The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

236â Key approaches to the study of religions

something like the Hebrew sacrificial system of the biblical period, and without assuming that it is an adequate basis for understanding all other sacrificial cults, one could investigate other systems that have some resemblances or likeness to it. The resemblance could be a matter of degree, not identity. In fact, if one examines any comparative pattern carefully, one can often find that it is implicitly based on a particular cultural version or prototype of that pattern. This is typically the case with the concept ‘religion’ itself. When Westerners use the term, what they often have in mind is a version of the Christian religion, so that, for example, religion signifies a system with a scripture, a creator god, and a concept of salvation. While this would be too narrow a way by which to describe everything religious, it is not in itself a faulty or uncontrolled comparative enterprise. The problem would be if there was no awareness that one was in fact limiting the analysis to the use of a particular historical norm or prototype (on the prototype issue see Saler 1993).

Sixth, academic comparativism should recognize a distinction between the perspectives, purposes and language of the comparativist and those of the insider. This is not to assert that the comparativist approach is better or more genuine in some absolute sense. Rather, the committed insider and the observing comparativist have different purposes. The object of the student of comparative religion is not simply to reiterate, replicate or ‘understand’ what particular religions say or do, though she must also be able to do that, but to find relationships and differences among religious traditions and to hold these up to view with a more wide-angled lens. These would be linkages that the insider, as insider, may neither see, be able to see, or be interested in.

To use the famous example of the philosopher William James, a crab does not see itself as a crustacean (the latter being an ‘outsider’s’ concept). But the biologist does. The scientist sees all the crustacean features (and against a broad evolutionary background) that the crab shares with over 40,000 other subspecies. The comparative anatomy scholar therefore sees continuities and differences unobservable to the single organism, and builds a new vocabulary to describe them. Likewise, comparativists in religion generate a terminology about ‘types’ of religious behaviors and representations, using the whole history of religion as the ‘context’ for making comparisons.

Seventh, if religion should be studied from all angles, then comparative themes should not be limited to religious patterns only. Comparison needs to be versatile – as complex as its subject matter. Religion can be analyzed in terms of any concept or topic. The ‘common factor’ in comparison can even be a complex combination of factors. For example, the relation of sacrifice to patterns of male authority; or the relation of ideas of deity to changes in technology in developing countries; or the cross-culturally patterned ways fundamentalist movements respond to modernist governments.

Comparative religion thereby extends its repertory of concepts and patterns, the better to do justice to the subject’s intimate connection with complex social realities, and to connect with some of the same theoretical concerns and perspectives found in other human and social sciences.

Eighth, in the face of the criticism that religion is always unique to culture and incomparable, there is a recent counter trend to reach behind culture in order to ground cross-cultural thinking in shared behavioral and cognitive patterns of the human species per se. The next section illustrates that approach.

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Human-level commonality

Behind all cultures are human beings. One could therefore look for continuities in the kinds of things people do as humans and in the processes by which humans organize experience, rather than only in the specific content or context of what they believe as insiders to their respective cultures.

Commonality among humans is not merely physical. All humans engage in common activities not only by their shared bodily make-up but also by their mental, social, and linguistic nature (cf. Brown 1991). They not only sleep, eat, reproduce, and react to pain, but they also create societies that form ‘kin’-like bonds, maintain moral order and codes of behavior, socialize the young, transmit ancestral tradition, distinguish between insiders and outsiders, set and defend boundaries, perform periodic rites, endow objects and persons with special prestige and authority, punish transgressions, experiment with alternative forms of consciousness, recite sacred histories and genealogies, interpret events and objects, form communicative systems with culturally postulated immaterial beings, classify the universe, and fashion their own worlds of time, space, language, and obligation. In these and many other ways, all human societies build, inhabit and maintain world-environments (Brown 1991: 130–141; cf. also the W. Paden essay in Idinopulos 2006: 59–76). Behaviors such as those just cited form common building blocks for the construction of diverse expressions of religious life. In turn, the religious systems play out these behavioral infrastructures with their local languages and values. Each of these mappings, for the insider, constitutes the way the world ‘is.’ To the comparativist, however, these are so many world versions.

The distinction of common, transcultural forms of human behavior and different cultural content (including meanings to the insider) then becomes important. Consider three illustrations:

Sacred histories

Each religion forms its own history of the world, its own memory system. The comparativist observes that there are as many of these ‘origins’ – with their prestigious founders and special founding events – as there are religious groups. For insiders to these traditions, such ‘historical’ origins are absolute. Every past rises up around key events and figures, not because it is objectively true by standards of modern historiography, but because it represents the given operating tradition and memory of a particular community. Even within the large Christian and Buddhist traditions, each sub-denomination has its own special lineages of authority, signature beliefs and models of history, just as villages, neighborhoods and families will have their own patron saints and ancestral icons.

These histories share common functions. They account for that on which the life of the group depends and the self-identity of the society; they create lines of transmission and authorization of power from the founders and exemplars; and they provide exemplary, idealized models for how to live.

But difference comes into the picture insofar as each group sees the past in terms of its own idea of what life is based on – its own idea of what is sacred. Navaho myths link the origin of humans with the origin of corn; Masai myths address the origin of the gift of cattle; ancient Babylonian myths deal with the founding deeds of their god-king Marduk; mystical sects describe their versions of the fall and redemption of the soul.

Sacred histories also showcase different social structures. They give superhuman authorization to particular social boundaries and roles, imperial descent, ethnic Âidentity,

238â Key approaches to the study of religions

or collective destinies. Many, such as the Judeo-Christian scriptures, include detailed genealogies. A well-known Hindu myth describes the origin of the four main castes from the body of a primal being, the brahmans emerging from the head, and the manual labor caste from the feet. The miraculous appearance of the ‘Virgin of Guadalupe’ to an indigenous Indian in 1531 is at once a national, ethnic, and Âreligious ‘foundation account’ for Mexican identity.

Thus, ‘myths of the past,’ or ‘sacred histories,’ encoded either in scripture, oral tradition or ritual reenactments, not only have the common functions of indexing memory and guiding or inspiring behavior, but may also be read as representations of different social values and meanings to be investigated in contextual detail.

Periodic renewal ritesÂ

Cultures not only represent pasts; they also recollect them in recurring rituals. Here, the values and venerated objects of the culture are celebrated and are imprinted on the life of the group’s members through the participatory media of the festival – such as unusual forms of fasting, feasting, music, dance, or other impressive collective performances.

Again, while the general function of these celebrative actions is similar, the content is not. In fact, only when the common factor is identified can the differences become appreciated. One of the important areas of difference is that of the social values that are meshed with the rites. For example, in traditional China the New Year festival highlighted the foundational role of family tradition and relationships. But in traditional South Asian Buddhist communities, major annual observances feature the mutually supportive relationship of the monks and laity. Annual rites in Pygmy culture feature the sanctity of the forest, but in Eskimo cultures the focus of honor is the sea mammals, and in ancient Athens the festivities celebrated the patron of the city, Athena. The Passover tradition for Jews focuses on the distinctive historical identity of that people; and for Christians, Easter celebrates the transformative power of their founder.

As renewal rites are not just expressions of religion, but of the broad activity by which humans construct time, they naturally appear in nonreligious versions, too, such as in national celebrations which honor the founders and accomplishments of one’s country.

Again, any one of these festivals can be read for the way it reveals different meanings to different social classes within the society. Festivals often show patterns of status, social inclusion and exclusion, kinship, gender roles, local traditions, and other forms of social identity, thus encoding a variety of significations.

Sacred order

A third example of a general human disposition that serves comparative study while highlighting ‘difference’ is the notion of sacred order. All religious groups draw lines, identify boundary transgression, and punish violations. All establish categories that require defense and monitoring. All maintain and defend a system of allowable and unallowable behavior; all have some version of authority, law and tradition.

But no two orders are the same. The content of what constitutes order and disorder is relative to the sociocultural system. Boundaries and their negotiation are mingled with complex social norms related to ideas of honor, obligation, kinship, sexuality, selfhood and any number of value configurations peculiar to any society. While there are some specific,

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recurring patterns of restrictive behavior among diverse cultures, such as the prohibition against incest, murder, and theft, it remains that much that is obligatory or violative pertains to each culture’s own norms. These might include notions of purity about food, social status, ritual, or protocols of the hunt.

Thus, at this broad level, comparative perspective can allow for a move ‘downward’ toward shared, panhuman features of behavior, and at the same time ‘upward’ to cultural specifics and differences, with all their particular inflections of texture and signification. Either or both directions may serve the comparativist’s purposes.

There is some contrast here, then, to Eliadean comparativism. The latter cited examples of ‘sacred space’ (for example) in order to show how they embodied patterns like ‘the Center,’ or the ‘world axis.’ But the examples typically illustrated what one already knew about those spatial archetypes; the many listed examples of a theme tended to be essentially replicas of the same concept. By contrast, a sociologically sensitive comparativism looks also for why spaces are different and for the ways they show nuances of social, ethnic and political identities. Thus, Hopi kivas, Quaker Âmeeting houses, modern suburban megachurches, Mormon Temples, Buddhist relic shrines, and Australian aboriginal ‘markings’ can be of interest for showing very specific cultural values and worldviewsÂ.

Religious patterns in secular life

From the above, it would follow that comparative religion has implications for the general understanding and explanation of human behavior; and also the other way around, because religious patterns are in many ways ‘natural’ human behaviors writ large and given a sacred basis. All cultures, not just religious ones, have special histories, places and times; all have renewal rites, sacred order and boundary marking. Even more specific ‘forms’ like pilgrimage, sacrifice, rites of passage, rites of purification, states of trance, ethical precepts, are not limited to religious domains. The notion of sacredness itself is a broader concept than religion: modern arenas where the factor of sacredness can be found include social justice, individual rights, and national sovereignty.

In these ways, the comparative religion endeavor invites reflection about any cultural system and its continuities with human worldmaking generally. The anthropologist Colin Turnbull thus discovered revealing aspects of adolescent ‘passage’ customs of British school boys after he had lived in the Pygmy culture and observed its puberty rites. Studying other cultures can thus have the reflexive effect of noticing the myths and rituals of one’s own for the first time.

Traditionally, American college religion departments offered just one course on the ‘NonChristian Religions,’ while all the other offerings would be on theological and historical facets of the ruling Judeo-Christian tradition. Today, in many academic settings, and particularly in secular public universities, this disproportion is being redressed. Indeed, one of the challenges of the comparative study of religion now is to be able to evenhandedly apply its perspectives to the study of biblical traditions.

The comparative study of religion is evolving. It develops along with our knowledge of the world and with the relevance of different kinds of theories and patterns applied to the world. Hence it is not something fixed for all time, but an ongoing process of discovery.

240â Key approaches to the study of religions

Summary

•â Comparison is a basic activity of the human mind. All thought, all concepts, involve comparison.

•â The comparative study of religion has evolved historically according to different worldviews and purposes.

•â Comparison can either focus on commonality or on differences relative to a point of commonality, or both.

•â Comparative perspective uncovers relationships between phenomena that would otherwise be unseen, and links those patterns to a broader interpretive theme or concept.

•â Critiques of comparativism typically claim that it overrides interesting and important differences among cultures.

•â A revival of interest in comparison has brought more clarification about its methods and goals, affirming, for example, that generalizations are corrigible, that they can achieve controlled focus on specific aspects of religion while still respecting context, and that they can help highlight cultural differences.

•â Cross-cultural and historical (or culture-specific) perspectives are both part of the general study of religion.

Bibliography

Braun, Willi, ed., 2004, ‘Comparison in the History of Religions: Reflections and Critiques,’ special issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 16/1.

Brown, Donald E., 1991, Human Universals, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Carter, Jeffrey, 1998, ‘Description is Not Explanation: A Methodology of Comparison,’ in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 10/2: 133–148.

Doniger, Wendy, 1998, The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth, Columbia University Press, New York.

Eliade, Mircea, 1958, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed, World Publishing Company, Cleveland.

—— 1959, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York.

Frazer, James G., 1963, The Golden Bough, abridged edn, Macmillan, New York.

Holdrege, Barbara, 1996, Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

Idinopulos, Thomas Athanasius, Brian C. Wilson, and James Constantine Hanges, eds. 2006, Comparing Religions: Possibilities and Perils? Brill, Leiden.

Jones, Lindsay, 2000, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture; Experience, Interpretation, Comparison, 2 Vols., Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Martin, Luther H., 2000, ‘Comparison,’ in Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds, Guide to the Study of Religion, 45–56. Cassell, London.

——, M. Hewitt, E.T. Lawson, W. Paden and D. Wiebe, 1996, ‘The New Comparativism in the Study of Religion: A Symposium,’ in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, VIII/1: 1–49.

Müller, F. Max, 1872, Lectures on the Science of Religion, Charles Scribner Co., New York.

Naroll, Raoul and Ronald Cohen, eds, 1970, A Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology, The Natural History Press, New York.

Neville, Robert Cummings, ed. 2001, Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, The State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 2001, vol. 48, no. 3. Brill, Leiden (special issue on comparativism).

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Paden, William E., 1994, Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion, 2nd edn, Beacon Press, Boston.

Patton, Kimberley C. and Benjamin C. Ray, eds, 2000, A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age, The University of California Press, Berkeley.

Poole, Fitz John Porter, 1986, ‘Metaphors and Maps: Towards Comparison in the Anthropology of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54: 411–457.

Saler, Benson, 1993, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, Leiden, Brill.

Sharpe, Eric C., 1986, Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd edn, Open Court, La Salle, Ill.

Smith, Jonathan Z., 1982, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

——1987, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

——1990, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

——2004, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Whitehouse, Harvey, 2004, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission, Altamira

Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

Suggested reading

Braun, Willi, ed., 2004, ‘Comparison in the History of Religions: Reflections and Critiques,’ Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 16/1.

Special issue, with essays by religious studies scholars responding to the Patton (2000) volume.

Eliade, Mircea, 1959, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York.

Widely read classic on such themes as sacred space and sacred time by the leading comparativist of the last generation. (A condensation of many of the themes from his larger volume, Patterns in Comparative Religion, 1958.)

Idinopulos, Thomas Athanasius, Brian C. Wilson, and James Constantine Hanges, eds., 2006,

Comparing Religions: Possibilities and Perils? Brill, Leiden.

Essays by thirteen religious studies scholars on the nature and aims of comparison.

Jones, Lindsay, ed. 2004, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edn, 15 vols, Macmillan, Detroit, MI.

Major source of articles, with bibliographies, on comparative topics, and a thorough updating of the original 1987 edition (ed. by Mircea Eliade).

Müller, F. Max, 1872, Lectures on the Science of Religion, Charles Scribner Co., New York. Seminal lectures on the importance of comparative perspective by a founder of the discipline.

Paden, William E., 1994, Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion, 2nd edn, Beacon Press, Boston.

An introduction to comparative perspective in the study of religion and to key patterns and variations in the formation of religious ‘worlds.’

Patton, Kimberley C. and Benjamin C. Ray, eds., 2000, A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age, The University of California Press, Berkeley.

Essays by fourteen contemporary scholars on the ongoing importance of comparative work in relation to the challenge of postmodernism.

Poole, Fitz John Porter, 1986, ‘Metaphors and Maps: Towards Comparison in the Anthropology of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54: 411–457.

242â Key approaches to the study of religions

Influential analysis of comparative method by an anthropologist of religion (for more advanced students).

Sharpe, Eric C., 1986, Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd edn, Open Court, La Salle, IL.

Remains a usefully informative overview of the development of comparative religion as a modern field.

Smart, Ninian, 1996, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Accessible demonstration of seven key categories by which religion can be studied (ritual, mythic, experiential, doctrinal, ethical, social, and material).

Smith, Jonathan Z., 1982, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Highly influential work raising critical issues on the methodology of comparison.

——, 2004, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, Chicago University Press, Chicago. numerous articles on issues of comparison by the best-known contemporary comparativist.

Part 2

Key topics in the study of religions

Chapter 14

Gender

Darlene M. Juschka

What is gender? What is sex? What is gender/sex?

Historical prelude

Gender as a category of analysis has operated in a variety of ways depending on pedagogical location or historical period. For example, in sociological studies gender consists of the study of sex roles in pre-industrial and industrial societies. Or, historically in Europe, gender has simply been the natural designation of the sexes as opposite since the eighteenth century. However, in the 1960s gender became a central category of feminist studies. So for example, in feminist language studies gender becomes the means by which to look at the erasure of women by the generic term ‘man’ and the thingification of women as the object of the male gaze.

The development of gender as a category of analysis can be seen in the work of Margaret Mead and Catherine Berndt, for example, as a slow transformation of the belief in natural sexroles and sex-role assignments to an analysis of the social construction of these roles. In other words, people like Mead and Berndt began to think about how the labor and roles given to men and women may have less to do with biological certainties and more to do with societal demands. These anthropologists examined women’s ritual activities and beliefs among preindustrial peoples, a focus that had been hitherto overlooked by their more androcentric colleagues. They found that the women they investigated tended to operate in a separate female sphere with rituals, symbols, and myths centered on such concerns as fertility and birth, economics, healing, or the well-being of the society, e.g. tending ancestors, the land, or myth cycles. They also became aware of two significant issues in the study of human society: one, the erasure of women and their activities from all fields of knowledge; and two, that women and men’s gendered practices, e.g. work, parenting, status, were in fact social roles that were secondarily assigned as sex roles. Under the influence of firstand second-wave feminism,1 then, the analysis of women as gendered, gender relating to both the oppression of women and creating a new subject of study based upon women, was established.

What is gender?

Gender is something we all know, or think we know. We immediately categorize people (and most everything, e.g. language, animals, planets, or inanimate objects) on the basis of their gender. We categorize ourselves repeatedly by ticking the appropriate box on a form to indicate our gender. We are careful to enter the proper washroom, and we choose particular