Romantic Indigenizing of New Religions in Contemporary Europe Critical Methodological Remarks
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.37626Keywords:
indigenizing, indigenous religion, colonialism and anti-colonialism, romanticism, nationalism, methodAbstract
Romanticisms, not colonialisms, drive the indigenizing and the religionizing in the cases described and analyzed in this special issue. In what follows, I shall explain what I mean by this observation and suggest ways to think about it critically. The task of this essay is to highlight entangled methodological and political contexts for the discussion about “indigenizing” that Graham Harvey opened in his introduction, a discussion that the different case studies then continued and exemplified. Inspired by Paul Christopher Johnson’s theorizing about indigenizing (Johnson 2002a), Harvey asks whether it is useful to employ the concepts “indigenous” and “indigenizing” in studies of contemporary movements in Europe: British Druids (studied by Suzanne Owen), Italian shamans and witches (by Angela Puca), The English Bear Tribe (by Graham Harvey), Irish or Celtic Pagans (by Jenny Butler), English Powwow enthusiasts (by Christina Welch), Anastasians in Lithuania and Russia (by Rasa Pranskeviciute), and Goddess devotees in Glastonbury (by Amy Whitehead). These are movements (and scholars) that have been associated with the study of paganisms and the study of new religious movements, but usually not with the study of indigenous religions (except Harvey and Owen who have worked extensively in both fields of research).
References
Anderson, Mark. 2009. Black and Indigenous: Garifuna Activism and Consumer Culture in Honduras. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Årsheim, Helge. 2018. “Including and excluding indigenous religion through law.” Numen 65(5–6): 531–561. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341511
Balagangadhara, S. N. 1994. “The Heathen in His Blindness…”: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004378865
Bangstad, Sindre. 2014. Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia. London: Zed books.
Barnard, Alan. 2006. “Kalahari Revisionism, Vienna and the ‘indigenous peoples’ debate.” Social Anthropology 14(1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2006.tb00020.x
Bauman, Richard and Charles L. Briggs. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486647
Bell, Avril. 2014. “Strategic essentialism, indigenous agency and difference.” In Relating Indigenous and Settler Identities: Beyond Domination, 116–136. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313560_5
Bozzoli de Wille, María E. 1979. El nacimiento y la muerte entre los bribris. San José: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica.
Chidester, David. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
———. 2014. Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226117577.001.0001
Clifford, James. 2013. Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114675.001.0001
———. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114736.001.0001
Conklin, Beth A. and Laura R. Graham. 1995. “The shifting middle ground: Amazonian indians and eco-politics.” American Anthropologist 97(4): 695–710. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1995.97.4.02a00120
Cox, James L. 2007. From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions. Aldershot: Ashgate.
de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375265
de la Cadena, Marisol and Mario Blaser. 2018. “Pluriverse: Proposals for a world of many worlds.” In A World of Many Worlds, edited by M. de la Cadena and M. Blaser, 1–22. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478004318
Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988 [1969]. Custer Died for Your Sins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
———. 2003 [1973]. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, CO: Fulcrum.
Dressler, Markus. 2013. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969401.001.0001
———. 2019. “Modes of religionization: A constructivist approach to secularity.” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities—Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 7, Leipzig University. https://www.multiple-secularities.de/media/wps7_dressler_religionization.pdf (accessed September 14, 2019).
Fekete, Liz. 2016. “Hungary: Power, punishment, and the ‘Christian-National idea’.” Race and Class 57(4): 39–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396815624607
Geertz, Armin W. 2004. “Can we move beyond primitivism? On recovering the indigenes of indigenous religions in the academic study of religions.” In Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity, edited by J. K. Olupona, 37–70. London: Routledge.
Gill, Sam D. 1987. Mother Earth: An American Story. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Goodyear-Ka’opua, Noelani, Ikaika Hussey and Erin K. Wright, eds. 2014. A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376552
Hagen, Ross. 2011. “Musical style, ideology, and mythology in Norwegian Black Metal.” In Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World, edited by J. Wallach, H. M. Berger and P. D. Greene, 180–199. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392835-008
Harvey, Graham and Charles D. Thompson Jr, eds. 2005. Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Harvey, Graham, ed. 2000. Indigenous Religions: A Companion. New York: Cassell.
Harvey, Graham. 2013. “Why study indigenous religions?” In Critical Reflections on Indigenous Religions, edited by J. L. Cox, 19–28. Farnham: Ashgate.
———. 2016a. “Performing indigeneity and performing guesthood.” In Religious Categories and the Construction of the Indigenous, edited by C. Hartney and D. J. Tower, 74–91. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004328983_006
———. 2016b. “Indigenising in a globalised world: The re-seeding of belonging to lands.” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 20(3): 300–310. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-02003007
Hilleary, Cecily. 2017 (May 4). Native Americans decry appropriation of their history, culture. Voice of America News. https://www.voanews.com/a/native-americans-decry-appropriation-of-their-hist/3837209.html (accessed September 21, 2018).
———. 2018 (March 7). #DearNonNatives: What Native Americans want non-natives to know. Voice of America News https://www.voanews.com/a/dear-non-natives-what-native-americans-want-us-to-know/4284194.html (accessed September 21, 2018).
Hodgson, Dorothy L. 2014. “Culture claims: Being Maasai at the United Nations.” In Performing Indigeneity: Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences, edited by L. R. Graham and H. G. Penny, 55–82. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1d9nmw6.7
Johnson, Greg. 2008. “Authenticity, invention, articulation: Theorizing contemporary Hawaiian traditions from the outside.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20(3): 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006808X317464
———. 2017. “Materialising and performing Hawaiian religion(s) on Mauna Kea.” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 156–175. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_010
Johnson, Greg and Siv E. Kraft. 2018. “Standing rock religion(s): Ceremonies, social media, and music videos.” Numen 65(5–6): 499–530. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341510
Johnson, Paul C. 2002a. “Migrating bodies, circulating signs: Brazilian Candomblé, the Garifuna of the Caribbean, and the category of indigenous religions.” History of Religions 41(4): 301–327. https://doi.org/10.1086/463690
———. 2002b. Secrets, Gossip and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0195150589.003.0008
———. 2007. Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2017. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Oakland: University of California Press.
Kenrick, Justin and Jerome Lewis. 2004. “Indigenous peoples’ rights and the politics of the term ‘indigenous’.” Anthropology Today 20(2): 4–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0268-540X.2004.00256.x
Kraft, Siv E. 2015. “Sami Neo-shamanism in Norway: Colonial grounds, ethnic revival and pagan pathways.” In Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses, edited by K. Rountree, 25–42. New York: Berghahn. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qctm0.6
Kuper, Adam. 2003. “The return of the native.” Current Anthropology 44(3): 389–395. https://doi.org/10.1086/368120
Lincoln, Bruce. 1999. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Longkumer, Arkotong. 2015. “‘As our ancestors once lived’: Representation, performance and constructing a national culture amongst the Nagas of India.” Himalaya 35(1): 51–64.
———. 2017. “Is Hinduism the world’s largest indigenous religion?” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by. G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 263–278. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_017
———. 2018a. “‘Along Kingdom’s Highway’: The proliferation of Christianity, education, and print amongst the Nagas in northeast India.” Contemporary South Asia 27(2): 160–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2018.1471041
———. 2018b. “Bible, guns, and land: Sovereignty and nationalism amongst the Nagas of India.” Nations and Nationalism 24(4): 1097–1116. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12405
Mahoney, James. 2000. “Path dependence in historical sociology.” Theory and Society 29(4): 507–548. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007113830879
Mandair, Arvind-Pal S. 2009. Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/mand14724
Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226922621.001.0001
McNally, Michael D. 2017. “Religion as peoplehood: Native American religious traditions and the discourse of indigenous rights.” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 52–79. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_004
Meleagrou-Hitchens, Alexander and Hans Brun. 2013. A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement. London: ICSR.
Nabokov, Peter, ed. 1999. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to Present, 1492–2000. London: Penguin.
Niezen, Ronald. 2000. Spirit Wars: Native North American Religions in the Age of Nation Building. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2003. The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2009. The Rediscovered Self: Indigenous Identity and Cultural Justice. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Nygren, Anja. 1998. “Struggle over meanings: Reconstruction of indigenous mythology, cultural identity, and social representation.” Ethnohistory 45(1): 31–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/483171
Ødemark, John T. 2017. “Timing indigenous culture and religion: Tales of conversion and ecological salvation from the Amazon.” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 138–155. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_009
Orbán, Viktor. 2007. “The role and consequences of religion in former communist countries.” European View 6: 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-007-0003-9
Owen, Suzanne. 2008. The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality. London: Continuum.
———. 2010. “Production of sacred space in the Mi’kmaq Powwow.” Diskus 11. http://jbasr.com/basr/diskus/diskus11/owen.htm
———. 2017. “Unsettled natives in the Newfoundland imaginary.” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 221–233. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_014
Palacio, Joseph. 2007. “How did the Garifuna become an indigenous people? Reconstructing the cultural persona of an African-Native American people in Central America.” Pueblos y Fronteras 4. https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2007.4.226
Penny, H. Glenn. 2014. “Not playing indian: Surrogate indigeneity and the German hobbyist scene.” In Performing Indigeneity: Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences, edited by L. R. Graham and H. G. Penny, 169–205. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1d9nmw6.11
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2016. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373810
Ralls-MacLeod, Karen and Graham Harvey, eds. 2000. Indigenous Religious Musics. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Ramos, Alcida R. 2003. “Comments.” Current Anthropology 44(3): 397–398. https://doi.org/10.1086/344652
Rountree, Kathryn, ed. 2015. Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses. New York: Berghahn. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qctm0
Saugestad, Sidsel. 2004. “On the return of the native.” Current Anthropology 45(2): 263–264. https://doi.org/10.1086/382253
Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376781
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1998. “Religion, religions, religious.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by M. C. Taylor, 269–284. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 1996 [1985]. “Subaltern studies: Deconstructing historiography.” In The Spivak Reader, edited by D. Landry and G. MacLean, 203–236. New York: Routledge.
Tafjord, Bjørn O. 2013. “Indigenous religion(s) as an analytical category.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25(3): 221–243. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341258
———. 2016a. “How talking about indigenous religion may change things: An example from Talamanca.” Numen 63(5–6): 548–575. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341438
———. 2016b. “Scales, translations, and siding effects: Uses of indígena and religión in Talamanca and beyond.” In Religious Categories and the Construction of the Indigenous, edited by C. Hartney and D. J. Tower, 138–177. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004328983_009
———. 2017. “Towards a typology of academic uses of ‘indigenous religion(s),’ or, eight (or nine) language games that scholars play with this phrase.” In Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by G. Johnson and S. E. Kraft, 25–51. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346710_003
Tafjord, Bjørn O. and Gregory D. Alles. 2018. “Introduction: Performances and mediations of indigenous religion(s).” Numen 65(5–6): 457–466. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341508
Taguchi, Yoko. 2017. “An interview with Marisol de la Cadena.” NatureCulture.
http://natureculture.sakura.ne.jp/an-interview-with-marisol-de-la-cadena/#more-140
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1982. La conquête de l’Amérique: La question de l’autre. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Wenger, Tisa. 2009. We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807894217_wenger
Whitehead, Andrew L., Samuel L. Perry and Joseph O. Baker. 2018. “Make America Christian again: Christian nationalism and voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Sociology of Religion 79(2): 147–171. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srx070
Whyte, Kyle. 2018. “What do indigenous knowledges do for indigenous peoples?” In Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, edited by M. K. Nelson and D. Shilling, 57–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009 [1953]. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Woolf, Greg. 2013. “Ethnography and the Gods in Tacitus’ Germania.” In Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches, edited by E. Almagor and J. Skinner, 133–152. London: Bloomsbury.
