Discussing Religious Diversity

Late May, early June is not a good time within University life to find time for blogs. With examinations, in my case the proof reading and indexing of the new book, and preparing papers for a series of one day workshops and conferences. However, much of that is now past and I have something of a backlog of issues to write about. Here is the first, coming out of the CARD network workshop in Aarhus in mid May. This also forms the first blog in the series on 'Towards a General Theory of Religion', although probably in itself it does not address that directly. I was at a workshop in London on Tuesday on Religion and Census, and I am going to Turku next week to present a paper at a European Sociology of Religion conference on religion and superdiversity. All these will focus on the issue of diversity and so I will try and bring them together after getting back from Turku and at that point I will link them into the wider theme. Enjoy the comments below...

In late May I was invited to Aarhus in Denmark as a guest of the Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity programme, sponsored by the European Union. At this event eighteen  scholars from around the world gathered to share our understandings of religious diversity, to engage critically with the concept of religious diversity and to look at ways the study of religious diversity may develop in the future. The event consisted of a series of papers with plenty of time, between and following the presentations for conversation. The great thing about such workshops is, of course, the limited number of people and the ability to develop a conversation over an extended period of time. I would like to express my gratitude to the organisers at Aarhus, both for my own invitation and for the excellent organisation of the event.

It is not my intention here to give a summary of every paper or in any other way to speak on behalf of others at the event. I simply wish to draw out a number of themes that I felt to be important and to develop them as appropriate. In doing this I want to address, for a very personal perspective, the central theme of the workshop and of the wider CARD programme, that is the critical reflection on what is meant by religious diversity and what we, primarily as sociologists, can do to engage with that concept in our work.

The first theme was raised right from the start in the excellent opening address delivered by Peter Beyer. I will not summarise the full background analysis that led to this point, or suggest that this was Peter’s primary point, but it was the issue that struck me from his talk and one which came back time and again during the workshop. This was the question of what level of diversity we might be talking about in our studies. There is clearly diversity at international, national, regional and local levels, although much of that is still framed in terms of what became known in the workshop as the ‘big six’, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Such a list of major global religions does not, even in itself, offer any real recognition for more local religious traditions, religions that sit between and across the big six, indigenous religions, new religious movements, or the many different positions that Peter highlighted as versions of ‘non-religion’, including the obvious secularist traditions, but also areas where culture and religion become confused. Beyond this issue, however, which may well be a question of definition, it was also noted that there was considerable variety within all of the big six, and the many other religious traditions out there, that sometimes had profound effects. We had an excellent paper on the variety of Muslims (whether between Suni, Shia etc. or in terms of national origin) in Australia and the very different attitudes of those who have these sometimes very different identities. Finally there was the question of possible religious diversity within individuals, whether because of dual heritage, or more likely in the contemporary world, because individuals choose what elements of religious traditions they find most helpful/comfortable/challenging. Religious diversity, therefore, needs to be more closely defined and delimitated before it can be used as an analytic tool.

The second issue was the question of whether we should be talking about religious diversity or pluralism. The suggestion was that ‘pluralism’ implied some kind of ideological commitment to the idea of religious diversity, that it was not just a good think, but something that we should actively work to implement. It also implied that the relation between religions should go beyond mere diversity to active engagement and even possible unity as an ultimate goal. Sitting behind this distinction, and the way the discussion played out more commonly within the workshop, is the question of the religious commitment of the researcher. Some at the workshop were keen to uphold the traditional sociological position of methodological atheism, or perhaps agnosticism. Others were fully committed participants who were looking for more theological engagement with the issues. What was clear, however, is that practically all those present agreed that positive religious diversity was a good thing and should be encouraged in and of itself, that the religious bodies should engage with each other in a positive fashion and that this was ultimately good for the society, and perhaps even for the government (a number of those present worked on government sponsored projects and the question of the paymaster in these discussions was never far from the surface). One really interesting take on this issue came from a study of interreligious activity in Germany. This was one of the more neutral papers, so far as any commitment to religious diversity as a good things in itself went, but the analysis of the context and performance of interreligious engagement, drawing on a Goffmanesque analysis passed on performative elements in the dialogue, offer for me a fascinating way of engaging with the wider discussion.

What, therefore, did we learn? First that religious diversity is a fact of life in the current globalised world, and that it is going to grow, however we actually define that diversity. Second, that we need to look beyond the big six religions and look both at internal diversity within the religions, and the much more complex issues of individual diversities among both religious and non-religious people. Third, that this is an explicitly political, and I would argue ‘theological’, issue and that the question of where we stand, and as I said in one of the discussions, our motives and what we wish to get out of the studies, is of central importance. There is no simple theory of religious diversity in a globalised world. Economics, population movements, political positioning, local government policies, individual senses of identity and many other factors all come into play. It is even more essential, therefore, that out of this context networks like CARD who can engage in the wider theoretical and critical debates about diversity are essential, and it is good to be able to report that they are looking to gather again next year to take the discussions forward.

Care and Curation

In this post I want to go back to the conference on material religion in Durham. It always interests me how the programmes that are put together at such conferences always manage to juxtapose different and sometimes seemingly incompatible ideas, but still manage to spark new thoughts. It is the serendipity of the process that I find so fascinating, and which links through to some of my ideas around post-post modernism (see posting below).

One particular combination of papers at the conference triggered a particular line of thought for me. Both were very different in themselves. The first was by Amy Whitehead and drew on her fieldwork in southern Spain, where she is observing the way in which local people interact with specific shrines and statues of Our Lady. She was interested in the kind of issues related to subjectivity and relationships with non-human others that I looked at in the previous posting in this strand. The second was by Pamela Smart and focussed on the collecting practices of the De Menil family and in particular showed how their religious background and concerns led to a specific approach both to collecting in general and to that which was collected. The main purpose of Pamela's paper as I understood it was to show that Catholicism and modernism were not incompatible, especially when seen through the lens of the De Menil family's collecting. Both were excellent papers but it was one small element of each that particularly caught my attention and led me to reflect on our relationship with material objects in the light of my own interest in Dogon art.

From Amy's paper the element that struck me was the way in which the women associated with the shrine care for the statue. Traditionally these women would have been virgins, but that is no longer possible. What is interesting, however, is that these women are the only ones entitled to care for the statue in an intimate and very personal way when all the other people have been removed from the church. They change the clothes and even they have to hold up a sheet and look away while their leader changes the underwear. This is very intimate care representing very close contact with the statue that treats that statue as a real person, and a very special person, a person who is understood to be a Queen.

In Pamela's paper the point that she made, which particularly struck me, was that the private nature of the collection led to a particular emphasis on curatorial care of the objects within the collection. This involved restoration, stabilisation, and an attention to the needs of the object in terms of environment for storage and display. Pamela argued that such attention to care is not as clear in the case of public collections of different kinds, but was central to the whole ethos of the maintenance and display of the collection for these private collectors, even to the point of dictating the form of the building that holds the display. There is a personal element here, as with the statue from southern Spain, but this is the collector's personal attachment to the objects within the collection.

What I picked up from this particular juxtaposition was the different understandings of care and curation of objects in different settings and contexts. Linked to this is very clearly the idea of ownership. For the private collector it is the fact of personal ownership that leads to the emphasis on care for the object. In the case of the women at the shrine I might suggest that it is actually the ownership of the women by the statue that demands the level of intimate care that is seen in the ritual. But ownership is only one aspect. As with the wider themes of the conference and the questions of personhood and subjectivity, the issues around care and curatorship lead us right into the question of our relationships with the material, especially within the context of religion.

As I work through the material on the Dogon I can see both elements of this juxtaposition at work. For the people themselves there is a caring for the objects, within the shrines as part of the ritual, in their placing these objects within the cliffside caves to preserve them among the dead, and in their reuse of the objects at other times. The layers of sacrificial patina represent a kind of care, as do the addition of nails, jewellery and other additions. Finally there are also elements of repair that are seen on some of the objects that in itself is a sign of care. Repair can also be seen, depending on when it is undertaken, in relation to collectors (although it is often frowned upon as authenticity does not expect the collector to go quite this far in their care of the object). How the museums, galleries and private collectors also 'care' for the objects, and the different ways these different groups do 'care' for the objects is also a fascinating area of study. I am not sure I can offer any conclusions at this stage, but it has raised so many new questions for me about the relations between the human and the object in the case of Dogon art, and in many other contexts.

Teaching as a Protected Characteristic

Last week I went to Leeds to present some of the findings from the Valuing Teaching @ Birmingham (VT@B) Project to those who are taking part in this year's HEA Change initiative. VT@B was an Higher Education Academy supported project undertaken here at Birmingham University to look at the way in which the balance between teaching and research among academic staff was understood by the staff themselves. It consisted of a series of interviews with a wide cross section of staff, feedback from a web survey and a number of focus groups and discussions with senior managers within the University. The project led to a series of recommendations aimed at redressing the balance between the recognition of teaching and research in academic contracts within the University.

This is not really the place to go into the specific results in great detail. The overall conclusion, which will probably reflect many other research intensive universities (and others from the responses at the HEA event) is that as we approach the REF submission, many academics feel that teaching is being undervalued, at the day to day level within specific departments, when considering issues such as promotion, and in the wider messaging of the University, especially on the outward facing web site. With the emphasis on increase grants, however, an increasing discourse around student experience, and the importance of NSS and other elements of national league tables, then it was noted that this might be changing.

One interesting point struck me, however, as I was preparing the presentation for the HEA event, and that I raised in the final few minutes of the presentation. This was the similarities between much of the language and structures of discrimination that we had heard around teaching within the project and the debate that is happening more broadly around gender, race or sexuality within the whole field of equality and diversity. I am responsible, within the University, for our Equality Executive Group and like so many other Universities we have been struggling with things like the Athena Swan charters, questions of BME attainment gaps, recognition for our work on sexuality and even interfaith activities across the University. Within all these areas the question is not so much overt sexism or racism among staff or as an institution. Attitudes of that kind are very rare these days, although perhaps still too common for comfort. The issue in all these 'protected characteristics' is actually one of implicit prejudice.

I could perhaps take the example of religious faith as an example. Many colleagues, and even whole individuals, will claim quite legitimately that they have no faith position and that they do not take faith positions into account in relation to teaching, to promotion practices within the institution, in relation to research or in relation to expectations in terms of workload models or whatever it is. However, almost by saying that they are demonstrating an implicit prejudice and if they took the time to make themselves aware of the specific needs and experiences of people of different religious groups, then they would realise that whether it is in relation to prayer times, washing facilities, food provision, failure to recognise faith perspectives in learning and teaching, or whatever else it might be, by claiming to do nothing detrimental they are in fact limiting the chances of some of their students, or their colleagues who hold committed faith positions.

Another element of implicit prejudice comes through experiments which show that even those who have a good track record on, for example, race issues can still react differently (more quickly, less consciously) when confronted by pictures of individuals from different racial backgrounds holding guns. the prejudice is so ingrained that we do not always note that we display it. This has also been shown to be the case when names are added at the top of essays, or promotion documentation. Even if the individual is not known, our assumptions about gender, race, or perhaps even religion, will determine, perhaps only slightly, but still measurably, our response to the paper concerned.

In the case of teaching, therefore, what we see in our data is the idea of teaching as a 'protected characteristic' among academics. We say all the right things. We assert as institutions that individual academics have as much chance of promotion or reward on their teaching as they do on their research. We claim to recognise teaching excellence in colleagues and at times of promotion etc. If we stop to think about it, and are clearly challenged to do so, then this is what we do. However, when we are under pressure to deal with a pile of forms, to sort out next year's work load, to think on the spot of who to recommend for reward or recognition (however that is done) at any one time, then across most research focussed Universities, and perhaps we could say most universities, we revert to type, and our implicit prejudices come to the for. I am probably as guilty of this as any other manager. The solution, however, is one of raising awareness, noting and drawing to the attention of boards and managers, asking our colleagues to stop and think about the consequences of their actions, becoming self aware. These are exactly the same solutions that we are learning to take on board for all protected characteristics and perhaps, in the University context, we need to add 'teaching' to that list.

Dogon Sculpture and Material Religion

Following the theme of the conference that I attended at Durham, I have been thinking about how far the various ideas around material religion can be applied to the Dogon sculptures and masks. Dogon material has always been recognised as being religious, but the exact nature of the religious element and the relationship between the religious and the objects themselves has tended to change over time.

 

One of the things that I am doing in the development of the book on the Uses of the Dogon is trying to track the development of ideas about the Dogon, their life and culture, their art, and, yes, their religion. Of course to talk of ‘their religion’ raises many questions that I ought to be addressing in another one of the strands of this blog. That is not where I want to go in this posting. Suffice it to say, for now, that by ‘religion’ at this point I am meaning interactions with the non-empirical, the other.

Historically the interpretation of masks, and to some extent of statues as well, has been dominated by Marcel Griaule’s classic work on myth. From his earliest work on the masks, through his conversations with Ogotommêli, to the work that Griaule and Dieterlen put into Le Renard Pâle, the complex myths that form the pinnacle of knowledge among the Dogon were assumed to be the basis for understanding every other aspect of Dogon life. It is not my place in this posting to question the myths themselves, or Griaule’s construction of the myth, but it is simply to note that both he, and those who followed him, assumed that an understanding of the myth would make sense of all aspects of the Dogon culture and life, including their material culture. All masks, therefore, all symbols and drawings on the fronts of houses, all sculpture and granary doors, all aspects of Dogon art, was understood in terms of the myths. Everything was a Nomo, a twin figure, an ark, or whatever it might be.

Over time, however, it was recognised that the myths did not relate easily to the principle forms of the sculpture, especially, for example, the maternity figures, the equestrian figures, or figures holding various day to day objects. A new understanding began to see the sculptures more in relation to ancestor figures rather than related directly to the myths. This was reinforced by what was known about the use that was made of sculptures in various shrines (and actually very little was known about the use of the sculptures as Griaule and his colleagues focussed so heavily on the masks and the dances that they tended to overlook other aspects of ritual and material culture). The figures were seen as representations, or repositories of the ancestors, a means or mode of communication between the living and previous generations. They were a source of power, or perhaps more accurately a conduit for the power of the other.

The latest thinking around material religion, however, as expressed in a number of different papers at the conference, aims to break down the distinction between the material and the spiritual, to see the object not as a container for the other, or for power in whatever form, but to see the relationship with the other being a relationship between subjective persons, to see the object as having agency in its own right. Are the sculptures representations of the ancestors? Are they conduits for the power of the ancestors? No, in this view they cannot be that. They are players within the religious field, subjective others in their own right, part of a complex relationship between human persons and non-human persons. Much current thinking around animism is focussed on this kind of interaction and the subjectivity, or the agency, of the non-human other.

I am not sure that I actually have the ethnographic knowledge to be able to provide a real rethinking of the role of sculptures as non-human others within the Dogon religious world. I can speculate, of course, and what fascinates me more than anything else in this context is the way older statues can be used and re-used. The work on the biography of the object (a different kind of subjectivity and relationship with the material) plays out in wonderful ways among the Dogon where objects, made many centuries ago, can be used within shrines, taken to the cliffs and ‘buried’ with the dead, rediscovered, reignited with power, and reused in ritual, perhaps many times over, before finally being collected by travellers and dealers and bought to the West for sale, collection and display.

To simply treat these objects as illustrations of the myth, however wonderful and complex that myth is, or as bit parts in ancestor cults, conduits of power, or even as aesthetic masterpieces within the museum, is ultimately to undervalue them as non-human others, objects with life and with power, part of a long historic relationship with many different human others and part of a contemporary relationship with the collector and observer. It is this that, somehow, I think we ought to rediscover…

Dogon Art at the Liverpool World Museum

This is the first of three postings under the theme of Uses of the Dogon. As I have explained below (Post 1), that is the title I have given to the book I am currently writing on the way in which the Dogon people have been represented in different kinds of discourse (anthropological, art historical and tourist) in the West. What I want to use this strand of the blog for, therefore, is to comment on things that I am reading and visits that I am making that have a loss relationship to the book, but may not actually be included within the text itself.

The week before last I visited Liverpool World Museum with my partner to look at the Africa gallery and to see the Dogon items that are held by the Museum. Last week I attended a conference at Durham, organised by the Sociology of Religion section of the British Sociological Association, on the theme of Material Religion. These three postings, by way of catching up with myself, will pick up themes that come from these two experiences.

So, back to Liverpool, I must begin by offering my thanks to Zachary Kingdon, the curator of the Africa Collection at Liverpool for giving his time to show us around the gallery and taking us out to the store to see the other Dogon items. Liverpool has a small collection of Dogon pieces, all acquired during the 1960s when the then curator used money given to the museum to rebuild its collection after damage during the war, to buy a number of objects on the open market to, in many ways, ‘complete the collection’. The Dogon items, however, did not ‘complete the collection’ and, I assume the same was true of many of the other items bought at this time. This was because the ‘collection’ as it had developed in Liverpool really never should have contained Dogon items in the first place. It was a collection largely put together by a Liverpool merchant, Arnold Ridyard, who travelled the coast of West Africa from Sierra Leone to Angola accepting donations from, and making purchases from, local Africans in the different countries visited. It is only by some abstract notion of ‘African Art’ that Dogon pieces would have been seen to add to, or ‘complete’ such a collection. It is an understanding of what Zachary has called the ‘canon’ of African Art. That the Dogon are seen as an essential part of such a canon is, of course, interesting and relevant to the book, but of little direct relevance to Liverpool.

Zachary has done some very interesting work on the African donors to the original collection and the current gallery within the museum makes a significant point of placing the African individuals back into the story of the collection and its position within Liverpool. Even the Congo material, which was largely purchased by Ridyard, emphasises the role that local African research assistants played in going from village to village asking about the use and relevance of the Nkisi nail figures. This placing of the African individuals, both men and women, at the centre of the story, and recognising their links to Liverpool, where some came to study, or sent their children to study, provides a very different kind of narrative that gets beyond the ‘art/artefact’ debate. It gives a coherence to the gallery and an interest that is historical as well as cultural.

Unfortunately, however, in the middle of the gallery sits a display of items from Benin. These probably could not have been ignored, they are of excellent quality and very impressive items in themselves, a few bronzes and a series of ivory tusks. One of these, on the wall apart from the others, was collected before the British expeditionary force arrived and could well have been a gift to an earlier merchant. The majority, however, came from the violent activities of the British and represent plunder rather than gifts or the result of trade. I did not feel that this distinction was really brought out clearly enough in the display.

At the end of the gallery, on the other hand, some of the items bought in the 1960s are set aside, including a wonderful seated Dogon figure. These are set aside as evidence of a different kind of ‘collecting’ from the bulk of the exhibition and while this makes a useful point, and while most of the items are one-off, because of the way they were purchased, and so could not form part of a wider display of a particular people or region, I did feel the distinction was somewhat false. That, however, is a personal opinion and I still have to say that this was one of the most imaginative and informative exhibitions of African cultural artefacts that I have seen in recent years and would be highly recommended.

Introducing the Post-post-modern

Having presented a series of posts around the New Collegiality theme I have decided that I need to get the other three themes activated and to begin exploring some of the ideas around them. I will start that process in this post by adding a section of a draft introductory chapter to my latest book project on the Uses of the Dogon. This outlines what I mean by 'post-post-modernism', although I do recognise that I need a much better title than that...

A Theoretical Frame

There is a sense in which this work is part of a much wider project and it is important to understand that larger project in order to fully understand what I am trying to achieve within this book. My starting point is post-modernism, or perhaps a caricature of post-modernism, that was common in the nineteen nineties. At that point, at the height of post-modern criticism in many different disciplines, the whole post-modern project appeared to be one of deconstruction, of taking the grand narratives apart, laying out the different elements that were revealed and reconstructing them in a series of entirely random ways; what has been described as playing in the ruins of the past. What this suggests is, at one level, that there is no ultimate truth, simply a variety of perspectives each of which is of equal validity with the others, and at another level, and implied in the first, that there is no sense of future, nowhere to go apart from more playing and more and more fanciful reconstructions of the parts (past).

There was a great deal in the post-modern moment that was important and needed to come in order to take the wider academic discussion forward. Anthropology, among many other disciplines, found the space within post-modernism, to offer a significant critique of its most precious assumptions and all disciplines learnt not to take themselves too seriously as part of the critical discussion. It was the sense of collapse, however, the denial of any significant future that ultimately saw post-modernism as an intellectual dead end. Some have tried to pretend that it has never happened. Some took it as the opportunity to turn back to the pre-modern and to restate older truths and grand narratives in new and more or less original ways. Others have learnt the lessons, stated their own perspective and carried on much as they had before, although in a perhaps more knowing way. Very few people, so far as I can see, have asked what we really need to do with all the different perspectives, deconstructed elements and ruins that we were left with at the end of the post-modern critique.

It is here that I really want to begin. I want to acknowledge that there is no single grand narrative that we can use to make sense of the world, even those narratives of critical theory such as orientalism and post-colonialism, they all have their limitations, they can all be approached, deconstructed and challenged. That does not mean, however, that we are left merely with ruins. What we are left with, I would suggest, are multiple strands, what might be called ‘complexity’. It is not that there is no truth, nor quite that there are multiple truths, each equally valid. What we are confronted with in most human sciences (and perhaps in the arts and humanities more generally) are highly complex truths, truths that cannot be reduced to single narratives or snappy formulae. It is that complexity that I would suggest we need to begin to recognise, accept and explore, and that is part of what I am trying to achieve in this work.

In order to achieve this reconstruction of complexity we have to acknowledge that there are many different ways of seeing and engaging with any single object or idea. To try and grasp the full range of possible perspectives will, of course, always be impossible. Even to get close probably takes many different scholars from many different disciplines. What I can do here, however, is to show, in some small way, how this might play out. I have in mind the possibility of beginning with a specific object, let us say a Black Monkey Mask from among the Dogon. From here it is possible to ask so many different questions and to listen to so many different narratives. There is the story of its construction, its role, and the place of the carver, within the political and social structure of the Dogon. We can ask about those who wear the mask, the rest of the outfit, the dances, the rituals, where it is kept when it is not being worn, is it inherited, placed in a cave, or simply left to rot and so on. At another level we have the question of the symbolism, what does the mask mean, why does it have this shape, what are the artistic conventions that determine what it is. There are stories related to the myths in which the Black Monkey has a role, their part in the wider mythic and religious world of the Dogon, both in the past and in the much more complex interreligious contexts of the present. When was it danced, does it make any difference whether it was danced just for the Dogon, did it ever have any role within the dances put on for tourists, and if so how did the meaning of the mask, the dance and the myths behind the dance change.

Once we move out from the Dogon themselves, this mask, at some point in its history, left Mali and came to Europe. Here it was given a new name, and does ‘black monkey’ really say what it is? It was caught up in the art market, the meanings it held for its owners began to change, its value was based on other, quite different, factors. It was sold to a collector, perhaps had a place at some time in its life within an exhibition or within the vaults of a museum, so initiating a whole new set of questions, understandings and narratives. Eventually I bought it through a dealer in Paris and it now sits on a shelf in my home. My own engagement with the mask is at once that of a collector, an anthropologist, one who has travelled as a tourist to Mali and as one who was born in Africa (albeit a very different part of the continent). These are all highly complex questions. They all engage a range of narratives and are immersed in their own distinct scholarly discourses. There is no single truth here, but truth has a role – this mask is not modelled, despite the obvious similarity in shape, on the helmet of some ancient astronaut from another solar system. However, a full understanding will demand that attention is given to all these questions, and perhaps to many more that I cannot begin to think about here, or to address within this text.

It is my contention, within this wider framework, that it is probably anthropology, drawing on and incorporating so many other disciplines, that will provide the appropriate academic home for such an analysis. So many of these questions have, in fact, been addressed within the anthropological literature (although many others from other disciplines have contributed and anthropologists have always drawn on the insights of others). There is something about the holistic approach of anthropology, its failure to recognise the normative discourses of its home society (or even its home discipline) that makes it an ideal scholarly context within which to embark on this kind of quest. One text, in particular, has helped me to see the possibilities of such an approach, and inspired me to begin to write this book, and that is Michael Taussig’s What Color is the Sacred? (2009). In this work Taussig begins with a very simple observation, from the work of Goethe, that Europeans see vivid colour as being exotic and ‘other’, and uses this as the spring board to range over wide spans of history and geography in his search for the meaning and uses of indigo, its involvement in colonial, and even Nazi, discourses, and its place within so many different histories and narratives. The book may not have a simple conclusion, it raises far more questions than it answers, but it achieves a depth of connection and completeness that very few other texts, whether within anthropology or beyond, ever achieve. I do not have the literary talent that Taussig displays, the way I put ideas together will always be very different from him, but I am hoping that this book, as an illustration of the wider theoretical frame of post-post-modernism, will also encourage others to think and to ask their own questions of so many other objects, ideas, narratives and people.

Seeking the 'Entrepreneurial'

A couple of weeks ago I attended an event in London, organised by the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education on the Entrepreneurial Institution. It was a really stimulating day and I would want to praise the organisers for putting together an interesting and thought provoking programme. It has, however, taken me a couple of weeks to think through some of the implications of what was being said and how this relates to some of my own thinking. If entrepreneurship is going to have a place in my model for the New Collegiality then it is going to be under the general heading of 'innovation and flexibility'. One serious question, however, is whether 'entrepreneurship' is the right word for what it is that I am really trying to get at within my own model.

Earlier in the academic year we held a focus group at Birmingham as part of a wider project on teaching and the curriculum. At that focus group colleagues were asked to look at the values that were set out by the University as they relate to teaching and learning. The group endorsed all the stated values apart from 'entrepreneurship'. It was not that they were against entrepreneurship as such, it was that they did not think that this was the right term, or perhaps the most useful term, to express the values that they wanted to endorse and to encourage staff and students to engage with. The general feeling was that entrepreneurship was too closely associated with Dragon's Den type start ups, too closely focussed on business and those who wanted to go into business. While it was recognised that it was perfectly possible to be entrepreneurial in social work, the health service, in art and culture and even in education, the term did not sit easily within many disciplines and would not, so the group thought, encourage the desired behaviours in the students. Unfortunately, despite a number of attempts, they could not really come up with a suitable alternative.

The NCEE event opened with an introduction from Paul Hannon who stressed that we needed to widen our understanding of entrepreneurship and begin to see how the values and behaviours that the term implied could be embedded throughout the institution; among students, among staff and as a key value/behaviour for the institution as a whole. This event was focussed primarily at the institutional level, but it was clearly recognised that this was not going to happen unless the individuals within the institution were also working in an entrepreneurial fashion and with entrepreneurial values.

When Paul, and the other speakers, began to define the term, isolate the values and behaviours that it might contain, and to offer examples of entrepreneurship in practice, then a number of key ideas kept being repeated. I do not intend to outline all of these, this is not an NCEE blog, but there were a number that struck me, either because of the centrality of the ideas, or perhaps because of their novelty. These all relate to what I have called, in my model, innovation and flexibility.

The first is creativity. Entrepreneurship is about new ideas. Creativity is not, of itself, entrepreneurial, but entrepreneurship cannot exist without creativity. Of course this is not just creativity in terms of original ideas, but it is also related to new processes, new ways of looking at old problems, new methods of working and so on. It is that willingness to try something new and to see how it works. This leads on to the second point that struck me, which is the need for flexibility and/or freedom. Creativity is only valuable if it is able to be expressed. There are two sides to this, one is a willingness to listen to, and hence to encourage, new ideas however odd they may seem at first, the second is the courage to test them out. This does not mean that we should not be critical, or even careful in our analysis and project planning, we just need to be more open. Finally, therefore, and perhaps most significantly for many Universities, entrepreneurship as it was presented to us, very explicitly on more than one occasion, was being willing to allow failure and to learn from failure, to live with a little bit more risk. This is something that we find difficult to instil in our students, certainly something that we are bad at celebrating among our staff, and something that many HE institutions would find very difficult to encourage as an institutional value. It is, however, perhaps something we should think about a little bit more...

The New Collegiality - Starting Points

While I clearly wish to work with four different, but related, strands in this blog, I seem to have begun with one in particular; the questions around the New Collegiality. There are various reasons for this but as the blog is here to enable me to respond to things that are happening around me then I guess I have to say this is the area that is probably uppermost in my mind at this particular time.

I cannot fully develop the elements of the New Collegiality, however, unless I do at least set out some of the basic starting points and assumptions that are part of my thinking. That, therefore, is the purpose of this posting. The idea comes from my current work within the University of Birmingham. Here I am Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Staffing and in that I role I act as an academic voice within a number of different staffing and student related agendas. There are three in particular that I have focussed on in the last year or so. The first is Equality and Diversity, the second Employability and the third is the development of Performance Development Reviews across the University. It is not my place here to comment on how these have developed or to talk specifically about the University of Birmingham. It is thinking through these agendas that has led me to ask about the more general principles on which staff development (in its widest sense) within the University could be developed.

These more general principles can, perhaps, be labelled as 'performance', 'diversity' and 'innovation'. Let me, therefore, just explain what I mean by each of these and then I will aim to bring them back together at the end of the post to say how they might be combined in the concept of the 'new collegiality'.

Performance can be understood in many different ways within a University context, from the role of individuals (as in a PDR) through the performance of teams, departments, schools (or whatever other structural units are relevant) to the performance of the whole institution. The measures of performance will also change depending on what kind of level is being looked at and the reasons why the measurement is needed. There is no question that all Universities are aiming at 'excellence' and as such some kind of incentive to performance is going to be essential. The real issue, however, is the way in which a particular institution, or sub-section of the institution, is going to understand 'excellence' and therefore how they are going to measure it. I am not, at this early stage, going to set myself limits on what I might mean by performance (I am still reflecting and thinking about the concepts) although I will note that I am currently looking at the idea of performance in terms of essential attitudes or behaviours rather than through specific targets and this, I think, will end up being more in tune with the other features of the overall model.

Diversity is something that we all live with in the modern world and particularly in the University. The equality and diversity agenda tends to assume that we are talking here of specific characteristics, be that gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability or whatever. I am fully committed to the wider equality and diversity agenda as understood in these terms and would even go so far as to suggest that teams and groups will always work best (perform to their highest standard) when there is a good range of different types of people involved. Diversity, however, can also mean other things. A great deal of work on team building suggests that a research team, a teaching team or any other kind of collaborative arrangement will need a very diverse range of personalities and talents within it in order to deliver whatever it is that is required. In a very different sence, and  treating diversity from a completely other perspective, I am also fully committed to interdisciplinarity and cannot see how any contemporary academic study can be undertaken without at least some commitment to an interdisciplinary context. This can also be understood as 'diversity'.

Innovation is the final piece of the jigsaw. Here I am thinking perhaps of the need for a flexible structure, an entrepreneurial attitude and outlook, and the willingness to take risks and to try out new things. Many of the large traditional Universities in the UK do not have a good track record on innovation as institutions, although many of their research staff in particular take the principle of exploring the outer edges of their disciplines in new and innovative ways totally for granted. This can, of course, create internal pressures as researchers and institutions pull in different directions. From the work that I have done within employability, however, and the consequential engagement with businesses that this has led to, I see no reason why innovation and flexibility cannot be introduced much more widely within the University. My guess, however, is that of the three principles that I have outlined this will be the most difficult to persuade many managers to embrace (at least beyond the ideological assent).

Performance (excellence), diversity (equality, teamwork and interdisciplinarity) and innovation (flexibility, entrepreneurialism) are all interrelated. To bring the three together within a particular institution and to maintain a critical tension between all three would demand, I would expect, a focus less on the individual and more on creative, and perhaps ever changing, teams, whether in research, teaching, outreach, student support or whatever area of the University's work we might be talking about. It is this complex, creative approach that I want to give the overall title of the New Collegiality and what I wish to do as this particular strand of the blog develops is to explore different ways in which the individual strands, and their points of overlap and interconnection, can be developed.

Theology and the University, Reflections on Nostalgia

Yesterday evening (Tuesday 5th Feb) John Milbank came to give the Cadbury Lecture here at the University of Birmingham on the theme of 'Theology and the Idea of the University'. I have always enjoyed reading John's work and I actually enjoyed the lecture. My overall view, however, is that while I tend to agree with much of his analysis of the 'problem', I very rarely agree with his particular 'solution'. Last night's lecture was a very clear case in point.

I may have got some of the facts, or points in the argument, wrong so please do take this as a definitive presentation of John Milbank's ideas. However, as I understand it, the main point he wanted to make was that of the three primary characteristics of the University, universality of knowledge, independence of institution and freedom of expression, the first has its roots clearly in the Christian theological tradition, the second in a more secular reaction and the third sat somewhere between the Christian and the secular.

As ever John provided a clear and detailed exposition of the history, or genealogy, of the 'university' as an idea and an institution. It was the question of universality, however, that formed the bulk of the lecture and John traced this back, not to the University as such, but rather to the idea of the Cathedral school as an arena for the widest range of possible disciplines. It is only when we include God within the preview of what that universality of knowledge, or study, might include that, according to John, we can really talk about 'universality of knowledge' at all. This suggests, therefore, that theology must have a role within the University and John went on to argue, drawing on the tradition of Newman's 'Idea of a University', that it ought to be possible to explore a theological reading of history, sociology, literature, biology and even maths. He did acknowledge, however, that this would probably be best done in the modern world within the context of a Christian (or other faith based) institution.

I am very certain that I do not share John's view of what 'theology' is or could be (although that is a discussion for another day). I am also unsure whether any 'theological' understanding of, say, science, might have a place within the contemporary University. What concerned me, however, about the kinds of solutions that John was presenting for the contemporary University is that they did not seem to take account of where Universities are in the real world. John did use the word 'nostalgic' and one of the questions from the floor suggested 'romantic', although this was clearly rejected by John. There is, however, always a sense with John's 'solutions' that we have to look back into history, usually pre-reformation Christian history, and lift something from that time and space into the present, that we can only go forward by looking back. Of course we can all learn from history, and I would be among the first to suggest that we should explore all the different possibilities and potentialities that exist in our past, but this could never be a blueprint for the future.

In these notes I am presenting one strand on what I have called 'the new collegiality', a new future for the University. It would be easy to see this also as mere 'nostalgia' for a lost past. The use of the term 'collegiality' in my title certainly suggests that that is where I want to go. That, however, is not the case. We are in a different space, a new space. We cannot go back to models from the time when Christian (or even religious) discourses were dominant. We cannot go back to Newman's context of the mid-nineteenth century (although I would, and will, argue that there is much we can learn from this time). Nor can we go back to the cosy 'collegial' ideal of the 1960s, or whatever period we care to choose. That does not mean, however, that we have to accept the status quo or that there is nowhere else to go. In these notes I do want to present a clear vision, based on where I believe we have got to and where we need to go forward. Theology may have a place in that vision (alongside many other disciplines) but will certainly not be my own starting point, at least not in the way John Milbank understands 'theology'.

Introducing myself

There are many things that I could write about, and much that could be written. My aim here is to focus on four things that I think might generate some comment.

I am an anthropologist by training, I am Professor of Liturgical and Congregational Studies and have published a Sociological History of Christian Worship. I am Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (Staffing) of the University of Birmingham. I am Chair of the Heritage and Cultural Learning Hub, that aims to provide digital solutions for galleries, museums, archives and libraries (GLAMs) and a member of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS). I was born in Tanzania and collect the sculptures, masks and other art of the Dogon societies of Mali.

I was described recently as a 'connecter'. Although I am not quite sure what was meant by that when it was said, I do know that I have always tended to be eclectic in my interests and am fascinated by what happens when the unexpected are juxtaposed and forced to talk to each other.

At one level this leads to a fascination with diversity. This picks up my anthropological roots of course, but also comes through in terms of the thrill of investigating the many different ways Christian worship (Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian churches as well as contemporary Pentecostal traditions and inculturation across Africa and beyond). It is seen in my most recent book on Discourses of Religious Diversity in Birmingham (and more of that later) and in my strong belief that the modern university has to be based in the celebration of diversity (both of people and of disciplines).

At another level it leads me to want to see theory from one field applied to something entirely other. I am dyslexic and think visually. I rarely work in straight lines and linear rationality or linear narrative seems so unreal. My exploration of multi-touch digital technology is perhaps more theoretical than practical, but it is the possibilities that this opens up for thinking in three or four dimensions, for unexpected and totally surprising juxtapositions and for collaborative research that really gets me excited. Post-modernism, we could say, began to take things to pieces, created intellectual debris without any real focus, or perhaps even any real future. We have to think beyond the post-modern, to the reconstructions, the reconfigurations that are possible, the multi-disciplinary investigations, the excitement of the new and the unexpected.

I love cities, I travel as and when I can. Maps fascinate me (again the visual thinking) and the layers of history and culture that can be seen in the buildings, the street furniture, the signs and the people of the city. I want to use this blog as a kind of exploratory journey through an imaginary intellectual cityscape, to comment on what I am reading, my conversations, my travels, my thoughts, and simply to see where this may lead. I welcome companions on the journey, why else would I blog, but I guess the journey will remain my own.

I have called this the Stringer Quartet. I want to follow four different, but probably overlapping paths, and will make it clear in the titles which thread each post will follow. These four strands, four strings if you like, reflect four areas of my current thinking and for now I will give them the following titles and subtitles.

• Towards a General Theory of Religion (what does it mean to be religious in the contemporary world?)
• The New Collegiality (what shape should the contemporary university - and especially Arts and Humanities - take?) 
• The Uses of the Dogon (my reflections on art, museums, anthropology, culture and tourism and the subject of my current writing project/book)
• Post-post-modernism (I have no better title for now, but aiming to get beyond linear rationality to a new way of thinking)