The Cultural Mandate: Review of *Imagining the Kingdom* by J.K.A. Smith

The Cultural Mandate: Review of *Imagining the Kingdom* by J.K.A. Smith

Review of M. Rynkeiwich, *Soul, Self, and Society: A Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postmodern World*

Soul, Self, and Society: A Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postmodern World

By Michael Rynkiewich. Eugene, OR.: Cascade Books, 2011. Pp. xi, 296. $33.

Michael Rynkiewich is one of the most insightful authors of missiological anthropology that many missiologists have never read. Until this book, Rynkiewich’s writing was notably found in two extraordinarily good articles appearing Missiology in 2002 and 2003, in which he critiqued common anthropological models and theories employed in missiology. In 2011, he published another excellent article in Mission Studies, addressing the importance of postmodern anthropology for contemporary missiology. Knowing these articles, I had high expectations coming to his book. Although Soul, Self, and Society did not meet all my hopes, it provides a helpful introductory textbook and a useful resource addressing the intersection of missiology and anthropology.

The book covers most of the concepts expected of an introduction to cultural anthropology – e.g., kinship, politics, economics – and several often not covered, such as transnationalism and diaspora. Accounts of his missionary work in Papua New Guinea make this a valuable introductory book for prospective missionaries. There are a few striking omissions, such as any discussion of gender, and a few bits that seem tacked on (such as two paragraphs on “business as mission” and a 6 ½ page final chapter on “The Anthropology of Christianity”), but overall the coverage is thorough.

As the author of an introductory anthropology textbook myself, I appreciated the practical help Rynkiewich provides those in mission work. Unfortunately, while he promises a “postmodern anthropology,” he does not interact with contemporary theory much. The most prominent theorists typically associated with postmodern culture theory appear briefly, if at all, and receive no sustained attention. More striking was the absence of any reference to the work of Robert Priest, a missiologist who has written prominent pieces on postmodernity and anthropology.  At several points it appeared that this text has been under construction for some time, and although published in 2011, already needs some updating. (E.g., on page 103, Rynkiewich refers to “recent work-time studies” published in 1974.)

There is a lot in this book the mission community would do well to absorb. Some may be frustrated that as Rynkiewich pulls missionary anthropology out of its orbit of 1960s functionalist anthropology, he sidelines anthropologically marginal concepts such as “worldview” and “syncretism.” Yet I agree with Rynkiewich that for missiology to maintain a vibrant conversation with anthropology, it must embrace contemporary theory where such concepts have little traction. Anyone studying anthropology for missionary purposes would do well to read this book.

Review of *Imagining the Kingdom* by J.K.A. Smith

Let me start with as clear an admonition as I can: This is a book that every Christian should read. That is, everyone would benefit from the argument here, and find something to encourage his or her Christian walk. It’s not a simple read - I’m not sure everyone would love it, or understand it - but this, like the first volume, Desiring the Kingdom, covers critical ground of what it means to worship, why we do what we do, or should do what we should do. 

Smith’s underlying argument is that human beings are feeling, emotional, affective beings, shaped and molded by our actions and arts. He pushes against the dominant intellectualist, “world view” approach to the Christian life that says our doctrines and knowledge are the bedrock on which faithful Christian life exists or from which action inevitably flows. In this second volume of a planned three volume set, Smith focuses on the practices of worship, and how worship serves (or should serve) as a set of, context for, and arrangement of practices that orient us as individuals and communities towards loving, serving and knowing God.

As a cultural anthropologist teaching at a Christian college, these have been the waters in which I have been swimming for a long time, and I am profoundly grateful for a text that makes this point so wonderfully. I am particularly appreciative of Smith’s extensive use of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, an anthropologist and social theorist I have also found enormously helpful in my own research and teaching on Christian life. I’ve had my students read his first book, and would likely assign this one as well, as it brings this complex theory into helpful dialog with Christian practice and story, rendering the argument relatively accessible; as accessible as I think it could be without losing its power to convince.

After reading the first volume, Desiring the Kingdom, I eagerly looked forward to this volume, but I had also hoped it would address a gap in the first one. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically given the purpose of the text, this one also fails to think deeply about cultural diversity. As well as Smith addresses mainstream U.S. consumer and media culture, he does not give us much to think about in terms of the varieties of cultural traditions present in the church.  Toward the end of the book, for example, he returns to a trenchant critique (present in both volumes) on the tendency of the (White) U.S. American church to separate form and content, viewing the gospel to be merely a “message” to be communicated by whatever means most compelling. He points to historic (European) liturgies as antidotes or correctives, and I agree with this view, yet it strikes me that he missed one of the more powerful examples of the church pushing back on a separation (or distinction with) form and meaning, the African American church tradition. In the black community today, to speak of someone as a “church person” is to remark on far more than church attendance, but to index their whole being – dress, language, tastes.  Unlike the white church, who today tend to ape the musical style of the moment, the black church has created the artists shaping the world outside the church; these artists are cultivated, in voice, manner, and body, in the church, and bring these sensibilities to performances on “American Idol” and the Apollo Theater (often in a highly twisted form, but recognizable.)  The black church, unlike the evangelical white church, seems better able to stand apart as a prophetic voice of the wider culture, resisting temptations to bring casual flip-flops, Twitter feeds and corny dramas into the Sunday service, instead holding to a story of the gospel told through the suffering and salvation of a people held up by the hand of God through some of the worst the world had to offer. While certainly not perfect, nor monolithic, black Christian traditions know who they are, and shape their people for life beyond the Sunday service in powerful ways. 

In addition, the black church has never struggled to bring emotion into the context of worship the way white liturgies have. Smith addresses head on the tension some might have at his argument that humans are more emotional than intellectual with the predominantly emotionless practices of many Euro-American congregations. He notes at several points that the rituals of liturgy often seem dry or unappealing to those conditioned by the mall and movie theater to receive instant stimulation and personal gratification.  He rightly pushes back on this perception, noting that the repetition of “dry” liturgy is part of the genius of shaping a person into a member of a holy communion, often apart from any particular “understanding” of what’s happening.

Yet ritual theorists note that while part of the power of ritual is in the pattern and repetition, changing elements of ritual serves to highlight elements of the experience in powerful ways. This is, as Smith himself notes, part of the impetus for making church look like a mall, or a rave, or a night club, believing (wrongly, he says) that such forms can bring all the fun, but just be filled with a Jesus message. But the form, he argues, carries a logic of its own, that works again, and more powerfully, than the mentions of Jesus or the prayer at the beginning of the “concert.”  Such borrowing, he avers, undermines the integrity of the bodily practices shaped by the traditions and life of the church. I would suggest, however, that a white congregation “borrowing” gospel music is a very different thing from them “borrowing” the sound of the Rolling Stones or Katy Perry in an attempt to be “relevant.” Instead, for many in the white church (or anyone not accustomed to it), a gospel choir raises the emotional temperature, and disrupts the ritual in a productive way, moving many into practices that are dramatically embodied, gospel centered and, perhaps, a bit uncomfortable. This can, and I would say, does serve the very purposes argued by Smith.

This raises a question for the whole church: how might the traditions of cultures outside ourselves push us towards postures we currently can’t imagine?  While the substance of Smith’s argument in this volume is exactly right, he leaves out a tremendously important conversation about the ways social power, race and culture are “performed” in the context of church in ways that can work for or against the gospel.  Bringing traditions into worship from outside the dominant cultural traditions of a congregation should be a vital part of re-forming the people of God as a single body, under one Lord and one baptism.  It can alert us to the ways we live our lives unaware of the differences around us. It can bring into our worship practices a sensitivity to the diversity of the body of Christ in every sense of the term “diversity.” (NB: I would argue this to be true for all congregations, not only Euro-Americans.)

This shortcoming notwithstanding, this is a brilliant book, and I anxiously look forward to the third volume. Smith has done us a tremendous service by bringing philosophy and cultural anthropology into such a productive conversation with the most practical aspects of Christian life.  As we eagerly wait for the third volume, I hope there might be something there to help us think about how our Imagining of the Kingdom needs to occur in multiple languages.

Anthropology, Social Justice, and Graduate School

Recently the members of Fishnet (the listserv associated with the Network of Christian Anthropologists) have been discussing a string of questions inspired by a query from an undergraduate anthropology major attending a well-known university in California.

Basically, the student had asked whether it was possible for an anthropologist to pursue “social justice” issues while retaining his culturally relativist training (a question, incidentally, that is also addressed in parts of Michael Brown’s excellent article in the June 2008 issue of Current Anthropology titled “Cultural Relativism 2.0”), and while retaining his public identity as a Christian. Indeed, he said, he was committed to the social justice issue BECAUSE he was a Christian and thought that’s what we Christians should do. The student also asked for advice on where to go to graduate school if he wanted to continue pursuing this matter within the rubric of anthropology.

Of all the many responses to his question, I thought the following one by Adam Kiš was especially useful. Adam obtained his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida in 2007. He is currently Country Director for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) in São Tomé e Principe, in Africa. Here’s his response:

Dear ____,

I think the original question was about the compatibility of anthropology and social justice. As you have no doubt noticed by our responses, we are a varied and dynamic lot! I, too, entered anthropology with the same vision in mind—to change the world—and I do not think that anthropology and social justice are in any way incompatible. That, I believe, is because anthropology is such a widely eclectic field. I was just reminded last week of how broad our discipline is; I was skimming through an old issue of American Anthropologist in which all articles related to the intersection of culture and food. Tell me in which other discipline would both the techne of French cheese production and short-term marriage contracts among migrant goldminers in Guinea (my dissertation topic) both feel perfectly at home?! I'm coming to believe that the only things that un ite disparate anthropologists worldwide are our common training (and even that's up for dispute) and our peculiar research methods (again, up for dispute). Perhaps even more generally than that, maybe anthropologists only have a curiosity for humanity in common. I don't know what our least common denominator is, but I do know that there is plenty of room both for non-interventionists and for idealistic pursuers of social justice within the fold of anthropology. You have nothing to be apologetic about in your affiliation with the latter.

I think that if you seriously want to pursue social justice and are still enthralled with anthropology, then you need to seek out a graduate department with that commitment (as I did). "Applied anthropology" is a general term for those who use what they learn to make a tangible difference in the world, but even that is broad. Are you applying your findings to improving cross-cultural business relations of Fortune 500 companies? Are you applying your findings to bridge the communication gap between poor peasants and the holders of opportunities and resources that the peasants seek? Are you applying your findings to diplomacy and staving off unnecessary wars between misunderstanding sovereign nations? Are you applying your findings to minimizing HIV transmission within a specific group of people? At the very least, seek for a department that is accepting of applied anthropology generally. If you are looking for a specific sub-specialty, you'll need to target your search further. But I am almost positive that you will find some mentor within anthropology's ranks who views the world through the same lens that you do. Our ranks are too broad not to include a little of everybody!

By the way, don't enter the discipline expecting to figure it all out, either. I've recently finished grad school and am now into the applied phase of my intended career trajectory (I hope academia will accept me back in 5 or 10 years after a spell practicing in international development!) and I don't expect to ever completely resolve the tension between cultural relativism and Christ's imperative that we help the needy. But, as someone on the list already pointed out, anthropologists tend to be a little more comfortable with ambiguity than most .. Blessings on you as you seek to prayerfully change the world for Christ.

Adam

Review of Paul Hiebert's book _Transforming Worldviews_

The following review was contributed by Jutta Bluhberger, currently a student at Fuller Seminary:

Paul G. Hiebert (1933-2007) was a pastor and missionary in India, and later professor of missiology and anthropology at Fuller and Trinity, authored many articles and books, of which Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008 was the last one, which he just finished before his death. The book’s thesis is that if the gospel aims at a transformation that is both individual and corporate, it needs to touch all levels, including the deepest level of worldview in order to be radical and total.

In the conclusion of the first chapter, Hiebert explains the model on which the rest of the book is based and presents as preliminary definition of worldview in anthropological terms as “the foundational, cognitive, affective, and evaluative assumptions and frameworks a group of people makes about the nature of reality which they use to order their lives” (p 25-6). They can also be called “people’s images or maps of reality” (p 26). The building blocks of his model include among others Opler’s themes and counter themes but significantly modified, and Redfield’s seven themes not as imposed etic categories but as suggestive themes to be explored.

Hiebert’s book is an excellent summary and clarification of the model of worldview at a time when main stream anthropology seems to move away from it. He makes it clear that it includes the cognitive, affective and evaluative assumptions and frameworks or maps of reality to organize our lives (p 25). It needs to combine synchronic and diachronic approaches without reverting to reductionism or compartmentalization. The often used term “deep structure” is misleading and Hiebert makes it clear that the causality goes both ways (p 32). In chapter four (p 89ff) it also becomes clear that “worldview” is not a method in itself but that other methods are needed and that any result will only lead to an approximation of a culture (p 90).

Interestingly, Hiebert contradicts the often heard claim that there are several worldviews in the Bible. Despite the diversity of contexts in the Bible, Hiebert points out the underlying unity of the biblical story (p 265) and suggests a tentative list of underlying worldview themes that are cognitive, affective, evaluative, and diachronic. His argument is that Abraham’s understanding was only a starting point of biblical revelation and others built on it until it came to its climax in Christ and to understand biblical worldview, we need to start with him.

I found this book to be a great treatment of a missiological theme from an anthropological view point, including and integrating many topics Hiebert has written about over the years. It therefore gives an excellent overview over many anthropological concepts related to worldview. It does seem to respond to some major critics of the worldview concept. Hiebert proves again to have excellent insights into the dynamics of conversion and spiritual transformation and what we need to understand about other people’s maps of reality if we want to see their lives transformed through the gospel.

Christians, World View, and Contemporary Anthropology - 3 - A Personal Essay

From Robert Priest, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Ph.D. program in Intercultural Studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School:

I agree with Ed Zehner and Brian Howell's comments about worldview analysis being rather marginal to anthropology.

What follows is a rather long and ad hoc disquisition on why I am not enthusiastic about worldview analyses. This is rather off the cuff, but I hope some at least find it provocative.

When I studied missiology in seminary, I was introduced to diagrams of culture as looking like an onion, with worldview at the center and other social realities (values, rituals, economics, technology, etc.) forming concentric rings outward. Or again diagrams of culture featured worldview as the foundation, with other cultural elements built on top. Or images of worldview as “depth” were contrasted with other cultural elements which were merely “surface.”

Sometimes arrows were drawn to highlight the direction of causal influence. But in every case worldview was always the first cause, the independent variable as it were, the foundation, the center, with other things affected and determined by worldview.

In short I had learned to think that the order observable in culture is primarily a cognitive and rational order, like a philosophy. I assumed that if I could learn to discover the “theory of everything” that lies at the core of any culture, that I would then understand cultural order (and also not need to pay too much attention to the details). I assumed that what I would be doing in graduate school was learning to map this rational order—and that this worldview would be the explanation of everything else related to social and cultural order.

But when I began studying social science at the University of Chicago, and then anthropology at UC Berkeley, it was rather disturbing to me to discover that none of my professors organized their work around the concept of “worldview.” Indeed, I was unable to find a single ethnography written by any mainstream anthropologist, organized around the construct of worldview. [Can anyone name such a work?]

The first class lecture I attended was by a cultural materialist, who drew a diagram exactly upside down to the way I “knew” culture operated—indicating that a subsistence base of hunter gathering is the independent variable affecting all sorts of value laden things such as the social requirement that one share what one hunts beyond the nuclear family. He argued that hunter-gatherers for material reasons will almost always develop such an ethic of sharing, unlike American seminary professors who seldom share their basic material acquisitions outside their nuclear family. He suggested that all sorts of possible food items (such as sacred cows in India or unclean pigs in desert ecologies) were banned as food for ecologically adaptive reasons, and that it was a mistake to think that the true first cause was a religious belief. These “religious ideas” were dependent variables, affected by the underlying independent variable or causal elements associated with the material base.

My second course was on “symbols and rituals” (the closest class title at Chicago to my worldviewish interests). My first class assignment was to read and summarize Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. The logic of religious symbolism here was foreign to anything I learned in seminary. Here I learned that religious ideas (about gods or totems) were not rational thoughts, but symbolic representations of social order, representations not understood as such by the religious believer. Furthermore as the course proceeded, I learned that the social order is not a rational order, but a symbolic, structural and functional order. Social rituals help to construct such order, as do myths. They are to be analyzed not in terms of rational philosophy—but in terms of what they actually accomplish in constructing social order.

Since Harvey Conn had said that Levi-Strauss’s structuralism helped us understand “deep” culture, I next signed up for Valerio Valeri’s course on cognitive structuralism. Before long even in my dreams I was analyzing binary oppositions involving nature vs. culture, raw vs. cooked, oral vs. anal, etc. I learned that while Amazonian myths naturally make use of bits and pieces of everyday life (possums, jaguars, macaws, etc.) that they were often organized around such binary oppositions and various mediations. But at the end of the day such research and analysis did not really disclose coherent philosophy.

I took Jack Potter for Marxist anthropology, and learned that again a material base was the independent variable, and ideologies dependent and instrumental. Unlike the cultural materialists, the Marxist material base was not thought of as functional or adaptive for the entire system, but a base which structured unequal power relations. Ideologies were not really good-faith efforts at reasonable understanding, but were instrumental efforts to justify (or sometimes resist) hierarchies. Subordinate classes often internalized such ideas as a kind of false consciousness. Every element of discourse should be subjected to a hermeneutics of suspicion. To look at Hindu philosophies underpinning caste, and spend all one’s time trying to see how wonderfully philosophical and elegant they are, is to miss the point, I learned. What all these supposedly rational efforts are doing is rationalizing and justifying social inequality. That is what lies at the core. Analysis should involve linking discourse to social effect. The order of ideologies is not rational, but instrumental.

Next I took Gerald Berreman for symbolic interactionism, where I learned that people are not philosophers trying to establish rational order, but they are attempting to pursue all sorts of agendas (sexual, political, etc.)—but that they must do this by constantly constructing an identity, and presenting this identity to others, manipulating it to fit their lines of actions to that of others. People live life socially, on a stage. The order we observe is largely a dramaturgical order – produced not by would-be philosophers but by would-be actors.

Then I studied with Alan Dundes, who introduced me to folklore and various sorts of discourses as constructing an order reflective of psycho-dynamic realities. Rather than discourse and belief involving innocent efforts at rational order, rituals, discourses and beliefs about everything from witchcraft to football reflected guilt, sublimated sexual desire, etc. and needed to be recognized as rationalizations, projections, displacements, etc. The order in culture is a psychological order.

>From my advisor Brent Berlin I learned ethnosemantic analysis, which searched for a kind of rational order, but at a rather microscopic level (categories of colors, plants), nothing as encompassing or ambitious as worldview analysis. On this model, culture is more on the order of folk science, rather than folk philosophy.

I did work hard to find scholars working in more intellectualist veins (which I will not summarize here), and took great comfort in the work of Max Weber on the protestant ethic. Just a few weeks ago I was reading through my field statements for my comprehensive exams taken at Berkeley in 1987 or so, and was startled to discover how strongly I was trying, at that time, to justify rational and intellectualist approaches to culture.

But an interesting thing happened in my dissertation fieldwork, where I discovered and began to find exciting, a variety of forms of order—and not just rational/philosophical order. My analysis of everything from rituals of purification to witchcraft now features symbolic, psychological, dramaturgical, conflict and other dimensions as explanatory.

In retrospect, I now believe that the social and cultural order which we study is shaped by many dynamics other than rationality (functional, dramaturgical, instrumental, ideological, structural, etc.). Furthermore “beliefs” are constructed through narratives and practices which are minimally or only tangentially oriented towards achieving rational coherence, abstraction and consistency—and very much affected by instrumental, dramaturgical, functional, economic, political, ideological, adaptive dynamics. That is, such statements of belief are often dependent variables, caused by other non-philosophical independent variables or linked to other cultural elements less through a rational order than a functional or instrumental order. People spend their lives trying to subsist, to achieve honor, to “score” with women, to retaliate, to justify themselves, etc. Lust and passion, love and desire, hurt and shame, envy and pride, death and sorrow, fasting and purging, going on vision trips, eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage—are the stuff of everyday human life.

Furthermore while I retain an interest in the cognitive order, I now believe this order to be grounded in and shaped or structured by metaphor, story, vocabulary, symbol, myth rather than abstract rational thought. And this cognitive order is often less philosophically comprehensive and integrated than often thought, involving clusters of symbols and metaphors which are related to each other less through abstract rationality than through practical action, manipulated towards personal or social ends, and with apparent contradictions philosophically of minimal concern to social actors. Admittedly, in most cultures (especially in contexts where one’s culture is questioned) one can find a small sub-set of intellectually oriented people attempting in a post-hoc fashion to articulate abstract and rational defenses of one’s culture. With a worldview approach, one might naturally tend to gravitate towards these intellectuals as providing the “real” explanation of cultural order. In my view privileging such intellectuals’ explanations and justifications as correct, is an error.

It appears to me that many worldview approaches to culture are grounded in an overly rational model of personhood. Pilate was able to cognitively conclude, “I find no fault in him,” but nonetheless command “take him out and crucify him.” That is, in practical everyday life, people are not primarily motivated to try and be rationally consistent and orderly. They are motivated because they want food, sex, honor, power, etc. etc. and human cultural order reflects these dynamics.

I now believe that a wide variety of theoretical approaches can help me understand some of the order which I find among people. Rational elements are but one sort of order, not to be overly given pride of place in our explanatory systems.

When I see many missiologists using the construct of worldview, I see a tendency towards generalizations which are abstract, distant from lived human experience, and non-falsifiable. I see students longing to find a short-cut to human understanding, a short-cut to which their seminary (philosophical) training will give them privileged access, as well as ability to render judgment. A worldview is a “theory of everything” and if I can just grasp your theory of everything, then I know all I need to know (without really knowing you). But while the “worldview” construct is easy to use pedagogically to teach people that others may see things differently, it is unfortunately not easy to use as the theoretical underpinning for research. I find myself frustrated when students want to write a dissertation on the “worldview” of Chinese, or whatever, not merely because of its tendency to essentialize, but because I cannot find good models for how to do responsible research-based analysis of this sort that I can direct students to.

Finally, I have missiological concerns. The very construct of worldview as being a coherent “theory of everything” invites the question of whether this coherent theory is right or wrong, true or false. And if all of culture is thought by a missionary to be determined by “a worldview,” a worldview that from a Christian standpoint can be said to be wrong, then this naturally inclines the missionary to judge all cultural elements as wrong. That is, in my view the worldview model of culture is a prescription for ethnocentric judgment. My own view is that in any society one can become a Christian in ways that continues to be distinctively reflective of the culture while being fully biblical and Christian. Whole swaths of culture may be perfectly compatible with Christian faith. But it is only possible to understand this when one comes to recognize other elements of order than that of worldview.

I could say more about patterns of evangelism which assume a cognitive and unitary view of the person (vs. the divided self of Sigmund Freud or the apostle Paul), but have run out of steam. I suspect this is enough to chew on for now.

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 6

From Kevin Birth, Professor of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York:

In many ways, questions among the cultural anthropologists I interact with the most have shifted away from descriptions and discussions of particular cultures to the issue of the relationship between societies and the construction of identity/difference. I am particularly struck by this as I prepare by contemporary theory course for this semester. So questions of world view are increasingly tied to how the world view is constituted in response to another world view, and except for the psychological anthropologists who think in terms of the distribution of cultural knowledge, the culture concept is dissolving into issues of hegemony/counter-hegemony. The trendy topics in which to investigate the construction of difference in relationship to globalization seem to be sexuality, violence, and history.

I also feel like there is an increasing disconnect between the anthropology represented in introductory textbooks and the anthropology discussed by grad students. Entry into the field is, to my mind, becoming increasingly difficult for anyone who does not have an anthropologist to teach them.

That said, I shall throw a few titles out because they wrestle with compelling issues, and the significance of these issues might be enough to engage someone who is not an anthropologist enough to sustain them through the various theoretical discussions and postures. All these books deal with the construction of identity/difference in ways that address how people think about themselves and problems in the world.

Briggs, Charles. 2003. Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare. University of California Press.

Foster, Robert. 2002. Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption and Media in Papua New Guinea. Indiana University Press.

Frank, Gelya. 2000. Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female in America. University of California Press.

Hinton, Alexander. 2005. Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide. University of California Press.

I also recommend Max Forte's work (since it has been mentioned), but his work is harder to find and more expensive to purchase than the above titles (as I can attest, the University Press of Florida marketing and sales operation is not very robust).

I'm not including any examples of the literature on sexuality for three reasons. First, most evangelical Christians probably would have a visceral negative reaction to this work; second, I find that much of the work on sexuality unreflectively draws on Queer Theory and feminism in ways that lead to strange, mysogynistic implications about which the author's seem unaware; and third, much of this work raises serious concerns about human subjects' rights and the ethics of research.

[On this third point, on the basis of later discussion, I understand Prof. Birth to be referring to the tendency--not just in this particular subfield--for ethnographic researchers to sexualize their relationships with informants, and for some savvy informants to engage in reverse-exploitation of the social-informational gateways to their communities, to the detriment of all, including the researcher, the informant, the community studied, and the larger anthropological community and those who use the information we generate. -- EZ]

P.S. And of course one can always encourage people to read my books ;) —although they probably are poorly suited for this particular set of questions)

[Note: As of January 2009, the Cornell University libraries listed the following books by Prof. Birth: (1) Any time is Trinidad time : Social Meanings and Temporal Consciousness (University of Florida Press, 1999); and (2) Bacchanalian sentiments : Musical Experiences and Political Counterpoints in Trinidad (Duke University Press, 2008). The latter is also available as an on-line ebook though libraries that have bought the appropriate licenses. -- EZ]

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 5

From Brian Howell, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton (IL) College, and Chair, Network of Christian Anthropologists (NCA):

For those who didn't read all of Ed's earlier post, I would recommend you do. It's very good! I won't rehash his critique, but I do have my own in a 2006 article in Christian Scholar's Review. I agree with Ed that the Worldview concept, though not completely moribund in mainstream anthropology, is extremely marginal. If you can find even one paper at the 2008 American Anthropology Association Meetings with “worldview” in the title, I'll buy you lunch.

Unfortunately, this has become a go-to concept in missiology and people often assume it is standard fare in anthropology generally. I think Paul Hiebert worked the concept as well as anyone, but in the hands of most, it has become a far more problematic concept than it's worth. It's interesting that Steve points to Mike Rynkeiwich's article as a defense of worldview [actually, it turned out Mike was merely commenting on something observed in Anthropology News], because I would recommend two of Rynkeiwich's articles in Missiology as good places to go for a Christian anthropologist who does NOT use worldview, but rather works with the concept of culture itself in some very helpful ways. The two with which I am familiar that I believe would be very helpful for missionaries seeking a more nuanced discussion of culture are:

1) “The world in my parish: rethinking the standard missiological model.”
Rynkiewich, Michael A. Missiology 2002-07-0130:3

2) “Person in mission: social theory and sociality in Melanesia”
Rynkiewich, Michael A. Missiology 2003-04-0131:2, 155

Both of these articles are specifically concerned with the missionary application of social theory and present the issues in accessible and well-reasoned ways.

Not as well reasoned, but perhaps helpful is my own article (Brian M. Howell, “Globalization, Ethnicity and Cultural Authenticity: Implications for Theological Education,” Christian Scholars Review Vol. 36 (3), Spring 2006, 3-31), which contains a critique of the world view concept, particularly as it concerns phenomena of globalization.

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 4

From Robert Canfield, Professor and former Chair, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis:

It seems to me the major turn in anthropology in the discussion about culture is the attempt to deconstruct the term and the attempt to specify how/ when specific cultural practices are created and reinforced. The result is that other categories than “culture” become useful. When the recent focus is on how “culture” gets constructed and reiterated and re-enforced in social life then it is helpful to think in terms of social history—that is, the ways ideas and conventions are created in specific cultural contexts and the ways they continue to be objectified and deployed for specific purposes in social practice.

At the risk of promoting a certain viewpoint and my own course I list here some articles that seem to me useful in examining the many contexts and mechanisms for the construction of cultural practices. Clifford Geertz ("Thick Description," Ideology as a Cultural System”; both essays appear in his The Interpretation of Cultures), Marshall Sahlins (Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities, Islands of History, Apologies to Thucydides), Pierre Bourdieu (several passages from Outline of Theory of Practice, especially on the creativity and “virtuosity” necessary in cultural practice); Raymond Williams (selections from Marxism and Literature); Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities); William Sewell (Logics of History); F. G. Bailey (The Prevalence of Deceit); Fredrik Barth (selections from Balinese Worlds), and some of the postmodernists such as James Clifford (introduction to his Writing Culture).

For those who care to put up with the nuisance of working through the WashU library system you can retrieve most of these on line by going to the WashU library site, and thence to “eres” [put it in the search box], to my name [Canfield] and my course “Works and Ideas of Great Anthropologists” (http://eres.wustl.edu/eres/coursepass.aspx?cid=1012), and enter the password “change”.

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 3

From an anthropologist in the United States:

Steven, I don't know those sources or anything about “worldview.” It's been common since the early 1990s to criticize “anti-essentialism” very strongly, for numerous reasons. I've heard Jonathan Friedman do it most flamboyantly. But the critique is not usually performed by anthropologists in their own right (in a technical sense), but rather by anthropologists on behalf of others who make essentialist claims. This seems most common among anthropologists who work with indigenous “Fourth World” peoples like native Australians and native Americans. The term I've seen most often is “strategic essentialism” or, in the case of Maximilian Forte, “anti-anti-essentialism”: http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/anti-anti-essentialism-1/ So far as I know, Forte takes the term from Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1992): http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Gilroy.htm

Point 1 of Forte’s essay: Do not meet the essentialist claim that “My people have been living here for thousands of years” with the evidence that “your people” by their own admission and by the historical record came here in 1750. To do so would be anti-essentialist. But we shouldn't ignore facts, merely defer their application. Instead of ridiculing the speaker, try to figure out what he means when he makes that statement. Maybe we can learn how such essentialist statements serve in a strategy for gaining a more powerful voice.

Point 2: Two wrongs don't make a right, and strategic essentialism cannot be equated with essentialism.

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 2

From Steven Ybarrola, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Asbury Theological Seminary:

Thanks, Edwin, for the thorough reply. I think you've nicely laid out some of the main criticisms of the “worldview” concept in modern anthropology. Indeed, one way to dismiss the work of an anthropologist today is to label him or her an “essentialist.” However, I'm not sure the concept has been totally abandoned in the discipline, and in fact there has been some critiques of the criticisms of worldview and “culture” more generally. My colleague here at Asbury Seminary, Mike Rynkiewich, examined a recent issue of Anthropology News, the monthly newsletter of the American Anthropological Association, and found several references in the articles to worldview (I don't recall off hand which issue it was) [Steven later clarified that Mike related this observation orally]. Also, one of the last books to be published by the eminent Christian anthropologist Paul Hiebert is entitled Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change, where Hiebert addresses various characteristics and types of worldviews (Bob Priest may have already mentioned this book in his post. For some reason I didn't receive it). An article I've found helpful on this subject is by the anthropologist William Douglass, “In Search of Juan de Onate: Confessions of a Cryptoessentialist,” Journal of Anthropological Research 56 (2): 137-163, 2000.

Sources on Contemporary Anthropology - 1

The following is the first of several posts from members of Fishnet (the listserv associated with the Network of Christian Anthropologists) suggesting sources that can help readers become better oriented to contemporary anthropology.

[This was in response to a request in the entry below titled "Christians, World View, and Contemporary Anthropology - 2."]

From an anthropologist in the United States:

Octopus metaphor [mentioned in that post]: How about culture as rhizome? This is from Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy), which is neither readable nor short. Nevertheless, it's hugely influential among anthropologists who like to see culture as a weed (crabgrass) or a potato plant, where there's no root, trunk, or branch. Instead, there are stems, leaves, and little roots. Fertile nodes find good soil and sprout, and send out tendrils that do the same thing in the next plot. If the “parent” node dies, no big deal--the “rest” of the plant keeps growing. Everything's connected, the plant is more-or-less recognizable and consistent, but not in a central, determining way like an octopus.

A couple of really useful and clearly written books for everyone (not just hipster anthropologists [like me] who were in graduate school in 2000) are Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities) and Arjun Appadurai's Modernity at Large, in particular his article “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”
(http://www.intcul.tohoku.ac.jp/~holden/MediatedSociety/Readings/2003_04/Appadurai.html) and its various “-scapes.”

I'm not saying these guys are right—there's plenty to criticize here! I just put them forward as ways to read your way into a “worldview” if you will—learning to see the world the way some very influential writers have, which might be useful.

Christians, World View, and Contemporary Anthropology - 2

Over the weekend, the following came to Dr. Zehner from an American doing anthropological consultancy work with a mission in Africa:

“Ed, do you have a couple/few good refs. for “the more recent, more nuanced approach [to doing and using anthropology and thinking about “culture”]'? I trust you think it's worth it [he was serious, as he clarified in a separate email], because I hate the idea of the world being encouraged to follow what's in fact a stupid American lead in anthropology or anything else [he was not necessarily referring to this particular development].”

Response from Edwin Zehner, the morning of Monday, January 12, 2009:

Hi. Thanks for asking. And I hope you won't mind my sharing your question and answer with the larger list, as I suspect many others are wondering the same thing, for the reasons outlined (and hinted at) by Bob Priest in his follow-up to my message last week.

Actually, I'm having trouble thinking of anything significant written by anthropologists in the last 30 years—other than by American evangelicals and those influenced by them—that uses the term “world view.” If not 30 years, then 20 years. And the move is not just “American.” It is global, with some Indian (South Asian) anthropologists leading the way, for example.

So the real question may be “What would be useful starting points to help evangelical Christians—including many Christian anthropologists—get reoriented to the discipline of anthropology the way it is practiced today?” Unfortunately, I'm having trouble thinking of something good and accessible that addresses this purpose for this specific audience. So though I'm hoping one of our listmates will have a specific suggestion, I will list a few ideas that I hope may help you and others get “reoriented” a bit (while inviting others to offer corrections and extensions).

I think one of the things that has made the concept of “world view” so enduringly attractive to evangelicals is because it resonates so well with Nicholas Wolterstorff''s concept of “control beliefs” as opposed to other forms of belief and knowledge. If none of you have heard of Wolterstorff (and I didn't until recently), he is reportedly one of the leading theorists behind the late 20th century version of the now-conventional evangelical models of “integration of faith and learning.” (For more on him specifically, see pp. 21-22 of Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, et al., Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation—thanks to Fishnetter Jenell Paris for pointing this book out to me some time ago). A cruder version of this notion is the idea (or perhaps hope) that our “faith” should ideally be reflected in all we think and do, and the assumption that others' “faith” or “ways of seeing the world” probably does the same. But, in fact, things are more complex than this, even in the most ideal of situations and in fact Wolterstorff points this out himself, according to Jacobsen and Jacobsen.

Short of having a specific “book” or “article” on the approach—unless Bob Priest, Brian Howell, Kevin Birth or others have specific suggestions (the several anthropology graduate students and recent Ph.D.s on this list would also be great to hear from)—I think the best approach would be to try to “retrain” ourselves in “how we think” about what we “see” on the field and how we analyze and synthesize it.

Here are a few starting suggestions, and I invite fellow Fishnetters to suggest some more:

(1) try to start looking at field data in terms of one or more of the criteria that Bob Priest listed in his response to my message late last week rather than in terms JUST of “world view”;

(2) simply analyze “subpatterns” of behavior (and interactive sets of beliefs and behaviors) without feeling obligated to relate these to “the whole culture”

(3) there is also no longer a felt need among anthropologists to describe “whole cultures” in fully integrated ways.

The third point deserves extra comment, because it has crept up so quietly. Of the many who have spoken of it, I first suggest Clifford Geertz's early 1980s metaphor of “culture as an octopus.” The octopus is definitely an integrated being in which the parts interact with each other, each influencing the other. But it lacks a central nervous system. There is no one set of parts—beliefs or behaviors or purposes—that dominantly influences all the others. Nor are they tightly integrated with each other the way old structural functionalism of the 1940s and 1950s (for example, Radcliffe-Brown and others of the era) seemed to suggest. The old, “tightly integrated,” model influenced people as well-known as Ruth Benedict, who truly used the “world view” concept, or something like it, in her Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and Patterns of Culture, and other works.

The idea of tight integration (but not “world view”—his underlying notions were already somewhat different) is found even in the works of the leading “structuralist” thinker Claude Levi-Strauss. However, some of the additional reasons why both “world view” and the notion of “tightly integrated” and “unitary” cultures have been abandoned is because of increasing anthropological attention to things like the following:

(4) increasing attention to social hierarchies within social groups—including those conventionally called “a culture”—along with awareness that people in each of these levels tend to have varied views of each other and of how they should act, what it means to act that way, what it means to be that kind of person, etc.;

(5) increasing attention to power differentials within groups and across cultures,

(6) increasing attention to gender differences, and expectations for gendered roles and identities and increasing attention to how one's “place” or “position” in a society can help shape those expectations and interpretations,

(7) increasing attention to the effects of differences in access to “global” culture or (what has always been the case) to goods, services, information, jobs, and other status-enhancing (or diminishing) things from outside the society or “culture,”

(8) awareness that individuals within a “society” or “culture” do not all think and act the same, in part simply because they are truly individuals, despite sharing some notions on how to act, and how to judge others, and

(9) awareness that one's own cultural “identities” are multiple and constantly being negotiated. To list just a few of my own identities—”American,” male, anthropologist, “northeasterner,” “educated,” “Christian,” “father”—each has their own implications that takes me in somewhat different directions. You can probably think of some others even as you reflect on your own “positions” and “identities” in the ways you go about life.

Those are just a few ideas to get the thinking started. Fellow Fishnetters may have some additional helpful suggestions. Thanks again for asking, as I think this is a very important question.

By the way, I should clarify that anthropologists have not abandoned the concept of “culture” at all. We have simply made it more complicated, much as the biologists of yester-year made the concept of “the cell” more complicated as they observed more things about it.

Christians, World View, and Contemporary Anthropology - 1

The following query appeared on the Fishnet listserv on Friday, January 9, 2009:

Hi,

I am wondering if anyone knows of any Christian anthropologists in Mexico? I am working here in Oaxaca and I would like to partner with so me other organizations and people to hold a week long worldview seminar in 2010. I am looking for people that can speak a native Spanish, explain anthropological topics like worldview, and have a commitment to Christianity. Thanks for your help!

Response by Edwin Zehner, Visiting Fellow, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University:

I would strongly suggest talking directly with Robert Priest at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His missiology conferences regularly include presenters from Latin America whose primary language is Spanish, so he may have some useful suggestions for you.

I should probably also note that anthropologists here in the USA tend not to speak of “worldview” anymore, partly because the concept is too broad and easily lends itself to intellectual stereotyping and “essentializing,” as if everybody from the same “culture” thinks the same way, and as if that shared “worldview” generates all the behavior. As you know, the reality is somewhat more complicated. But if your audience is used to the concept of “worldview,” you should definitely use it to advertise the concept. But you might want to make sure the actual presenters are people who can represent the more recent, more nuanced approach.

Another person I might recommend is Brian Howell of Wheaton College, if he is free and if you have the financial means to get him down there. He would be very good at helping the participants through the complexities I've just mentioned, while also realizing where they are coming from. I think he also knows some Spanish. And of course Bob Priest is himself a native speaker of Spanish, and would also be good if available—in addition to knowing who else in Latin America might be good.

Follow-up response by Robert Priest, Head of the Ph.D. program in Intercultural Studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School:

Since Ed volunteered my name I'll go ahead and write a note. The simple answer is I do not know any anthropologists in Mexico who are Christian. A fair number of Christian anthropologists have done research in Mexico at some time or other. Laura Montgomery from Westmont College, Dean Arnold from Wheaton College, etc. etc. And SIL would have several anthropologists fluent in Spanish—Tom Woodward in Dallas (with SIL), David Coombs in Peru, etc. Tito Paredes of Peru has a PhD in anthropology (UCLA) as well as an MDiv (Fuller). If you emailed Laura Montgomery (Anthropology, Westmont College), she might have ideas about Christian anthropologists in Mexico—or perhaps Dean Arnold would (Anthropology, Wheaton College).

I do agree with Ed that most anthropologists, in analyzing culture, tend to stress other sorts of order (functional, instrumental, structural, symbolic, discursive, metaphoric, psychological, dramaturgical, adaptive, etc) rather than rational/philosophic order—and thus few contemporary secular anthropologists make worldview the center of their approach to culture. A number of missiological anthropologists, by contrast, have done so—including Kraft and Hiebert. They have used the concept more as pedagogical tool than as actual underpinning for ethnographic research, however. An analysis of all this would require a whole article, so I better stop here.

Christians, Anthropology, and Cultural Difference

The following was originally written in February 2007. It is posted here for the first time:

One of the primary things that anthropology offers to the Christian liberal arts student is ways of learning to listen to socially and culturally different others, even when disagreeing with some or all of what the others are saying. Not only are such skills useful in conventionally “cross-cultural” settings, but in our increasingly multicultural and globalized world they are foundational (even prior) to being able to formulate and voice a Christian perspective likely to influence cultural discourse and public policy over the long term.

I would argue that such perspectives (the practical outcomes of the anthropological perspective of “cultural relativism”) are fundamentally biblical. Consider the Lord’s widely quoted statement in Isaiah 1:18: “Come, let us reason together” (not “Come and let me preach at you,” although he does plenty of that in adjoining verses). Read out of context, which is how most evangelicals appropriate this passage, the appeal suggests a privileging of inter-cultural dialogue, as the “reasoning together” dialogue between God and man is the most profoundly “cross-cultural” one that can be imagined.

Consider as well the Apostle Paul’s efforts—in the face of often strident opposition from Jewish cultural homogenizers—in formulating the approach to law, culture, and grace (e.g., Galatians 2-5) that informs our understanding and practice of Christianity today (it probably helped that he was raised in a multicultural city and was commissioned for his missions by a multicultural church – see Acts 11:19-26, 13:1-3). Consider also the Old Testament admonition (Leviticus 19:33-34; Ezekiel 47:22-23) to treat foreigners with the same love, respect, and rights as if they were native-born members of one’s own people (which, of course, did not mean taking on their religion – one can certainly be cultural relativist without being panreligious!).

[I realize my citation of such Old Testament passages is undermined by their insistence that sojourning foreigners follow Jewish law with the same rigor as the Jews do. In response, staying true to the hermeneutics of my evangelical upbringing, I would argue that the multiculturally-oriented grace preached in Paul’s epistles supersedes the letter of this particular aspect of the Old Testament law (see Galatians 3:23-28, 4:21-31, 5:1-6). ]

Buttressed by even stronger material in the New Testament, such passages parallel Jenell Paris’s recent argument that cultural anthropology can and should be an expression of Christian love for others, particularly (as I understand it) facilitating empathetic cross-cultural exchanges grounded not in pity or paternalism but rather in respect and empathetic curiosity about the others’ perspectives, felt needs, and experiences (see Jenell Paris, 2006, “A Pietist Perspective on Love and Learning in Cultural Anthropology, Christian Scholar’s Review, 35 (3): 371-385).

Overall, as a Christian trained in anthropology who studies other Christians (among other things), I find myself increasingly drawn to Paul’s metaphor of the “body of Christ” (I Cor. 12), with Christ (and nobody else) portrayed as the head of a trans-cultural, multidimensional Christian community in which all the parts are to interact supportively (Col. 1:18, 2:10; Eph. 1-22-23; 4:15-16; 5:23). Paul uses this metaphor not only to urge peace and humility within particular congregations but also to suggest how we should treat one another across cultural and national boundaries. The metaphor is cited in enough disparate contexts as to suggest that Paul intended it to apply not only within particular congregations, denominations, or cultural communities, but also to the trans-cultural church as a whole, making his metaphor the ultimate charter for cross-cultural respect among Christians.

I am also attracted to Paul’s widely quoted Galatians 5:13-26 passage on the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit, which even more directly argues for cross-cultural respect. This passage comes at the close of an extended argument addressing a fundamentally cultural conflict between Judaizing Christians and Christians who were not conforming to Jewish law. Paul’s response, here as elsewhere in his letters, was to preach cross-cultural tolerance within the framework of faith in and obedience to Christ. Read in this context, the passage even goes so far to suggest that the Judaizers’s cultural intolerance was directly opposed to the Spirit of God, a suggestion that has important implications for our understanding of similar intolerance today. There could hardly be a stronger argument for the importance of judiciously applied cultural relativism—and for the cognitive-relational tools taught in cultural anthropology courses.

If I may be allowed to preach a bit, for many years North American Christians have tended to act as if they were the hands, feet, heart, head, and brains of the international body of Christ. Today many North American evangelicals realize that such attitudes are not appropriate, but they may not be clear on how to avoid expressing them in practice. Anthropology, particularly in its contemporary critiques of power, discursive structures, and ethnocentrism, has a role to play in equipping evangelical Christians for more faithful adherence to Paul’s model, while also giving them skills and perspectives sure to be practically useful in fields as diverse as missions, community development, peacemaking, social services, and, yes, even politics, literature, and cultural criticism.