Antagonistic Insights: Evolving Soviet Atheist Critiques of Religion and Why They Matter for Anthropology

Abstract

This article offers a critique of the common notion in contemporary anthropology that a positive attitude toward the people under study is a necessary precondition for a sophisticated understanding of their social world. The empirical sociology of religion that evolved during the last decades of the Soviet Union's existence started from the premise that religion was a harmful phenomenon slated for disappearance. Nonetheless, atheist sociologists produced increasingly complex accounts of religious life in modern socialist societies. Their ideological framework simultaneously constrained Soviet scholars and forced them to pay closer attention to religious phenomena that contradicted political expectations. Drawing on this extreme example of militant atheist scholarship, I argue that studying 'repugnant cultural others' always requires some form of affective motivation. Antagonism can be as powerful, and as problematic, a motivating force as empathetic suspension of judgment.

Unfinished conversations: A tribute to Sonja Luehrmann (1975–2019)

“…Showing how documentation was part of the process of transforming reality, Sonja noticed how Soviet sociologists were sometimes changed by their encounter with religious 'others', subsequently beginning to empathize with their subjects and criticize the state. She thought anthropologists could learn from this 'antagonistic insight' (Luehrmann 2015c) in their relationship with 'repugnant cultural others' such as the Christian fundamentalists described by Susan Harding who became a test case for the anthropology of Christianity.…”