Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives
ed. by Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Parson und Jörg Rüpke, Berlin: de Gruyter 2019, 2 Vol., 1416 pages
Presenters during the book launch were Jörg Rüpke and Martin Mulsow as speakers of the Kollegforschungsgruppe ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’, and Martin Fuchs and Antje Linkenbach as long-term participants in the project. Bern-Christian Otto and Rahul Parson were unfortunately unable to participate in the event.
Jörg Rüpke introduced both the topic of the KFG and the publication. Following this Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach and Martin Mulsow gave a summary overview of the key theoretical and comparative aspects of the publication.
Martin Fuchs
Starting point of the KollegforschungsgruppeReligious Individualisation in
Historical Perspective, which came to an end in December 2018 after ten years of intensive
work and discussion, and of the book publication launched today[1]
has been the combined
critique of modernization theory and of Western-centrism still prevailing in
conceptualizations in both, the Social Sciences and Religious Studies.
Individualization is not a privilege of the West, or even the modern West. This
implies that, instead of regarding individualization as a drawn-out, linear and
teleological process which reaches its climax in the modern, post-Christian
West, we have taken the lens of individualization instead to uncover, and look
closely into, a plurality of different processes, across several world-regions
and across various religions. From a historical perspective, religious
individualization appears as a discontinuous development, covering processes of
short- or medium-term durée, and processes that are reversible.
The concept of “religious
individualization” can thus be described as a polythetic umbrella term, a
heuristic tool that permits engaging with multi-facetted phenomena. Dimensions
covered include: the enhancement of religious self-determination, the pluralisation
of religious options (or the emergence of spaces of choice); the facilitation
of religious deviance; the development of elaborated notions of
the self; or the realisation of intense experiences.
Such experiences can denote an inner
strength, which allows voicing outspoken critique of social besides
religious conditions that affect one’s life, or they can give the strength to
mobilise and organise for a betterment of such conditions. Such elements of
critique are not exclusive to modern, and meanwhile often non-religious forms
of individualization. We actually do encounter moments of critique, of
dissatisfaction with religious regulations and dogmas, or with social rules and
practices in a wider sense, as well as with the structures of power within religious
as well as political contexts, in many modern as well as pre-modern settings;
and we regularly discovered that processes of critique connect with increases
in religious individualization.
We should perhaps specify our
procedure here in two ways: Firstly, individualization should not be mistaken
for individualism, or even methodological individualism. One rather has to
differentiate between the ideal of individualism; the ontogenetic
process of individuation (as the flipside of socialization); and historical
processes of individualization. Secondly, individualization refers to
more than just individual cases of deviance and difference. What is
particularly interesting, as it can also become paradoxical, are the diverse
modes of institutionalisation of religious individualisations. This
includes the institutionalization of (social or cultural) imaginaries as well
as behavioural patterns (patterns of bodily, emotional, spiritual
self-practices), but also institution building: modes of conventionalization; processes
of group formation; of standardization and ritualization of certain ways of
communication, including communication with something beyond direct human
grasp; establishing textual canons and traditions; or even the establishment of
‘regimes’ of religious individualisation. Thus, individualization can have paradoxical
consequences, can result in its contrary, de-individualization. Or one can see
both forms side by side. But, one also encounters cases of creation of forms of sociality
or community that provide relatively unconstrained social (including religious)
spaces for enabling the development of personal options or paths’.
In this publication, ‘self’ stands
as a placeholder for the practices, experiences and representations of humans
circumscribed in different ways as person, even persona, identity, individual,
in part also subject and actor or agent, respectively as ‘patient’ of someone
else’s actions. What has to be emphasized: we understand the concept of Self or individual, like the
other concept of Religion, as inherently relational:
Regarding religion, talking of religion
or religiosity firstly means talking of a relationship people think to have to
something else, something beyond, or something felt inside, but in every case
something that is not immediately available. At the same time, secondly, no
religious individual can neglect his or her relationship to other people, and
there are various religious positions that equally give this relationship
prominence. Finally, the concern of an individual for him- or herself is often also
conceived in relational terms, as ‘self-relation’.
Regarding the notion of “self”: in a
way, religious individualization underlines the pragmatist insight into the
“primary sociality” of humans, and of selves. What many regard as the very core
of religiosity, self-transcendence, is essentially relational. We
distinguish three dimensions of self-transcendence: (i) Rather conventionally, the
experience of something beyond direct human grasp, something often
substantialised as ‘the’ transcendent, but something with which individual
actors want to connect or feel connected. The beyond (which may be a ‘within’)
can be experienced as deepening or widening the (everyday) self, or even as
contributing to its actual and authentic formation. (ii) In a wider and at the same time more profane sense, reference is to a
self, or the image of a self, that reaches out to the world beyond him- or
herself and experiences some powerful connectivity to something larger or
broader in which it feels included, but which, on the face of it, can equally
denote non-religious contexts – as in cases of ‘collective effervescence’, to
employ Émile Durkheim’s much quoted term. (iii) The phrase refers to those
social relations of a self that impact and connect him or her directly and
inwardly with others, and become in this way adjuncts of a self. Under the last
auspices, ‘transcending selves’ then relates in an emphatic sense of the term
to what a person or self shares with significant others, what we have
included under the concept of “dividuality”.
Antje
Linkenbach
When we understand
individualisation (here religious individualisation) as contingent possibility
of freeing oneself from social constraints and given authorities, we have to
acknowledge that there are always moments that counteract individualisation.
Firstly: conditions,
which stimulate individualization (often in form of deviance) can – in the long
run – solidify and allow for stabilisation and institutionalisation of
individualisation. It can even happen that in this process new constraints
emerge – in form of new authorities, formation of new traditions, or
standardized, stereotyped behaviours, a process that could seriously undermine
individualization.
Secondly: Individualization
does not mean that we shed away all forms of social bonds or moments of
relationality – with fellow beings, things / objects and manifestations of the
transcendent, and that we have a clear-cut and one-dimensional identity. Far
away from being a closed, a buffered Self – to speak with Charles Taylor – even
in modern social constellations the individual person is porous and permeable,
as it is also partible. Individuality is always paired with dividuality.
The first aspect was subject of
studies engaging in the search for ‘institutionalisation’,
“conventionalisation”, and de-individualization (Part III of the
publication). Scholars asked: How do processes of religious individualisation
in all their multifacetedness gather stability over time and become relevant
not just for a select few but for a significant number of people? Their agenda was to
move away from the analytical focus on individual actors in favour of broader
social dynamics that indicate processes of enhanced
dissemination, stabilisation (e.g., through ritualisation), standardisation
(e.g. through the canonisation of texts), or even the establishment of
‘regimes’ of religious individualisation. Of
interest were also processes that eventual relapse into de- or
non-individualisation. The case studies cover different religious
environments and historical scenarios, but also approach the research problem
from two different angles. One part traces
the institutionalisation of religious individualisation with a focus on ‘practices’,
particularly ritual practices, but also economic and legislative practices. Other
studies analyse the institutionalisation of religious individualisation by
looking at ‘texts and narratives’, especially taking into consideration the
nexus of authorship, texts, and audience.
The second aspect evolves around the
concept of dividuality. Dividuality was
made prominent in Melanesian anthropology to indicate that persons are
multi-authored and composite beings. However, the researchers of the
Kollegforschungsgruppe use ‘dividuality’ not in an essentialist way that
confronts western and non-western ideas and realities of personhood. Moreover
they understand it complementary to the concept of the individual and thus
underline the co-existence of relational/dividual and individual aspects of the
human Self. Human beings are constituted by both dividual and individual
qualities. Therefore, dividuality is an umbrella concept that has an
ontological and a historical dimension: The
ontological perspective brings the (primary) relational sociality of the human
being into focus. Relationality, as conditio humana, implicates openness,
partibility and vulnerability of the human subject even in its fully
individuated form and in all social constellations, including modernity. The
historical perspective brings into focus that dividuality is a lived
social reality and concrete social praxis and allows exploring ideas and realities of permeability and partibility on
the one hand, of closeness and boundedness on
the other, in particular historical and socio-cultural contexts as well as in particular areas of life and particular
situations.
The contributions on ‘dividuality’
are compiled in Part II of the publication and engage with the different aspects
of the concept: dividuality as relational pre-condition of humanity and human
sociality; as partibility, and as porousness or permeability. It covers – as
the other parts of the book – debates and practices in different historical
periods and geographical spaces – it moves between ancient Rome and Greece,
medieval, early modern and modern Europe as well as the Near East, India and
the Pacific.
Martin Mulsow
The
investigation of the history of religious individualisation is in many cases,
as it turned out, an investigation of
the history of interconnections, of cultural entanglements, onewhich
examines the different ways in which cultural boundaries have been crossed. By
‘history of interconnections’ the KFG means an inquiry in the sense of
‘entangled history’ or ‘histoire croisée’, which analyses the reciprocal
interactions and transfers between different cultural contexts, regions,
religions, and reference systems. It therefore picks up new developments in
history and applies them to our concern with individualisation.
Such
an inquiry involves an increased focus on ‘boundary-crossing’ interactions and
exchanges, in which diverse cultural and religious traditions encounter one
another and in which ideas and practices that strengthen or trigger
individualisation processes are transferred. We could see that migrations of
ideas and practices created complex interactions with consequences for religion
long before the great breakdowns of tradition within and outside Europe in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Seen from this angle, the insights gathered
by the KFG can be used to trace the vertical, or ‘deep time’, dimension of
these processes of transformation.
In
our volume, we consider two types or conditions of interconnections, on the one
hand through individuals or groups of cultural
brokers and on the other hand by structural relationships of exchange. Cultural brokers can be
religiously deviant individuals – in Europe for instance ‘Beguines’,
‘visionaries’, ‘spiritualists’ or practitioners of ‘learned magic’, who were
not always aware of the diverse transnational paths that their sources had
taken, but also religious entrepreneurs, including missionaries such as the
Jesuits in China, Japan, and India, merchants, soldiers and researchers across
highly variegated cultures. Such people are found across periods and
continents, beginning with ‘Chaldeans’, ‘sorceresses’, ‘magi’, ancient
astrologers, entrepreneurial ascetics in India and elsewhere, prominent bhaktas,
gurus, or saint-poets. Often they are members of the elite but sometimes
also of subaltern classes, like Roman military personnel. Again it is important
for our volume that these impulses are by no means to be found only in Europe
or from the early modern period onwards, but also in ancient and medieval as
well as non-European societies. In the context of religion, such processes
emerge above all when they coincide with phases of religious pluralisation.
Then these encounters – for instance between the Portuguese Jesuit Monserrate
and the Mughal ruler Akbar – provide proofs of the crosscivilisational
circulation of ideas, concepts and practices.
As
for structural relationships of
exchange and interconnection across cultural and religious boundaries, we speak
of ‘interconnectional regimes’. That means network structures in which
structural conditions like principles, rules, norms, and expectations – on both
sides – make long-term interconnections possible. Examples for these structures
are religious orders, missionary societies but also imperial formations like
the Roman, Ottoman or the Mughal Empire, in which various religious strands,
ethnic groups, and also particular officeholders interact.
These are the basic assumptions of
our volume. And now we would like to invite you to leaf through the table of
contents of the publication. You will surely find topics or aspects that
interest you and that you can address with your own questions.
[1] Just to add: this publication is not the only result of the work of the
KFG, there are several other publications of the research group.
