The Anthropology of Secularism

Cannell, Fenella

doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.105039

Cited by 135 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The very idea of inevitability leads a number of people and institutions to call for secularism in public life and to take action for this purpose. So, in many places, secularism has become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (Canell 2010). As Asad (1993) puts it, if the idea of the secular state is nothing more than a myth, an unsuccessful academic prophecy, other models-such as the group studied here-should not be interpreted as inferior, behind time, or Bnot modern.Â fter all, it is exactly these types of accusatory terms used against Pentecostals in Brazil.…”

Section: Contextualizing (The National Frame)mentioning

confidence: 90%

Between Conflict and Negotiation: an Ethnography at the Most Evangelical City in Brazil

Souza¹

2017

Int J Lat Am Relig

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This article is based on a research conducted in the city of Abreu e Lima, well known as the most evangelical in Brazil. We choose the school environment as a field of observation from the fact that different researchers have pointed to it as a space where students have contact with religious diversity (Giumbelli 2011) that can lead them to question certain attitudes-such as participation in the June's parties in the case of nonCatholics (Silva 2011; Campos 2009)-and as a field of specific moral requirements, regarding gender behavior (Perosa 2006;Ribeiro 2006). The initial idea of the research project was to think about the conflict held by Pentecostal girls at school in order to claim a right to demonstrate the characteristics and constraints of their religious choices. If the initial goal of the investigation was to find the conflict generated in this process, the field showed that the path to follow was different. Therefore, our research is committed to understanding the negotiations, understandings and performances carried out by students in the activation, or not, of their religious affiliations in the school. At a time when Brazilian society sees itself as secular and believes that there is a battle between these ideals and Bconservative evangelical activism^ (Machado, 2012;Campos et al., 2015), it is important to know what is happening in the most evangelical city in the country. Moreover, it is necessary to know how and if these children are being trained to become these activists.

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Section: Contextualizing (The National Frame)mentioning

confidence: 90%

Between Conflict and Negotiation: an Ethnography at the Most Evangelical City in Brazil

Souza¹

2017

Int J Lat Am Relig

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“…Recent works by sociologists, philosophers, and anthropologists indicate that the secular and the religious may not be as separate as the Weberian notion of disenchantment and other unilineal theories of secularization have usually implied, and that secularization theory may never have been applicable to non-Western societies [3,[35][36][37][38]. When it comes to Africa, for example, politics, which have been at the heart of the secularization debate in the West, "stubbornly resist the distinction between sacred and secular" ( [11], p. 3).…”

Section: Towards a Reflexive Postsecularismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupying the Ontological Penumbra: Towards a Postsecular and Theologically Minded Anthropology

Merz

2017

Religions

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Abstract:In the wake of the postsecular turn, we propose to reappraise both the religious as studied in anthropology and how anthropologists who have religious or spiritual interests can contribute to an emerging postsecular anthropology. Such an anthropology recognizes the failure of secularization theory to dissolve the dichotomy between the religious and the secular. We propose that as anthropologists we consciously occupy the ontological penumbra, an ambiguous and plural space in which we engage with various counterparts, both human and nonhuman. This means that we have to be open to the real possibility of the existence of gods, spirits, and other nonhuman entities. These should not only be treated as subjects of study, but also recognized as valid counterparts with whom we can engage in the ethnographic encounter. While this necessitates relinquishing the former privileged position of secular and Western epistemology, it opens up the discipline to a potentially unprecedented ethnographic productivity that is epistemologically and ontologically innovative. Without neglecting its secular heritage, such a theologically minded postsecular anthropology places anthropology in a better position to explore what it is to be human, especially in terms of understanding religious and spiritual experiences.

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“…Where uncertainty and doubt are incorporated into analysis, intrinsic instabilities of belief and the malleability of intellectual and ritual commitments to one's religious traditions are often seen as problematic only in the contexts of conversion and denominational switch (Kirsch 2004) and iconoclastic rejection of ancestral and popular practices in favor of authoritative global traditions such as Christianity and Islam. In sum, anthropologists have been far more interested in belief, whether as a socially significant phenomenon in its own right or a problematized field of relations within secular contexts (Agrama 2012;Cannell 2010;Starrett 2010).…”

Section: Doubtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Godless People, Doubt, and Atheism

Blanes¹,

Oustinova-Stjepanovic²

2015

Social Analysis

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Abstract:In the introduction to this special issue, we set the agenda for researching the aspirations and practices of godless people who seek to thin out religion in their daily lives. We reflect on why processes of disengagement from religion have not been adequately researched in anthropology. Locating this issue's articles in the anthropological literature on doubt and atheism, we argue for the importance of a comparative investigation to analyze people's reluctance to pursue religion.Keywords: atheism, disbelief, disengagement from religion, doubt, godless people, non-religion, unbelief Being GodlessIn the current climate of false prophecies of secularism and numerous theories of the resurgence of religions, it is rather unusual to study a way of disengaging from religion. A bulk of recent ethnographies tell stories about technologies of self and the adept cultivation of religious dispositions (Mahmood 2005), learning to discern God (Luhrmann 2007), and enacting divine presences in physical rituals, speech acts, dream visions, or materials (Engelke 2007). Rituals of presencing the transcendent, the divine, or the immaterial (e.g., Orsi 2005) and well-rehearsed arguments about the resilience of religious spiritualities in politics (Bubandt and van Beek 2012) seem to be the order of the day. Building on the growing interest in researching how people demarcate the boundaries of religion and what falls outside (Engelke 2012b(Engelke , 2014, this special issue suggests that 'being godless' is an important empirical reality that encompasses processes, aspirations, and practices that purposefully or inadvertently lead to the attenuation of one's religious life. Through ethnographies of 'godless people', we propose to explore modalities of disengagement from religion, such as aspirations to move away from one's religious tradition and attempts to maintain one's atheist sensibilities and dispositions in encounters 2 | Ruy Llera Blanes and Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic with religious phenomena and people. The contributors to this issue illuminate several moments and movements within such processes: the materiality and bodily consequences of atheist configurations (Copeman and Quack), questions of certainty and doubt (Tremlett and Shih), problems of defining a non-religious identity (Lee), and political narratives and ontologies (Blanes and Paxe). We also interrogate the non-religious construction of scientific scholarship (Luehrmann) and the atheism of anthropology and anthropologists (Oustinova-Stjepanovic). These contributions exemplify possible questions and itineraries in the empirical study of atheism and non-religion and raise anthropological questions beyond a specific sub-disciplinary scope. As Matthew Engelke brilliantly exposes in the afterword to this issue, this exercise is conceptually uncomfortable but can be productive for both a hypothetical anthropology of non-religion and an anthropology of religion. In this introduction, we set an agenda for the study of non-religion and atheism and critically revie...

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The Anthropology of Secularism

Cited by 135 publications

References 34 publications

Between Conflict and Negotiation: an Ethnography at the Most Evangelical City in Brazil

Between Conflict and Negotiation: an Ethnography at the Most Evangelical City in Brazil

Occupying the Ontological Penumbra: Towards a Postsecular and Theologically Minded Anthropology

Godless People, Doubt, and Atheism

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