Acts of Imagination

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Kenneth G. MacKendrick

Religion: “While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religious – there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy.” – Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion

History: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as historical – there is no data for history. History is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. History has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Politics: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as political – there is no data for politics. Politics is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Politics has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Capitalism: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as capitalist – there is no data for capitalism. Capitalism is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Capitalism has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Truth: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, true – there is no data for truth. Truth is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Truth has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Meaning: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as meaningful – there is no data for meaning. Meaning is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Meaning has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Reality: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as real– there is no data for reality. Reality is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Reality has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Sex: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as sexual – there is no data for sex. Sex is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Sex has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Death: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as dead – there is no data for death. Death is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Death has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Intelligence: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as intelligent – there is no data for intelligence. Intelligence is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Intelligence has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Elitism: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as elitist – there is no data for elitism. Elitism is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Elitism has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Stupidity: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as stupid – there is no data for stupidity. Stupidity is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Stupidity has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Humor: While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as humorous – there is no data for humor. Humor is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Humor has no independent existence apart from the academy.

Posted in Kenneth G. MacKendrick, Religion and Theory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Being a “Good Christian” at Bob Jones University

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Tim Morgan

Christopher Peterman, a now-expelled 23-year-old Bob Jones University student, initially entered the conservative Christian institution embracing its strict rules. They were “exactly what he signed up for,” according to this news report. Ostensibly, he flouted a few of them, received a series of demerits for his infractions, and was eventually expelled a few weeks before his scheduled graduation.  His offenses included updating his Facebook during class and linking contemporary Christian music lyrics (i.e. Christian rock) on his status updates. One of the most severe punishments came after he was caught watching the TV show “Glee” off campus, because the university deemed it “morally reprehensible” due to its sexual content, particularly its non-condemning portrayal of homosexuality in the form of gay characters. His final demerit was for “disrespecting authority.”

The administration at Bob Jones may have been more self-critically correct than they were aiming to be, considering the backstory Peterman was aiming to expose. While still a student, Peterman started a group called “Do Right BJU,” which aimed to raise awareness of sexual abuse. “That’s when all of my problems started,” he said, because Chuck Phelps, formerly a member of the Board of Trustees at Bob Jones University, was a target of one of the group’s protests for his role in the attempted cover up of the rape of Samantha Anderson, a former member of Trinity Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church in Concord, NH, where Phelps was once pastor.  When Phelps discovered that Anderson was pregnant as a result of one of the assaults she endured from Ernest Willis, another member of Trinity Baptist Church, he had her confess her “sin” in front of the congregation, then arranged for her to relocate with another IFB family thousands of miles away and to give up the baby for adoption, all before a trial could be conducted. Willis too was forced to confess his “sin” of adultery in front of the congregation since he was married, but without having to admit the rape or that his victim was a member of the same church. Concord police reopened the case after being alerted to a Facebook campaign to bring Willis to justice, which was started by another former member of Trinity Baptist Church. Willis has since been tried and found guilty of the rape, and Phelps is now a pastor at a different IFB church.

The response from Bob Jones following the protest was at first non-combative and in accord with its purpose. A public promise was made that there would be no negative consequences for any students involved in the protest, Phelps was forced to step down from the Board of Trustees, and a Committee on Sexual Abuse was established. But then a darker side of the response emerged outside of the public eye, at first anyway, swiftly, persistently, and decidedly not in accord with Peterman’s intentions or Bob Jones’s promise. According to CNN, Peterman was required to attend counseling with dorm monitors and several deans, including the Dean of Men, and had his movements to and from campus monitored by a resident assistant at the order of BJU administration. In an online interview available on YouTube, embedded below, Peterman claims that he was that he was told that he needed “spiritual help because [he] was not a good Christian” for stepping against authority and “bringing shame on Bob Jones.”  He also describes his dorm monitors recording his behavior in order to accrue enough demerits against him for expulsion, as the CNN article also reports. Since he did not technically have enough demerits for the expulsion to hold, administrators decided that his final tactical move of consulting media outlets and Bob Jones’s accrediting agency for guidance prior to his final hearing with administrators provided the justification because he was trying to “intimidate” them.

BJU’s Public Relations department issued the following statement after officially expelling Christopher Peterman: “We expect students to obey the student covenant in the spirit and the letter. Our goal is to help him succeed, and we did everything we could to help him succeed.”

The first question that comes to mind is how watching “Glee” could be detrimental to student success. BJU students are also prohibited from seeing most movies, listening to most forms of music, and reading many periodicals. Shouldn’t students be exposed to culture outside of the BJU environment, even if only to learn to combat it? Isn’t restricting this exposure in contradistinction to their goal of “extend[ing] these objectives beyond the university campus”? And isn’t the sort of intimidation they decried leading up to Peterman’s expulsion akin to the threat of punishing someone for witnessing the same culture that Bob Jones is ultimately a part of?

“God is in control. So God has a plan for this,” Christopher Peterman said in one of his interviews, remaining upbeat and with his faith intact, which is decidedly not out-of-step with the mission of Bob Jones University. Samantha Anderson also continues to echo a strong profession of faith, in spite of the devastating experiences she has endured. In both of their cases, attempts at guilt through authoritative control were made to scuttle an institutional threat, and the consequences are on display in the very manner the institution was trying to avoid.  The fundamentalist atmosphere at Bob Jones is one that seeks “not [to] be conformed to this world,” as Romans 12:2 instructs, but in examples like the Christopher Peterman case, where the interests of individual powerbrokers and the reputation of the establishment seem to predominate, discerning “what is good and acceptable and perfect,” as another part of that passage also instructs, seems to be have been subsumed under notions of obedience to authority.

In Peterman’s case, it is noteworthy that he is embracing life outside of Bob Jones University’s code of conduct. In the recent YouTube interview alluded to above, he is visibly wearing a Hollister t-shirt, something that is expressly forbidden on page 32 of the school’s handbook.  Perhaps this indicates that he and others like him can still find ways to reconcile the conflict between one authoritative conception of what is required of a “good Christian” and their own formations of that identity.

Posted in Religion and Popular Culture, Religion and Society, Tim Morgan | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What Ales the Hindu Community… Kali-Ma Beer?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Deeksha Sivakumar

As early as next week, Burnside Brewery in Portland Oregon planned to release a spiced wheat beer, “Kali-Ma”.  Needless to say, the ‘cultural theft’ of a popular demonic form of a Hindu goddess has rubbed a number of Hindu Organizations the wrong way, provoking condemnations of Burnside’s choice on the grounds that it would “hurt the devotees.” In ways that mimic disputes over the appropriations of yoga earlier this year, and Heidi Klum’s dressing up as Kali-Ma for a 2008 Halloween Party, Burnside has argued that it was not their intent to offend devotees by using Kali-Ma.

Of course,it is not only commercial interests who appropriate cultural goods in ways that serve their own self-interest. Post colonial governments regularly do so. In 2008, for instance, the Egyptian government sought patents for the use of the image of pyramids . Their proprietary claim stemmed from a desire to identify certain images as cultural signifiers, and perhaps also the considerable revenues, and the ability to enforce limitations upon how such images are used by others, patents typically provide.

Such practices provoke questions about the appropriate contexts for determining when cultural images are used (or abused) and who gets to draw these boundaries. On the one hand, some devotees claim to be harmed by the ‘theft’ (and especially the commodification) of their cultural resources. It is worth noting that at least one other commercial vendor of alcohol, Sula, the winery from Nasik, India, use the image of the mustached Sun (also a Hindu god) to label their bottles.

Thus, it is worth inquiring further as to precisely how why Burnsides’ Kali-Ma beer might be construed as harmful. Kali, the black, naked, and terrifying goddess, is depicted in the Devi-Mahatmya (a Hindu devotional text from the Markandeya Purana) as drunk (on blood) and wielding tremendous power. Just as some followers of yoga sought to sanitize the practice and remove some of the tantric connotations associated with practices, do modern Hindus hope to sanitize representations of Kali? On the other hand, cultural images of all sorts quickly become part of an endless repertoire shared the world-over. With the Internet, culturally specific images from one community soon evoke sentimental value in those from others. Should we, then, expect their appropriation, even commodification?

Perhaps what irks the critics of Burnside (and Heidi) is that a non-Hindu may get to use and promote one particular image of the goddess, while they themselves hope to promote a “purer” image of Kali-Ma. However, this too stems from a need to polish Hindu gods, making the gods palatable to a non-Hindu gaze that may not understand the diverse stories of the Hindu goddess. I do not wish to marginalize the possible “suffering” Kali-Ma beer may cause some (sanitized) Hindus, but it does lead on to ask: when we stand up to lay claim to cultural signifiers, does this serve the purpose we have explicitly claimed? It may in fact have little to do with Kali-Ma beer offending Hindu sentiments, and much more to do with wanting to claim authority over the appropriate use of symbols, and the high that goes with wielding that power.

Posted in Deeksha Sivakumar, Religion and Popular Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What’s belief got to do with it?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Kelly Baker

“They don’t really believe that, do they?” is a refrain that I find familiar, expected and, frankly, tiring. As someone who researches white supremacists and doomsday prophets, I should be used to it. The query confronts me in the classroom, at conferences, at the dinner table, and most often conspiratorially in the hallways.  It is often a hushed question in which the interrogator asks me beseechingly to say what s/he already wants (needs?) to hear.  Simply put, the interrogator wants me to say “no, of course, they don’t believe” that the world will end catastrophically, that reptoids inhabit caves under New Mexico, that Atlantis might rise, or that race war is the only way to redeem America. If I, the person who studies “weird” or “exotic” religion, will assure them that these people don’t believe, then maybe they can rest easy. I cannot assure them. And, if I am being truly honest, I really don’t want to. Instead, I emphasize that this “belief” is materialized in every prophetic utterance, billboard proclaiming the date of the end, online discussion of reptoid encounters, and each weapon purchased for the possibility of race war.

As Craig Martin notes in a previous post, belief is a problematic starting point for the study of religious people. It is an impoverished concept that ignores how people embody, enact, imagine, practice, participate, discuss, envision, hope, desire, want, and construct their religions. Religion is not simply belief, but is enmeshed in lives, materially and metaphysically. In a recent meditation on “belief,” Robert Orsi discusses the materiality of belief and the practice of religious life. Belief doesn’t quite explain what religious people do or even why they do what they do. It cannot encapsulate the messy richness of religious practice.

All of this is to say that I was excited to see Tanya Luhrmann’s contribution to Frequencies, the online genealogy of spirituality, and her new book, When God Talks Back.  (Here’s her interview with NPR). In her Frequencies article, “Magic,” Luhrmann discusses her research on Druids and their religious training to create worlds that were separate from the modern world and contained magic. She writes:

They practiced the exercises and read the books and participated in the rituals and then, out of the blue, they had seen something. They saw the Goddess, or a flash of light, or a shining vision of another world. They saw these as things in the world, not phantoms in the mind, although because the image vanished almost immediately, they knew that what they had seen was not ordinary. They said that their mental imagery had become sharper. They thought that their inner sense had become more alive.

The Druids trained. I guess we could say they “believed,” but why would we want to?

Posted in Kelly J. Baker, Theory and Method, Theory in the Real World | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Some Thoughts on Theory and Politics in the Classroom

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Matt Sheedy

A recent thread on Facebook got me thinking about how scholars/instructors negotiate the boundaries between theory and politics and how these lines are always a little blurry, even at the best of times. Tim Murphy offers one way to think about this problem in his essay “Speaking Different Languages,” (2000) when he points out how debates in the public realm are different from debates in scholarship since they exist on different “temporal horizons.”
Whereas politics is driven by practical questions that concern the  ‘here and now’ and is typically framed in a narrow and partisan fashion, the scholar thrives on careful and subtle distinctions and thus have the luxury to “wait and see” without (ideally) an immediate
pressure to choose sides. (188) If it is true that most students come  to the classroom with an understanding of religion that has been filtered and homogenized through a particular cultural, historical and political lens (e.g., Anglo-American) then it stands to reason that drawing on examples from the public sphere (e.g., the news media) is a good way to illustrate the boundaries between theory and politics and to demonstrate how we might try to navigate this rocky terrain.

A recent USA Today article entitled, “Secularists counter prayer day with National Day of Reason” provides a useful example. The article frames the National Day of Reason as “part protest, part celebration and totally godless,” and ends by quoting Paul Fidalgo,
communications director at the Center for Inquiry, who states: “We feel that having our chief elected officials proclaim a religious day to be a clear violation of the separation of church and state. Besides that, it is exclusionary not just for nonbelievers but to
everyone who does not buy into monotheism.”

On the level of politics, we may note how the language/rhetoric and framing of this issue encourages people to choose sides in relation to their preferences as they are presented with what appear to be logical propositions that require a yes or no response. Here I might
confess that I, as a non-theist and as a person with political interests, am sympathetic to secularist groups being able to voice their concerns in the public realm and am weary of politicians promoting such an exclusionary event as the National Day of Prayer. I
might also note, however, that I am uneasy with the way that many secularist groups tend to construct “religion” as the opposite of “reason,” which is one of several factors that makes me reluctant to choose sides. And the reason I think this is, in no small measure, because of my training in theory and how it has changed the way that I think about discourse in the public sphere.

Looking at this article with a more theoretical lens, we may note two structural dichotomies in the above quotation, that between religion and reason and that between church and state, both of which can be placed within the history of the Euro-West and its corresponding
emphasis on “belief” as something that is internal to the individual and is therefore a “private” affair that should not get caught-up in the “public” matters of the State. Pushing further we might locate religion in a contemporary American context, noting the particular
history of church/state relations and ask why this is such a heated matter, especially in light of such events as 9/11 or the historical marginalization of atheists from politics? We could also frame this event via comparison, looking at the Canadian National Prayer
Breakfast, which is held around the same time, and ask why it did not, to my knowledge, garner the same level of opposition (or media coverage) from secularist groups, despite its overwhelmingly male, conservative and Christian orientation?

After raising such careful and subtle distinctions it should be easier for students to see that issues in the public sphere are not so cut and dry, and that terms like “secular” and “religion,” or church/state boundaries have a history and must be situated in relation to other factors if they are to make any sense at all. While the “temporal horizons” of theory and politics are not likely to change any time soon, by stressing that knowledge is always caught-up with human interests and that we need not always choose sides (at least not right
away!) we create a space for critical thought to take shape as something more than mere fantasy, without falling into the trap of confession or advocacy. In this sense, Marx was right: philosophers and theorists don’t just interpret the world, but, through
critique and by presenting issues in a certain light, ultimately serve to change it if on a slightly smaller-scale than Marx had in mind, and with much less certainty as to what it all means for the future.

Posted in Matt Sheedy, Pedagogy | Leave a comment

Are We Teaching Students How to Research?

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Craig Martin

When I started my college career I took introductory composition courses that taught me how to do “research.” I learned how to go to the library, how to search online databases for articles and books on my topic, how to cite sources using MLA format, and then how to write papers with a minimum number of citations/sources supporting the claims I made.

I think we are still teaching students how to do this, but I’m not sure it’s useful. As a scholar, I never go about research in religious studies by searching online databases, and the citation styles I use vary by context.

How do I do research, then? I ask peers what’s “essential reading” in a certain area, I ask who’s publishing recently on a certain topic, I sift through bibliographies in the books and articles recommended to me, and I read around in what looks to be relevant. The only time I use a library database is to look up and download an article I’ve already identified.

So the question is: are we teaching students skills that are not useful? What if, instead, we spent more time teaching students how to evaluate sources we readily shared with them (like we get from our peers), rather than focusing on how to physically find and cite find sources?

Of course, teaching students how to evaluate sources would draw us into ideological battles that would be more easily avoided if we merely focused on the numbers of sources cited rather than the contested value of various sources. We’d be talking about the value of some types of scholarship over others, the usefulness of some methods over others, and why they should avoid anything with “The Sacred” in the title.

Messy business—but isn’t that what research really involves?

Posted in Craig Martin, Pedagogy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Field Notes: News and Announcements in the Discipline

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Philip L. Tite

We are pleased to launch a new section in the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. As of our April issue, we are now including “Field Notes” in future issues, thereby offering a venue to inform readers of possible opportunities and happenings in the field.

The Bulletin welcomes announcements, including call for papers, conference announcements, grant competitions, news items, and other informative updates on happenings in the discipline. Such announcements will first appear here on the Bulletin’s blog for timely distribution with occasional inclusion in issues of the Bulletin. Please email all announcements to the editors, Craig Martin and Philip Tite (or submit via our online submission system). Our editorial staff will also be watching for interesting items to include in this section of the Bulletin.

 

Posted in Academy, Announcements, Call for papers, Philip L. Tite | Tagged | Leave a comment

“You Can’t Reason with a Crazy Person”: The Un-politics of American political discourse

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By James Dennis LoRusso

Were you to travel one segment of the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois this morning, you might discover a curious billboard.  The display features a mugshot of Ted Kaczynski, the self-confessed “Unabomber,” coupled with the question, “I still believe in Global Warming.  Do You?”  The new billboard campaign lining various commuter routes is the latest initiative of the Chicago-based conservative think tank, the Heartland Foundation, to call into question prevailing scientific consensus around climate change.

Predictably, progressives have responded virulently, claiming that Heartland has sunk to a new low in its effort to undermine and politicize “mainstream” science.  In a scathing response, Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast characterizes the strategy as “a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses on guilt by the most extreme association.”  In other words, by linking belief in global warming to the likes of Kaczynski, Castro, and Charles Manson, all of whom presumably agree with the thesis of climate change, Heartland implies that anyone subscribing to such views must also be degenerate.

While Sullivan’s critique is warranted, it also reveals something significant about the shape of American political discourse more generally.  To borrow a notion from Roland Barthes, esteemed scholar of twentieth-century myth, American political discourse has become depoliticized.  Barthes writes: “Myth is depoliticized speech… Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.” (Mythologies, 143) Barthes wishes for us to see how myths transform historically situated and contested knowledge into concepts beyond the pale of critique.

At first glance, the billboard appears to perform precisely the opposite function of myth; After all, isn’t it calling into question something which “mainstream” science simply acknowledges as “a statement of fact?” Well, yes… and no.  Barthes also reminds us that all is not as it appears in myth.  He writes, “myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.”  Similarly, these billboards clearly intend to question global warming, and to associate this view with various serial killers, dictators, and cult leaders.  Nothing is hidden here.  The mythic component, however, operates at a higher order: It is the underlying assumption, as Barthes suggests, which inflects the meaning of the billboard for the passerby.

By including Kaczynski, the billboard presents global warming as pathological rather than political.  At least in American popular discourse, his actions represent those of a sick and demented mind, rather than a politically motivated individual (despite the vast amount of evidence that the “Unabomber” saw himself as utterly political).  By extension, then, anyone who subscribes to the idea of man-made climate change must also be experiencing some form of mental illness.

Curiously, in his critique of the billboard campaign, Andrew Sullivan merely inverts the main characters, reproducing the same myth.  After carefully pointing out how the Heartland Foundation has rendered “the left” as some monolithic bloc of mentally deranged psychopaths for believing in global warming, Sullivan concludes: “Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved.  And there is no Buckley to reign them in.  Just countless Jonah Golbergs seeking to cash in.” Here, he reduces the conservative audience towards whom these billboards are aimed to a mob of mentally deranged subjects.

What, then, does this analysis of political squabbling accomplish? Well, employing Barthes’ lens exposes contemporary American politics as pathological, even bipolar.  Each side deploys the language of pathology in order to construct an “other” that is neither political nor rational (perhaps not even human), but ill or evil.  This strategy insulates one’s position from critique, as it simultaneously depoliticizes the issue (in this case global warming).  “Something must be wrong with those people,” we say.

Taking the attitude that “you can’t reason with a crazy person,” however, seems troubling to me, as I look out on a world filled with violence, suffering, and increasingly concentrated undemocratic power in the form of transnational corporations. Democracy, I was always taught, requires that we accord human dignity to others, even those with whom we disagree politically.  It demands that we take our adversaries as thinking individuals; it asks that we assume that they, despite our differences, believe that they have the best interests of society at hand, and finally, it challenges us to engage in reasoned debate with one another to establish the grounds for practical solutions. Contemporary political actors on all sides instead engage in competing forms of myth-making, designed to dehumanize the opposition and depoliticize the issues.

Of course, Barthes might claim that I am merely constructing a myth of my own, one that naturalizes all humans as reasonable and well-intentioned.  But as he states, “the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology.”

Posted in James Dennis LoRusso, Open Submission, Politics and Religion, Religion and Popular Culture, Religion and Society | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Arranging Marriages in the Age of Online-Speed-Dating and Soul Mates

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Kenny Paul Smith

By Deeksha Sivakumar

The idea of arranging marriages seems like an exotic thing even for modern Indians who see their relationship problems as very different from those of their parents’. India has changed considerably over the past few decades. Indian singles who have grown up this side of 1990 did so  in a decade of rapid economic and infrastructural development, with professional opportunities for men and women alike due  primarily to the growth of IT. From this milieu have emerged young men and women with hopes of selecting their own partners or “settling down,” and trying to rationalize their personal expectations with what the larger culture expects.

Kamna Mittal and her husband recently shared their experience of creating new, 21st century, options for arranged-marriage practices. Combining both parents’ and children’s wishes, Mittal offers “social mixers” as informal gatherings. While this may seem novel, it suggests continuities with some traditional Indian practice, as the arranging of marriages (traditionally understood as a communal, rather than an individual, responsibility) frequently occurred in informal ways, among “aunties” who would provide contacts from extensive kinship networks. By combining speed-dating with traditional expectations, the Mittals hope to attract more Indian-American singles who are perhaps uncertain as to how, when, and where, they might mingle with other Indian-American singles given their often times exceptionally busy lifestyles

The Mittals hope to make the marriage selection process “safer” for all of those parties who may be involved in arranging a big Indian wedding and required to do so in a contemporary American context, in large part by delimiting the parameters of who gets to participate in the mixer. The parents may call it “safe” because they would approve of the potential mates being Indian at least if not Hindu. This is interesting since speed-dating is usually associated with the thrill of meeting an unlikely match from a very diverse pool of people.

India-American parents and children are willing to forgo traditional caste-based considerations and opt for broader criteria such as “being Hindu” and/or “being of Indian-origin.” As we might expect, the ambiguities associated with the categories “Hindu” and “Indian” are imported into this new social practice. As one matchmaker queries, if a woman says she wants to marry a Hindu,  does that mean  someone who goes to temple each week, someone who is simply “being spiritual,” or something else entirely? Of course, as in much Indian discourse, heterosexuality is implied among other normative standards that are implicitly shared. And while it isn’t considered “prejudiced” to avoid potential mates from other religious backgrounds, it is considered unseemly to do so based on physical appearance. Such norms, though, are more difficult to maintain in American contexts, with so many dating websites and even Indian arranged marriage web portals where one may customize one’s “search” for a soul mate according to caste, dietary habits, and physical preferences.

Of course, in the non-Indian, American gaze explicit talk of “arranging marriages” may be perceived as a bizarre social practice. Still, arranging may not be so far removed from what virtually all American young adults experiences. When young people meet and are attracted to each other, each evaluates the other on all sorts of grounds. If things become serious, family and friends are likely consulted, who in turn bring with them considerations that reach beyond concerns of the moment, e.g., bank balances and economic potential, education, comportment, the perceived quality of friends and family, cleanliness, to name just a few.

Thus, arranged marriages may render the deliberative aspects of this complex social practice more explicitly than do contemporary dating rituals. If, however, we probed either set of cultural practices, considering the heavy-handed roles that nature and social conditioning play, we may wonder whether, in coming to end up with our soul mates, “choice” plays any role at all.

Posted in Deeksha Sivakumar, Southeast Asian Studies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

White Privilege in Higher Ed

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Craig Martin

By Craig Martin

Yesterday I was walking down the hall past the two main computer labs at my college. One lab is open to all students; the second is set aside for graphic design majors. When I walked by I noted that the main lab was almost entirely full with minority students—primarily African-American students and students who probably identify as Puerto Rican or Dominican. By contrast, the graphics design lab, full of brand new and expensive Apple computers, was almost entirely empty: there was only one white student in it.

It got me wondering: what social structures could account for this disparity?

Possibilities that came to mind (which might be completely wrong—I’m just brainstorming here):

  1. On average minority students are less likely to come from wealthy families and are therefore less likely to have their own computers in their dorm rooms.
  2. White students are more likely to be drawn to graphic design than minorities, because—growing up with more wealth (again, on average)—they are more likely to arrive at college “comfortable” with advanced computer applications.

Possible effects:

  1. White students disproportionately benefit from the more expensive and nicer computers in the graphic design computer lab.
  2. Minority students are disadvantaged because they are more likely to have to wait to use a computer—and one that is probably considerably older than the ones in the design lab.

Whatever the reason, it’s unlikely that random chance sufficiently explains why the computer labs are racially divided in this manner—and it seems that this phenomenon deserves our attention. Where is your campus racially divided?

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