An Introduction to Theologically Engaged Anthropology

Lemons, J. Derrick

doi:10.1080/00141844.2019.1640760

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…However, the emergence of a “theologically‐engaged anthropology” (Lemons, 2018) over the past few years makes the claims of Islamic anthropology seem less controversial today. Indeed, Islamic anthropology is ripe for revisiting as anthropology's taken‐for‐granted secularity is finally coming under mainstream scrutiny.…”

Section: Theology and Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance

Moll

2023

American Anthropologist

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Can there be a Godly ethnography? This article explores how the epistemic entailments of this question trouble our taken‐for‐granted notions about what decolonizing anthropology demands. Disciplinary decolonization aims at more‐just futures through interrogating Eurocentric ways of knowing and approaching marginalized histories and perspectives as good to think with, not merely about. I argue that far from being a radical challenge, such decolonizing calls are internal to a secular liberal anthropology. The ethical norms they embed take paradigmatic form in the ethnographic stance and its imperative to take difference seriously as a way toward self‐transformation. This stance needs to itself be provincialized as belonging to secular traditions of critical inquiry and their attendant emancipatory politics. By contrast, a Godly ethnography, as put forth in the 1980s call for an “Islamic anthropology” by some Muslim scholars working within a broader Islamization of knowledge movement, is a more radical challenge to the discipline. Here, the study of human differences is oriented neither towards self‐determination nor solidarity but towards divine devotion. Indeed, Islamic anthropology's transcendent telos is difficult to reconcile with the secular ethic of “taking seriously” motivating call for epistemic decolonization. This difficulty necessitates more‐carefully disentangling the question of disciplinary decolonization from political liberation, asking what happens the day after epistemic decolonization.

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Section: Theology and Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance

Moll

2023

American Anthropologist

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“…Other ontological endeavours focus on the task of truly recognising the reality of diff erent, and possibly unknowable, 'others'. A special collection in Ethnos (Lemons 2021) shows that, in this, anthropologists can be stimulated by the axiomatic reality and centrality of god(s) in theological studies. Two other special issues of Ethnos discuss the generally 'other-than-human' (Lien and Pálsson 2021) and the particular 'phytocommunicability and cross-species sociality' of plants (Schulthies 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Reality, Realism and the Future

Kruglova

2023

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

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The world’s ethos in 2021 grew increasingly realistic, focusing on constraints and practicalities, accounting for ‘bitter necessities’, and choosing defensiveness, preservation and stability over creation and exploration. The rise of realism in the world’s public and private spheres presents a challenge to anthropology’s ability to integrate a moral compass, empirical embeddedness and epistemological value in the discipline. This review of research published in some major peer-reviewed Anglophone European journals in 2021 seeks to vindicate the optimistic kind of moral realism by showing its inescapable entanglement in two of the most powerful items on anthropologists’ agendas today, the ontological and the future-oriented.Résumé : En 2021 l’éthos mondial est devenu de plus en plus orienté vers le réalisme avec le souci d’identifier des contraints, nécessités et aspects pratiques. La défensive, la préservation et la stabilité ont été privilégiées. La création et l’exploration ont été mises à l’écart. La montée du réalisme à travers le monde a marqué la vie publique ainsi que les relations privées. Il est clair que cela représente un défi pour beaucoup d’anthropologues dans la mesure où cela bouscule les traditions. Le réalisme nécessite une prise de position quant à la nature de la discipline anthropologique. Il faut s’interroger sur sa capacité d’incorporer le sens moral dans le processus de recherches empiriques et les fondements épistémologiques. Cet article examine des recherches évaluées par les pairs dont les résultats ont été publiés dans les principales revues scientifiques en langue anglaise de l’année 2021. Il vise à exprimer le bienfondé d’un réalisme optimiste à la croisée de deux priorités majeures pour des anthropologues d’aujourd’hui : l’ontologie et les études prospectives.

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“…I am well aware that many anthropologists and ethnographers are religious and pious, and the categories of 'scholar' and 'pious' should not be presented as if they were mutually exclusive. However, in light of scholarly discussions on methodological atheism(Bialecki 2014;Lemons 2018;Oustinova-Stjepanovic 2015), I think that such a distinction can be retained for analytical purposes.4 Aside from Ibn Taymiyya's works and other specific Islamic exegeses pertaining to same-sex sexuality, the idea of divine test and self-sacrifice -especially in relation to one's relations with other people -is apparent in the Islamic epistemic tradition. The narrative of the Prophet Abraham, or Ibrahim, for instance, demonstrates that the Prophet had to sacrifice his own son to follow God's command (seeLjamai 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

Of agency, Allah, and authority: the making of a divine trial among Muslims with same‐sex attraction in Indonesia

Ramadhan

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article delves into the life stories of Indonesian Muslims who struggle with same‐sex attraction (henceforth SSA) and believe that their SSA is divinely foreordained as a test from Allah. I draw on seventeen months of ethnographic research in an online community called Yayasan Peduli Sahabat (henceforth YPS) which prescribes ways to live heterosexually to its members and clients with SSA. In this article, I argue that the members of YPS are exercising their agency when they try to discipline their sexuality and live as heterosexuals. In this way, this study contributes to the existing literature on the agency of illiberal religious subjects by discussing the extent to which agency is practised in the face of one's relations with the divine and human‐mediated religious authority. Drawing on these interrelated themes, this article conjoins anthropological scholarship on self‐cultivation, divine intervention, and religious authority. Instead of understanding Muslims’ lives through the shift from a self‐cultivation paradigm to the paradigm of divine intervention, I suggest that both paradigms are instructive and attending to them could elucidate how Muslims with SSA exercise their agency while continuing to be affected by the divine.

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An Introduction to Theologically Engaged Anthropology

Cited by 10 publications

References 15 publications

Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance

Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance

Reality, Realism and the Future

Of agency, Allah, and authority: the making of a divine trial among Muslims with same‐sex attraction in Indonesia

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