Transcending Methodological Atheism and Not Thinking Transcendentally
Nuns’ Understanding of Life within the Cloistered Monastery
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.39707Keywords:
female cloistered monastery, monasticism, lived, everyday religionAbstract
The main goal of the article is to propose an alternative approach towards the monastery, which relies on overcoming methodological atheism and is rooted in a lived, everyday religion approach. In order to do so, in the first section, I reconstruct Peter Berger’s methodological atheism, discuss its limits, and point to alternative methodological approaches. In the second section I present elements of my sociological study of a female, cloistered monastery, focusing on the dichotomy between obedience and autonomy in nuns’ experiences of life within a cloistered monastery. If understood from a classical perspective, the two traits seem contradictory. My research suggests that some nuns perceive these two characteristics as supplemental rather than contradictory. I propose that using an approach that focuses on lived, everyday religion, rather than an approach focused on religious experience (methodological atheism) allows for a comprehensive interpretation of how monasteries work and how monks and nuns operate in this specific environment. It also allows for the integration of social actors’ understanding of their environment into investigation.
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References
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2016 Individual Sensory Experiences, Socialized Senses, and Everyday Lived Religion in Practice. Social Compass 63(2): 152–62. http://doi.org/10.1177/0037768616628789
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2003 Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in? Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(2): 169–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.t01-1-00170
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Rulla, Luigi M. 1971 Depth Psychology and Vocation: A Psychological Perspective. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Rulla, Luigi M., Joyce Ridick and Franco Imoda 1986 Anthropology of the Christian Vocation: Existential Confirmation?. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Sbardella, Francesca 2006 Silenzio abitato: pratiche di comunicazione controllata. In Antropologia dei flussi globali, edited by A. Destro, 112–34. Rome: Carrocci.
2012 Abitare con la divinità-dio. Processi di rappresentazione e di costruzione di senso. In Rappresentare: Questioni di antropologia, cinema e narrativa, edited by A. Destro, 99–118. Bologna: Clueb.
2014 Ethnography of Cloistered Life: Field Work into Silence. Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion 5: 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004283503_005
Sharma, Arvind 2005 Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination. New York: State University of New York Press.
Vandewiele, Wim 2014 Contemplatieve abdijgemeenschappen in de 21ste eeuw. Een etnografische studie naar het hedendaagse contemplatieve gemeenschapsleven. PhD thesis, Leuven.
2015 Toekomst abdijgemeenschappen onder druk? Rol en kwaliteit van het monastieke gemeenschapsleven uitgedaagd door maatschappelijke transitiebeweging. Religie en Samenleving 10(1): 25–43.
Vasquez, Manuel A. 2010 More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2012.01618_9.x
2014 Finding Religion in Everyday Life. Sociology of Religion 75(2): 189–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sru013 Asad, Talal
2003 Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v17i1.113
Berger, Peter L. 1969 The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.
2014 The Many Altars of Modernity. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bianco, Frank 1991 Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today. New York: Anchor Books.
Cantrell, Michael A. 2016 Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic or Agnostic? Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84(2): 373–400. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv066
Casanova, José 1994 Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2018 The Karel Dobbelaere Lecture: Divergent Global Roads to Secularization and Religious Pluralism. Social Compass 65(2): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768618767961
Della Fave, Richard L., and George A. Hillery, Jr 1980 Status Inequality in a Religious Community: The Case of a Trappist Monastery. Social Forces 59(1): 62–84. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/59.1.62
Dudley, Charles J., and George A. Hillery, Jr 1979 Freedom and Monastery Life. Journal for the scientific Study of Religion 18(1): 18–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385374
Egenolf, Peter 2003 Vocation and Motivation: The Theories of Luigi Rulla. The Way 42(3): 81–93.
Francis, Mother Mary, PCC 1956 A Right to be Merry. New York: Sheed and Ward.
Fry, Timothy 1998 The Rule of Saint Benedict. Vintage Spiritual Classics. New York: Random House.
Goffman, Erving 1961 Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351327763
Guillaumont, Antoine 1979 Aux origines du monachisme chrétien. Pour un phénoménologie du monachisme. Begrolle-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine. https://doi.org/10.2307/3269882
Habermas, Jürgen 2006 Religion in the Public Sphere. European Journal of Philosophy 14(1): 1–25. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00241.x
Hillery, George A., Jr 1992 The Monastery: A Study in Freedom, Love, and Community. Westport, CT and London: Praeger.
Hulme, Kathryn 1957 The Nun’s Story. London: Muller.
Irvine, Richard D. G. 2010 The Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery: or, Not Playing at Being a Monk. Fieldwork in Religion 5(2): 221–35. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v5i2.221
2017 The Everyday Life of Monks: English Benedictine Identity and the Performance of Proximity. In Monasticism in Modern Times, edited by I. Jonveaux and S. Palmisano, 191–208. London: Routledge.
Jewdokimow, Marcin, and Thomas Quartier, OSB (eds) 2019 Visual Approach to the Study of Religious Orders: Zooming in on Monasteries. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429032103
Knibble, Kim, and André Droogers 2011 Methodological Ludism and the Academic Study of Religion. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 23(3–4): 283–303. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006811x608395
Latour, Bruno 2013a An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2013b Rejoicing: The Torments of Religious Speech. London: Polity Press.
Ludueña, Gustavo A. 2002a El Silencio como práctica de Ascesis corporal en una comunidad de monjes benedictinos. Quaderns de l’Institut Catalá d’Antropología 17–18: 65–78.
2002b Etnografía, habitus y forma de vida: Una experiencia de campo en comunidades religiosas de clausura. Cuadernos del Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano 19: 365–84. https://doi.org/10.19137/qs.v11i0.723
2005 Asceticism, Fieldwork and Technologies of the Self in Latin American Catholic Monasticism. Fieldwork in Religion 1(2): 145–64. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn. v1i2.145
McGuire, Meredith 2008 Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2016 Individual Sensory Experiences, Socialized Senses, and Everyday Lived Religion in Practice. Social Compass 63(2): 152–62. http://doi.org/10.1177/0037768616628789
Merton, Thomas 1948 The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Orsi, Robert A. 2002 The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/91.5.1277
2003 Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in? Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(2): 169–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.t01-1-00170
Porpora, Douglas V. 2006 Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism and Religious Experience. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 36(1): 57–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2006.00296.x
Rulla, Luigi M. 1971 Depth Psychology and Vocation: A Psychological Perspective. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Rulla, Luigi M., Joyce Ridick and Franco Imoda 1986 Anthropology of the Christian Vocation: Existential Confirmation?. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Sbardella, Francesca 2006 Silenzio abitato: pratiche di comunicazione controllata. In Antropologia dei flussi globali, edited by A. Destro, 112–34. Rome: Carrocci.
2012 Abitare con la divinità-dio. Processi di rappresentazione e di costruzione di senso. In Rappresentare: Questioni di antropologia, cinema e narrativa, edited by A. Destro, 99–118. Bologna: Clueb.
2014 Ethnography of Cloistered Life: Field Work into Silence. Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion 5: 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004283503_005
Sharma, Arvind 2005 Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination. New York: State University of New York Press.
Vandewiele, Wim 2014 Contemplatieve abdijgemeenschappen in de 21ste eeuw. Een etnografische studie naar het hedendaagse contemplatieve gemeenschapsleven. PhD thesis, Leuven.
2015 Toekomst abdijgemeenschappen onder druk? Rol en kwaliteit van het monastieke gemeenschapsleven uitgedaagd door maatschappelijke transitiebeweging. Religie en Samenleving 10(1): 25–43.
Vasquez, Manuel A. 2010 More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2012.01618_9.x
Published
2019-11-08
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Jewdokimow, M. (2019). Transcending Methodological Atheism and Not Thinking Transcendentally: Nuns’ Understanding of Life within the Cloistered Monastery. Fieldwork in Religion, 14(1), 70-84. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.39707
