Towards a New 'Sacred Sociology'

I am currently working on the chapter of my most recent book on the reception of the Dogon in the West that deals with the discourse within the anthropological tradition and provides a critique of the anthropology of the Dogon with reference to anthropological theory. As part of this I have been looking at the intellectual roots of Marcell Griaule and others involved in the research on the Dogon. This is focused on the intellectual scene in Paris in the late 1920s through to the end of 1930s. In exploring more about this period I came across Michele Richman’s work ‘Sacred Revolutions’. In this book Richman outlines the thinking that came together in the short lived College de Sociologie towards the end of the 1930s. The key players in the College were Georges Bataille, Roger Callois and Michel Leiris (who was part of the first Griaule Mission to the Dogon).

In talking about the College, Richman says: ‘Sociology thus became an essential resource for the College’s investigation of the interface between the social and the political as a key to understanding the nature of collective movements’ (2002, 113) and a little later: ‘With its claim that death is the underlying catalyst for movements of attraction as well as repulsion, and that the need to mediate encounters with it prompts the consecration of sacred places, persons or things, the College united under the banner of a sacred sociology’ (2002, 114, italics in original). There is, of course, much more to Richman’s complex and sophisticated analysis of this movement, but there are a number of things that really appeal to me even in those two passages and that makes me want to explore this whole movement further.

In the first passage the concern is with the ‘interface between the social and the political’. That is essential in today’s world and something that I personally find difficult to grasp. It is this interface, Richman suggests, that is ‘a key to understanding the nature of collective movements’. For those collective movements that really concern us today (radical Islam and the like) this is undoubtedly true and while considerable work has been done on collective movements, and the interface between the social and the political, since the 1930s much of this has veered away from any direct concern with religion. The second passage talks about death as the ‘underlying catalyst’ and the need to mediate encounters with it through a greater understanding of sacred places, persons and things. In the 1930s the College had difficulty in engaging with the rise of Nazism and their solution, in part, was to see this as a ‘sacred’ movement, or at least a movement that had elements of the sacred within it. The contemporary movements can be seen very clearly as ‘religious’, and we may or may not want to use the word ‘sacred’ to describe them. Far less has been said about the centrality of the encounter with death (in all its forms, not just suicide bombings) that sits at the heart of such movements and, I would suggest, must sit at the heart of any analysis of the movements or any attempts to counter them. It is this, Richman suggests, that led the members of the College to ‘unite under a banner of a sacred sociology’. Does this imply, therefore, that we might now need a new ‘sacred sociology’ to counter the contemporary collective movements? I think that it probably does.

I am just about to go off on another holiday, another tour with long hours of bus and train travel, this time in Southern Spain and Morocco. I want to use that time, in part, to reflect on what such a ‘sacred sociology’ might look at (not as a parody of the theory of religion as with ‘metaphorics’) but as a way of engaging with the real issues that we face as sociologists and theorists of religion in the contemporary world. I am clear that Richman, and the College, is not talking about a sociology of the sacred here, far less a sociology of religion. I am also clear that they are not talking about a religious sociology (as in Catholic or Islamic sociology) that is not in any sense what I am talking about, although there may be something to learn from these sources. The emphasis on the word ‘sacred’ with its roots in Durkheimian sociology and its connection with ‘death’, the ‘collective’ and, later in Richman’s analysis with the ‘erotic’ is where I think we need to begin. Obviously to really begin to construct (or is it to ‘reconstruct’) a new sacred sociology is going to demand much more reading, research, debate and discussion. It cannot be put together, like a spoof theory, on a bus travelling through the mountains of Morocco. I can, however, begin to think through the parameters, the limits and the possible shape of such a sacred sociology. That, I really believe, has to be my next task.

I will come back and report on how I have done (and also attempt to bring together the various posts from the last few weeks) on my return…

Being an Entrepreneurial Academic

In a newsfeed on Higher Education issues from the States there was a recent series of blogs on academic entrepreneurship. It offered advice over four weeks with suggested exercises in order to help readers get their own particular ‘business’ off the ground. The section that particularly struck me was on the differences between the academic and the entrepreneurial mindset. I am not sure there was anything new here, but it was the way in which it was laid out, so simply and so clearly, and the way the comparison was made with the ‘academic mindset’ that particularly struck me. The author identified five elements to the entrepreneurial mindset:

• Academics move slow. Entrepreneurs move fast.
• Academics study problems. Entrepreneurs solve problems.
• Academics function in constraint. Entrepreneurs create possibility.
• Academics focus on patterns. Entrepreneurs focus on the exceptions.
• Academics loathe promotion. Entrepreneurs live to sell.

There is probably some element of stereotyping going on here and the text does recognise a little more subtlety than is suggested by the titles, but the basic principles should be clear enough. It was the text under the first of these headings that really made me think:

‘As an academic my approach to change was to move slowly, deliberately and cautiously. I believed that the best way to minimize mistakes was through extensive conversation, committee meetings, producing volumes of written material, etc. In other words, the best way to make a decision was by slowly moving through a process that involved lots of talking, thinking and analyzing before doing anything. As an entrepreneur I act first and analyze later. Quick movement is essential because my goal is to get into action and fail as fast as possible. Every time I fail, I can evaluate what worked (and didn’t work), make quick adjustments, and get back into action. Failing gives me lots of data that I can use to adapt as I’m moving forward.’

That willingness to fail, and the learning from failure as part of the process of development, was something that others had also commented on in relation to entrepreneurship and something that I am more than aware that we discourage within the academic world.

 

As part of my role of Deputy Pro-vice Chancellor (Staffing) I have aimed to apply something of this logic to the process of culture change within the University. It is usually said that culture change takes time, and to fully embed any particular change that is undoubtedly true. With only three to four years to make any kind of impact, however, I have had to think in much shorter time scales. My line manager commented in the annual review earlier in the summer that I seemed to have a knack for start and finish projects. I would prefer to say that I am applying entrepreneurial methods: establishing agendas, making changes, achieving results and moving on.

There are three or four areas where this has been particularly successful (although the exact methods have changed in each case, and that goes back to the idea of learning on the go). With employability I was asked to chair a review. I identified the issues (the lack of embeddedness) constructed a strategy and, with colleagues in the Careers Network costed out what was possible. We took this to senior management, got the go ahead to make the changes (although on a lower budgets than originally requested) and created a model for employability that has by any standards been successful, lifting Birmingham close to the top of the league tables. What is more the model has been taken and applied in different ways in a number of different UK universities, becoming known as the ‘Birmingham Model’, a clear sign of recognition and success. I followed this up with the establishment of an in-house student employment agency (Worklink) despite being told that we could never deliver on this internally, given the University's track record on such projects, and would be better off buying an existing model off the shelf. I made the case for doing it ourselves and the result has been groundbreaking and succesful.

Switching areas slightly, I was asked to act as academic lead on a Higher Education Academy sponsored project on Valuing Teaching at Birmingham (VT@B). This aimed to identify how academic staff perceived teaching across the institution and to make recommendation to improve the outlook and value of teaching as a part of the wider academic process. The issue here was perhaps more of perception than reality but there were clear things that could be done and I made it my task to get these on the agenda of senior management and delivered. We now support the academic promotions process with workshops and training for Heads of School, placing teaching alongside research as well as addressing other equality and diversity issues. We have also established a Birmingham Teaching Academy and advertised for international Birmingham Teaching Fellows to encourage and promote excellence and innovation in teaching. The landscape has changed and teaching is now talked about alongside research as one of the strengths of the University. More importantly, however, the fact that the project existed, was very well publicised and that I spoke to the senior team about it constantly meant that the valuing of teaching became part of the conscious messaging of the institution even before the project reported and that, in itself, has made a significant difference to perceptions.

I could point to similar action around academic performance and on issues of equality and diversity, perhaps with less obvious or visible success at present, but in each case I set out with a clear objective, a sense of urgency in terms of implementation and what I would generally think of as an entrepreneurial mind set (as defined in the points set out above). I think I have surprised myself, at least looking back on the last three years, on how successful some of this has been. What I probably need to do now, however, is to see whether the same principles can be applied to research as well as to the management of the institution. Whether I can make the entrepreneurial mindset work for me individually as well as for the University as a whole.

Entering the Discworld Part II: Metaphorics and Macedonia

I wanted to pick up on what I was saying in the last posting and develop this a little further. I am thinking here particularly about the very narrow boundary between academic theory and fiction. I read a blog yesterday commenting on the plagiarism accusations levelled at Žižec. It was not the accusations that struck me (they appear to be becoming ever more frequent with reference to well-known academics and I may come back to that at a later date). The issue that resonated with me was the way in which the author reflecting on their own experience as a student held an undimmed admiration for those who were capable of producing theory, a sense of awe and wonder at the intellectual weight, and a feeling of utter inadequacy at never being able to achieve this level of academic mastery. I can sympathise with that, in spades, and I always tended to blame it on the dyslexia…

Things have moved on. I have read much more theory. I feel comfortable with Foucault, Derrida, Levi-Strauss, whoever it might be. More importantly I have learnt, for myself, how to engage with them; how, I might say, to ‘play the game’. But that is the nub of the issue, I cannot convince myself that this is not a game. To that end Terry Pratchett is as significant in terms of theory and religion as any of the major French authors that I have just mentioned. His insights are equally as profound and worth playing with. I just find the way he presents them, within the context of a comic novel, so much more conducive and convincing.

Last summer we decided to take our holidays touring round Macedonia and neighbouring countries (beginning and ending in Sofia and heading down to Greece for the last few days of the tour). We tend to take these guided tour holidays because you can see so many places that might otherwise be off the beaten track, but more importantly all the thinking and planning is done for you and so long as you are at the bus at a particular time it will take you where you need to go. This leaves many long hours of bus travel, between the various sights on the tour, to think and reflect on life, the universe and everything (to quote another inspirational theorist on religion and much else besides). During this last trip I found myself devising a whole new ‘theory’ of religion, entirely tongue in cheek, potentially believable, but entirely suited to the many different contexts that confronted us in Macedonia. I called this theory ‘metaphorics’ (only to find on my return that there is a sub-discipline with that name already established in literary theory, and I hasten to add there is no connection with my own ‘theory’).

Let me take you to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. The current regime has decided to rip the centre out of the town and to rebuild it in a distinctly post-modern style. They also have something of an obsession with statues. They are everywhere, from the two enormous statues of Alexander and Phillip of Macedon at each end of the main thoroughfare to hundreds of smaller statues lining bridges, buildings and fountains and filling up any kind of public space. Surely there is a way of interpreting all this by looking at the interrelations between the statues, their subject matter, and the various meanings they hold. You can then look, perhaps using a quasi-structuralist methodology, at the patterns that are created and, behind that, at the power play that is implicit in the choices and placing of the different images. Such an analysis is at least plausible.

 

Now move to any one of the many Orthodox churches we visited, perhaps in Ohrid, or the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria. Each of these is also covered in images and there is a long history of the analysis and careful placing of these images within the liturgical space of the church.

In Ohrid there was one church, however, where the guide told us that the images were deliberately different, they tended to subvert, in interesting ways, the traditional structures and presented elements that we are much more used to seeing in renaissance painting (although some hundred years or so earlier). The same analysis could be undertaken in this context as with the statues of central Skopje, with the same attention to space, intertextuality and even to power, to read off the religious message of the building. Couldn’t we begin to develop a ‘theory’ of religion out of this kind of methodology, use a few long words, wrap the spatial and power related elements up in some kind of obscurantist jargon, add an element of time and then generalise outrageously to claim some ultimate (albeit essentially subjective) truth underpinning not just these examples, but any kind of example you care to choose, and finally to give it a grand name ‘metaphorics’ just so that people remember it. Isn’t this the way all theory works? And if it is, then what is it that such theory adds, apart from recognition in academic circles for the one who dreams it up?

  

 

 

 

On Entering the Discworld

Last weekend I drove up to Leeds to help transport some second hand books to be sold at the International Medieval Congress. While driving I listened, once again, to a couple of Tony Robinson’s reading of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I bought these originally when I was travelling back and forth, from Kidderminster to Retford in North Nottinghamshire, during the final illnesses of my parents and, subsequent to their deaths (within three months of each other), while my sister and I were sorting out the house, the estate and related matters. On that occasion I simply listened to the next novel that I found within the local bookshop (since closed of course) and so followed the series in no particular order. On this occasion I have decided to listen in order and over the weekend got as far as ‘Sourcery’, number five in the series according to the CD.

It is not so much the specific content of the story that interests me at this point. It is first of all the effect of spending two and half hours at a time driving and listening to the reading of a novel. This is different from reading. Half my mind (or perhaps it should have been more than half my mind) is on the act of driving and the various diversions of motorway traffic. The text, however, is also mediated through a voice - with Tony Robinson a very persuasive voice - and this does, to my mind, change the experience. As I arrived, negotiated the traffic of inner-city Leeds to find the University, and then turned the engine, and the CD off, I left one world, the Discworld, and entered another world, that of second hand book selling and the Medieval Congress. It took some adjusting (well, perhaps not that much!). What is more, having been on the road a couple of days, fairly consistently, and having listened to five or six CDs worth of text, the adjustment back into the real world of my everyday life was somewhat more challenging than I had imagined. I was still living, at least in part, somewhere entirely different, not far from Ankh-Morpork.

The other factor that struck me was the way in which the texts of the Discworld spoke so significantly into the world I currently live in. I have always felt that Pratchett is one of the most insightful commentators on religion (far more so than the academics of this world, and actually more so than many senior religious figures). I use elements of his novels on a regular basis in my Introduction to the Study of Religion module, although it saddens me to note that the students rarely appreciate either the references or the insights. But it is Pratchett’s insight into human nature, and particularly into the nature of human institutions in the modern world that I find so uncanny and so real. There is something about the Unseen University that, despite its subject matter (magic) and its rather arcane structures, not to mention the architecture, is remarkably familiar and speaks directly into my own experience of trying to engage with colleagues, and especially the senior management, of an institution such as my own University. You can see just the same responses, the same disputes, the same fears, the same mistakes, the same triumphs, and, in so many ways, the same people. That, of course, is part of the genius of a writer such as Terry Pratchett.

There is another element, however, that links the world of the novels, the Discworld, and my own experiences of academia. This is perhaps more difficult to express, but in some way combines the previous two elements. I have always felt, in some odd way, that to enter into the academic life is to enter into a fictional world. I don’t really mean this in the sense of the University as an unreal space. The physicality of the institution, the students, my colleagues, the administrators, the managers etc. are all real enough, and while there is an element of all institutional life that has to do with the playing of games, the ‘micro-politics’ of everyday life, this is the ‘real’, in very much the same way that so many of Pratchett’s characters are ‘real’. This is one reason I tend to towards management and encouraging others to fulfil themselves. That engagement with colleagues, other human beings, is something I can relate to: it is my work; it is something concrete.

 

What I find ‘unreal’, and perhaps always have, is that which others seem to get so obsessed about, that is the research, the theory, the ‘ideas’ and the subject matter of what we teach. I write about ‘religion’, I engage in fieldwork, I read the theories of others, I think and I construct my own analysis, I then write and I teach this to others. Entering into that world, the world of research, of writing and even of teaching, is for me to enter the world of the fictional. I can never fully take it seriously. It will always have something of the air of unreality about it, a flimsy construction that I am actively willing to stay standing upright (perhaps by magic alone) and know could be brought crashing down at any time. I find that expressed so perfectly within the Discworld novels, the ever encroaching forces of the nether regions, the creatures of the dungeon dimensions, that need to be kept just beyond reality. That is what I feel about research, theory and the attempt to talk intelligently about religion, about society or perhaps about anything ‘real’ at all. And as with the end of the journey, the arrival, whether in Leeds or Kidderminster, or wherever it may be, there will have to come a time when I need to leave the car, leave the construction of theory, and adjust to the real world around me, and that is never entirely easy.

 

Religious Diversity, Encounter and Prejudice

I said that I would come back to the Superdiversity conference at the end of June and there is one issue in particular that I have been reflecting on and would want to explore further.

The first plenary was by Gill Valentine and outlined a project that she was involved in around questions of prejudice. At the risk of simplifying considerably, the gist of her argument was that a number of recent studies had shown that in areas of high diversity the day to day contact between people was both polite and tolerant, with little evidence of tension or underlying prejudice. She noted that the research on which this conclusion was based emphasised observation in public places and the analysis of what she referred to as ‘encounters’ (I got the impression that this was something of a technical term in a particular strand of recent geographical thinking and I will need to follow this up). Her work, and that of the team of which she is a part, has been investigating this further in the UK and Poland by seeking out individuals and engaging in detailed in depth interviews. This work shows that out of the public sphere, in the privacy of an individual’s own house, then there remains a considerable level of unspoken prejudice. The public politeness and tolerance is seen as a necessity imposed on the individual by the norms of society (‘political correctness gone mad’, or something equivalent). For Valentine the discourse that her team has identified in private, the one in which prejudice still predominates, was implicitly seen as the ‘truth’ and the one to be noted, while that of the public spaces was fragile and uncertain.

I find this interesting, not least because my recent book is based almost entirely on the public discourses that Valentine appears to dismiss. First, it is interesting to note that there is other work out there which reinforces this, and one possibility for exploring this further is a paper by Susanne Wessendorf on ‘common place diversity’ which appears to link very closely with my own ideas. Wessenfdorf is working within IRiS so I will be following this up and will see what can be learnt from it. Second, Valentine’s work appears to suggest that my own analysis is flawed. That may be the case, but I do want to try and explore this further.

At the root of this, I want to suggest, is a methodological question. In a previous paper I proposed the possibility of three different discourses on religion within society that can be identified with three different data collecting methods. There is the discourse that is based on what people will claim in public as their ‘religion’ that can be seen in the census data and the debates around that, particularly in Abby Day’s work. There is the discourse that an individual will use about their own faith, that is complex, contradictory, and that is uncovered through in-depth interviews, narrative methodologies or something similar. And finally there is a wider ‘public’ discourse about religion in society, what we all basically assent to, that is what I discovered through observation and listening to public conversations on religion. In the paper I began with the three discourses and looked at possible methods for ‘hearing’ them. We could, just as easily, begin with a series of methods and ask what kinds of discourses are ‘heard’ through those methods. So, with the encounter literature in geography, for example, we hear ‘public discourses’. With in-depth interviews we hear a very different ‘discourse’, whether that is one of faith in terms of the analysis above, or prejudice in terms of Valentine’s work. The real question, however, is how far we should give priority to one of these discourses over the others and what kinds of hierarchy (whether explicit or implicit) should be given to these discourse, and by implication the methodologies that uncover them.

I am currently in the process of writing a Leverhulme bid that aims to test some of the claims made through my book. This has been relatively straightforward and has the advantage of being very easy to express. Leverhulme, however, like methodological creativity and I was not finding anything that I could get my teeth into at this level. The above discussion, however, raises a very interesting possibility. Was the discourse on ‘diversity’ that I found in the superdiverse neighbourhood of Handsworth a product of the superdiversity, as I proposed (by contrast to a discourse on ‘difference’ in the less religiously diverse neighbourhood of Highgate), or was it, perhaps, a product of the observational, encounter based, methodology that I was using. The project, therefore, could perhaps test both the impact of superdiversity on one axis, and the impact of methodology on another and see what happens at the various points of intersection. That would probably make quite an interesting and suitably sophisticated and original proposal that I would hope Leverhulme might be interested in.

If at first you don't succeed

On 24th June I turned 52 and, having been in the academic world for just over 25 years, I am probably about half way through my academic career (which is clearly not the same as any career I may have in full time employment). I am also at something of a cross roads in terms of the direction of my current role within the University here in Birmingham. This is, perhaps a good time to come back to this blog and to try once again to see what I must do to make it work, both for myself but also, and equally importantly, to provide something that others might want to read and to follow.

I will continue to maintain the fourfold structure that I began the blog with, the 'Quartet' of the title. That is still relevant, but I may aim to be more flexible in the way I engage with the different strands. I need to allow more interweaving, but also more opportunity to talk about things that are happening around me that may not fit neatly into that particular categorisation. I may also, over time, add further strands, more strings to my bow if you like. I will, however, continue to make connections and try to construct the blog in a way that allows the reader to follow the different threads.

One of the things that I have done much more of since last posting  to this blog is to look at, and follow, a number of other newsfeeds and blogs. It strikes me that there are essentially two types of blog. In the first it is the topic that is of most importance. Either an individual is recognised as a leading expert in a particular field, or they are able to draw together material and links that provide an authoritative commentary on a particular topic (whether academic, political, cultural or whatever), or the individual has their own obsession (whether short or long term) that they wish to share with others. The other form is based much more around the individual, a particular personality, or somebody who has an interesting job or role that others wish to follow for whatever reason. The best blogs, of course, combine these, a clear focus on a topic and an interesting and well-informed personality providing the commentary. I know from the start, therefore, that this blog is never going to meet either of those criteria. My interests are far too varied to keep any single interest, and I am sure my style and personality is not going to set the world on fire. I will, however, aim to focus more on the second than the first. I want to provide an opportunity to chat, to explore, and to engage on a whole range of issues that will come up as I struggle with various intellectual and academic issues that engage me.

The other question I have considered is whether Twitter might be a more sensible approach. I am told that blogs are on their way out, declining in number, not being followed, and giving way to more immediate and interactive forms such as Twitter. That is all very well, I fully understand the reasons for this, both from the point of view of the authors and the readers. This does not, however, fit with my own needs, or really my own personality.

At the beginning of the week I attended the first half of a conference on Superdiversity run by the Institute for Research intoSuperdiversity (IRiS) here in Birmingham. This was a really great conference that brought together a truly interdisciplinary crowd to discuss a very wide range of issues around the theme of superdiversity. I will no doubt come back to some of the content from the papers over the next few weeks. The point I want to make here, however, is something about the way in which I tend to engage with conferences in general and how that relates to the question of Twitter or blog.

It may be a consequence of my dyslexia, but I find while I enjoy listening to the papers, I can never think of an appropriate question to ask immediately after any particular presentation. At one level I need to go back, in my own mind, over the argument, the illustrations, the issues raised etc. and to process the information much more slowly (which is also why I find conferences that are too crowded in terms of papers very difficult and why I also prefer to get out after a really interesting paper to be on my own rather than chatting inanely over coffee or lunch, but that is another matter). Secondly, I always find myself wanting to bring ideas from one paper into conversation with those of another, and both into dialogue with something that I have been reading recently, or something that I vaguely remember from last month, last year or whenever. My response to the issues would never by a single statement or a straight forward question. I need the time and the space to work through the ideas, to explain the connections, to try out possibilities and to see what happens when the theory from one paper is matched against the data or examples from another, and so on. I cannot say what I want to say in a limited number of characters, it just would not make sense. In those terms, a blog -a chance to work through in a reasonable length of text a series of related ideas - is probably the ideal medium. That then, is what I aim to do as I begin, once again, to get this blog up and running.

My aim, therefore, is to write something each week, drawing on issues, reading, conferences, thinking, etc. that have happened that week and to upload the blog first thing each Monday morning. Last time I managed to keep going for 10 posts. I am fully committed this time, to doing better than that and, hopefully, getting into a routine that will see me through the next 25 years of my academic career…