From Angels to Aliens!

            In From Angels To Aliens Lynn Schofield Clark explores the resurgence of interest in the supernatural among teenagers. She theorizes this is happening, at least in part, as a result of the legacy and suffusion of evangelical Christianity in American culture. A generation ago, religious identity was something one was born into; increasingly it is becoming something we chose for ourselves, selected from various narratives presented in media and religion. (bricolage?) People are less religious but more “spiritual”. This means that while people (especially youth) are dissatisfied, confused, or disappointed with the job science and religion have done providing ultimate answers for life, they remain open to the notion that there may be more to our world than meets the eye.

            In their quest to form a religious identity, people develop certain strategies. Culture, as Clark defines it, is the store of public symbols and stories that flesh out and reinforce these strategies of how things should be done, making them seem sensible and even meaningful (10). Film and television offer satisfaction because they symbolically resolve conflicts that are troubling to our society. Although teenagers may develop their taste in media based on what fits their “style”, their exposure to various ideologies is one of the ways they gather materials from which they construct identities. Identity is a result of both parenting and exposure to cultural products.

            Within evangelicalism there has been a tendency to draw lines in the sand: us vs. them, sacred vs. secular, holy vs. demonic, etc. In what was initially an attempt to convert people to Christianity (“repent or burn!”), evangelicals ended up simply encouraging Americans to accept the notion of cosmic, incomprehensible forces at work in (or responsible for) our visible world. Thus, today popular teen culture is rife with elements of the supernatural—vampires, aliens, demons (does The Hunger Games dystopian future count?) etc. Horror stories, especially those with supernatural elements, “allow young people to experience and relieve fears about death, the afterlife, and in general, the forces in life that they believe are beyond their control—which includes quite a bit, from the teen perspective” (64). Since the Divine can be somewhat ineffable, we occasionally explore it through its negation.

            Clark then roughly categorizes her research subjects (interviews with teens and their families) as having one of five various approaches. They refer to teenagers’ feelings on supernatural and organized religion, and range from loving one while hating the other to the other way around. Science and religion are not necessarily at odds with each other, as they might have been a few decades ago. The line between them ranges from non-existent to blurry to firm, depending on the teen’s family history (were they raised in a religious household?), parenting style (do they limit media exposure?), socioeconomic status (how marginalized to they feel?), etc. The group in the middle seems the most normative or typical: seekers, or “customizers” are individuals who actively select from various sources to make sense of their worlds and to meaningfully participate in them (118). Some teens desire to distinguish between religion and myth but have trouble doing so.

            Teenagers’ wide range of perspectives on the supernatural is reflected in the ways their parents raise them. Some parents see religion as harmful; some see it as providing a good moral foundation. Media is approached in much the same way—some let their kids be exposed to everything available in to help them make “informed” decisions; some carefully filter the media their teens consume. Clark states that the purpose of her book is not to celebrate some semiotic democracy where infinite meaning can be constructed from a number of media texts, but to demonstrate that “the choices teens have are limited…and were influenced by their positions and their perceived relation to culture and its resources” (231). Popular culture is neither completely toxic or redemptive; the goal is simply to encourage teens (and everyone) to think and discuss the ways in which they process the media they encounter, since it is frequently easier to discuss media than personal life experiences.  

Clark, L. S. (2003). From angels to aliens: Teenagers, the media, and the supernatural. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Communication as Culture

In James Carey’s Communication as Culture (1989) he presents a new way of thinking about communication. Carey challenges established perspectives, where communication is viewed merely as transmission of information, and promotes studying communication from a cultural perspective. He draws upon the work of previous scholars (Clifford Geertz , John Dewey, Max Weber, Walter Lippmann, etc.) to apply a cultural studies methodology to the study of communication. Carey seeks to “demonstrate how media of communication are not merely instruments of will and purpose but definite forms of life: organisms, so to say, that reproduce in miniature the contradictions in our thought, action, and social relations.” (9)

            Carey suggests two ways of viewing communication. The transmission view (the more common of the two) uses terms like “imparting”, “sending”, and “transmitting” to convey one party giving information to another. It involves “the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control.” (15) This view connotes the desire for control and power as it is derived from the spread of Europeans in their global colonization, and although technology and science have separated communication from transportation, some of the residual implications remain.

            Carey opposes this with the ritual view, which uses terms like “sharing”, “participation”, and “association”. This view is “directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs.” (18) Like the transmission view, the ritual view has grown away from its religious origins but still retains some of its metaphoric roots. There is an intellectual aversion to this view because of the unfortunate assumption that science somehow operates in a vacuum whereas culture is full of human error. Thus any method that studies the activity of people within a culture must be flawed. So for example, a transmission view of a newspaper would see it as a medium for disseminating disinformation to exert control over a population; a ritual view would see reading the newspaper as a shared experience by people in which their worldviews are collectively shaped and confirmed.

            Particularly in America, communication studies (both mass and interpersonal) “have aimed at stating the precise psychological and sociological conditions under which attitudes are changed, formed, or reinforced and behavior stabilized or redirected.” (44) American studies of communication have not given serious consideration to the relation of forms of expression (art, religion, etc.) and social order—how do meaningful symbols, and symbolic acts, affect real change?

            Cary suggests conceiving of communications as a cultural science as that will constitute a more “human” model and deal with experience as it normally is encountered. Culture is complex web of meaning which humanity has created, and “we are challenged to grasp the meanings people build into their words and behavior and to make these meanings, these claims about life and experience, explicit and articulate so that we might fairly judge them.” (59) People exist simultaneously in many different sub-cultures and a cultural approach to communication studies offers us helpful insights that traditional (transmission) views do not. “Culture” and “Communication” are not neatly delineated, finite artifacts or practices. A ritual view allows for a more nuanced understanding of human societies where the complexities of culture (and the influential, dynamic activities and forms of communication) are accounted for. Carey desires to “press forward with a form of cultural studies that does not perforce reduce culture to ideology, social conflict to class conflict, consent to compliance, action to reproduction, or communication to coercion.” (109)

            The second half of Carey’s book explores more specific facets of technology and culture. He wants to debunk the rhetoric of an electronic utopia. “Electronics is neither the arrival of apocalypse nor the dispensation of grace. Technology is technology; it is a means for communication and transportation over space, and nothing more.” (140)[1] Carey offers a brief history of communication studies in North America and traces the relation between time and space from local to global. He also traces the history of the notion of “future” as it has been used to propel us along with false promises of newer, better forms of human communication and the eradication social issues altogether. Carey concludes with a detailed look at the oft-neglected technological importance of the telegraph, the advent of which marked the first time in history that information and transportation were separated. Most of the attention Carey’s Communication as Culture has received has been paid to its first half. The ideas he lays out, although fairly simple, are a radical break from the way communication has traditionally been studied.

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[1] It is perhaps here that Carey’s ideas seem somewhat dated; he was clearly writing in a pre-internet era.

We are what we like (fandom as identity)

In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington have edited a collection of essays that explore how fans make use of their chosen texts and justify why this exploration is valuable.

            The editors give a brief overview of “fan scholarship”. Its first iteration took inspiration from de Certeau’s notion of bricolage, where fans make use of mass-mediated narratives in subversive ways. John Fiske and Henry Jenkins describe how fandom was “a collective strategy, a communal effort to form interpretive communities that in their subcultural cohesion evaded the preferred and intended meanings of the power bloc”.

            Public recognition and understanding of fandom has profoundly changed over the past several decades. Moving from broadcasting to narrowcasting, fans are no longer ridiculed but courted as advertisers and producers compete for their dollars and eyes. People now communicate (their identities, worldviews, etc.) through their fandoms.

            The second wave of work on fan audiences focused on the replication of social and cultural hierarchies with fan subcultures. Rather than see fandom as a means for empowerment, the taste hierarchies among the fans themselves emulate the wider social inequalities. Fans essentially maintain social and cultural systems of classification. “Blackberries, iPods, PSPs, laptops, PDAs, and cell phones all bring fan objects out with their users to the subway, the street, and even the classroom. These changing communication technologies and media texts contribute to and reflect the increasing entrenchment of fan consumption in the structure of our everyday life.”

            The third wave of fan studies offers new answers to the question of what they are for. Fandom itself is not an object of study, but part of the fabric of our everyday lives, and can provide insights into our daily existence. The study of fans can help us understand how we relate to others, meet challenges, identify our place in the world, and how we read the mediated texts that facilitate all of the above.

This third wave is broken into six themes: emphasis on the symbolic and representations that mark contemporary mediated worlds, the dissolution of boundaries between different textual forms (high & pop culture), changing relationship between physical and virtual space, interplay between global and local in globalization, new identities arising out of the transformation of production and consumption in light of social and technological change, and the formation of conflict in mediated discourses (fan-tagonism).

            Cornel Sandvoss notes that synthesizing fan studies with reception aesthetics enables us to explore aesthetics, a field sometimes ignored by critics, as a subjective category with objective criteria. Matt Hills advocates the generalized hybridity of contemporary media academics (academics who are also fans of what they write about) as helpful in avoiding the fallacy that scholars are objective, bias-free bringers of free thought. Rebecca Tushnet discusses the difficult notion of copyright law within the transformative fair-use doctrine. Technology gives fans greater creative control and re-mix capabilities, and there can be semiotic dissonance between what an author (profession or amateur) intends to produce and what others think the author has produced. Alan McKee argues that fans of theory are no different than fans of other cultural phenomena. Similar to Hills’ contention, he advocates fan studies as a way of opening up the methodologies of analysis. We all bring something to the table (as a “fan” of some bias, approach, ideology, perspective, text, or trend) and fan studies bring this out into the open. There are quite a few other essays here, but these are the ones that interested me. Henry Jenkins also does the epilogue and sums up the increasing salience of fan culture.

Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (2007). Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world. New York: New York University Press.

Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity

          In Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity (2000) David A. deSilva gives us a look at first-century cultural values and explains how understanding them will allow for a greater understanding of the world which produced the New Testament. To hear and understand scripture correctly, one must correctly understand the world in which it was written. DeSilva’s goal, as he puts it, “is to introduce the reader to another dimension of the context within which the New Testament texts were composed and within which they effected the purposes of God for their readers” (19). When we are better readers of scripture, we are better disciples, and can actively influence the communities into which God has called to live.

            The text is divided neatly into the four titular categories: honor and shame, patronage and reciprocity, kinship, and purity and pollution. For each cultural value there are two chapters: one chapter expounding on its role in the Greco-Roman world of the 1^st century, and a subsequent chapter integrating that exposition with our understanding of the New Testament. This book posits an enlightening set of ideas into discussions on contextualization, historicity of scripture, and even basic New Testament hermeneutics by situating the bible firmly in its 1^st century Mediterranean culture. DeSilva’s text would appeal to Biblical scholars and curious Christians alike.

            DeSilva begins with honor and shame. The notion of honor was one of the foundational values for the first century world. Their world was “every bit as socially sophisticated as ours and, in some ways, far clearer and more articulate about the values that defined and guided each group” (27). A person had honor based on the family into which they were born, but honor could also be achieved through virtuous dealings and building an estimable reputation (like a solider who demonstrates extreme bravery and loyalty). The quest for honor kept all members of a group in check. If one deviated from the honorable path, that person would bring shame upon themselves and the group(s) with which they were affiliated. While the Jews were once the dominant group, they had for generations been subject to the laws of other groups and struggled to maintain their identity. This meant a Jew decide between Torah adherence, which gained them honor within their Jewish circles (but contempt from everyone else), or acquiescing to the dominant cultural values and the consequent shame from their own kind. The early Christians, like their Jewish peers, promoted cultural values that were fundamentally at odds with those of the dominant Greco-Roman culture (like ultimate loyalty to God instead of Caesar). Christians experienced everything from shunning to execution as resistance in their commitment to Christ, and so neighbors and friends attempted to dissuade them from their path. New Testament writers frequently encouraged their audience to remember that God’s ultimate code of honor and shame was more important than the temporary, worldly one. While Christians today are certainly familiar with the notion of earning a certain group’s approval, we are generally uncomfortable with conflict and shame, and so avoid discussing or rebuking it in others. However, if we can become more sensitive to the cultural text of honor and realize what a core cultural value it was for New Testament audiences, we will become attuned to clearly hearing what the New Testament has to tell us about our own personal value (self-respect and validation) and what gives us our worth (86).

            The next value deSilva deals with is patronage and reciprocity. The first-century Greco-Roman world was one “in which personal patronage was an essential means of acquiring access to goods, protection or opportunities for employment and advancement” (96). Patronage was not only allowed but promoted, and it is tied to honor in the sense that the honorable thing to do was remain loyal in one’s relationships. Patronage even crossed socioeconomic boundaries; the term “grace” (for New Testament audiences) would have had connotations of reciprocity among the rich, poor, and even among humans and gods. Grace meant showing favor that was selflessly interested in the benefit of another. It was not mandated to repay someone; the cultural shame of failing to reciprocate grace or favor was enough. Grace was like a dance in which honor or favor was freely given to a client, patron, or friend, and was freely repaid in kind. The New Testament authors reframed this discussion in terms of God being the ultimate benefactor for us. He[1] seeks us out to give us life; this formation of a grace relationship “runs contrary to the normal stream of lower-echelon people seeking out brokers who can connect them with higher patrons” (130). As the ultimate mediator of God’s favor, Jesus voluntarily gave his own life to grant deliverance from sin and death. Not only that, but Christ continues to intercede on our behalf before the Father. In the face of such incredible grace, our only response must be more grace, in the form of the words we speak and actions we live out. This attitude rightfully re-orients our worldly pursuits around those that bring honor not to ourselves, but to God. Failure to promote the kingdom of God, who is our supreme benefactor, results in disloyalty to the one we should only please (156).

            Kinship was vital to first century life. One’s identity, like their honor, was tied to the reputation of their lineage. Jewish culture placed even more value on one’s parents and family. Harmonious living with one’s family involved cooperation in maintaining their honor, hiding the shame of kin, and mutual trust in the pursuit of honor and preserving the family lineage and reputation. Divorce brought complications, but in general the man had dominion over the woman, who was expected to stay at home to raise and educate the children to carry on their family’s trade. With family ties so strong, it becomes more radical to think of how many disciples left their families to follow Jesus. “It is now attachment to this Jesus that determines whether or not a person is in the family, rather than the person’s bloodline or natural lineage” (200). Christ redefined the “descendents” of Abraham to allow for anyone to be adopted into the new family of God. As members of God’s household, we are now bound to its code of honor and values. As the church, we have a great opportunity to re-imagine what it means to treat each other as those joined by the blood of the Lamb.

            Purity is something of a foreign notion for modern evangelicals. We have made a holy God available to everyone and have done away with the need for professional mediation. However, we do understand what when food falls from a plate to the ground (or dirt is brought inside the house) that an unhealthy boundary has been crossed and contamination has occurred. This contamination disqualifies us from entering in to the presence of a holy God. To avoid pollution and boundary crossing, maps of people (and their bodies), locations, and times must be made known, and sacrificial systems developed to atone for a transgression of the sacred. “Only as we come to appreciate the revulsion of sin (and feel revulsion ourselves) will Scripture have done its work building the all-important barrier between our desires and forbidden things…” (269) Jesus essentially re-wrote the maps of who, what, where, and when was permissible. Ritual moments are important for helping us remember boundaries and retain holiness.

            I found deSilva’s text to be enormously informative. We have grown accustomed to reading, understanding, and applying scripture within our own contemporary cultural context; it is incredible how rarely we stop to think about what, say, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians might have sounded like to the Ephesians themselves. DeSilva’s methodology is effective. By breaking down cultural values into four manageable, finite (though dynamic) concepts, it becomes possible to isolate specific intersections and applications of concrete first century ideals with New Testament passages.  This results in a richer understanding and appreciation for the New Testament, the world into which its texts were written, and even possible implications for discipleship in today’s world.

            This is particularly relevant for churches that are trying to live out the Gospel amidst a generation of people whose identities are fragmented, individualistic, and dynamic. How can someone who lives alone understand the value of kin? How can a kid who sees people get famous for whoring themselves out possibly understand the value of honor? As deSilva notes:

Studies of Generation X have shown relationship to be the way of reaching those born into a postmodern worldview, the way to show the reality of our faith. A church can no longer afford to be mainly a group of people who agree on propositional truths…but must become a group of people committed to one another in love, loyalty, and mutual support (239).

We live in a culture that celebrates the “now”[2] and the “me”[3]. When we read the New Testament we cannot help but bring these presuppositions with us to the text. DeSilva is trying to help us understand what the New Testament might have actually sounded like to those it was originally intended for; this will help us be more self-aware of our baggage and at least attempt to come to the text without an agenda, willing to be shaped by it.

            Discussing the established cultural norm is a great way to understand how powerful Jesus’ words and deeds actually were. For example, understanding how powerful individual and group honor was in the first century sheds light on the constant New Testament reminders to hold one another accountable in discipleship of Christ (82). Also, understanding that violation of purity required a three-phase ritual process of restoration in some groups underscores the radical dynamics implied in statements like “everything is now permissible” or when Peter had a vision that all food was now acceptable (266). Modern readers typically gloss over pollution mandates, but deSilva shows how this would have meant a complete break of traditional ways of living for first century readers!

            I found this text to be a quick and engaging read. It reminds us that we have systematized our theology based on a few letters of advice and encouragement written to real people two thousand years ago. Only once we understand their world can we understood how it would have shaped their reading of the letters and documents that became our New Testament. By attempting to understand the original context of the New Testament, we can become more adept in living it out (as disciples of Jesus) in our own.

DeSilva, D. A. (2000). Honor, patronage, kinship & purity: Unlocking New Testament culture. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press.

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[1] Obviously God is beyond gender but Jesus referred to him as “Father” so I’ll just use masculine pronouns for now.

[2] Pepsi-cola currently has billboards that say “Live For Now!”

[3] Apple has changed the face of personal electronics with a line of products that have “I” in the title.

Film Vs. Digital

I have been in more conversations about this debate in terms of photography, but this documentary (by Keanu Reeves??) uses interviews with prominent film directors, and it should be interesting.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/sidebyside/

Media, Religion, and Christ-centered wine commercials

           In Media and Religion: Foundations of an Emerging Field, Daniel Stout has laid out some basic perspectives on the nascent field of media and religion. This field can be approached from any number of angles (sociological, anthropological, psychological, etc.) but generally demonstrates one of two characteristics: organized religion as it is found in media, and elements of religion that people experience through media themselves (religion in the media, and media as religion). Religion and Media are inextricably bound together. “Religion is defined by individuals in everyday life; it should be studied wherever and whenever it occurs” (47). “Lived” religion?

            Stout advocates the use of another term in addition to “religion”: numinous. Since “religious” can have negative or limiting connotations, looking for the “numinous” in cultural texts or trends can broaden the search and dialogue about a given topic. To be numinous, something must: stir deep feeling (affect), spark belief (cognition), include ritual (behavior), and be done with fellow believers (community). This four-part framework is a helpful tool.

            Stout traces the history of mediated belief from ancient Egypt, through Greece and the Reformation to the current information age that allows for seemingly infinite choice. It is a time when religion is no longer captured by stable and static definitions: “religion or more broadly, the numinous, can be experienced any time at any place through the use of the media” (11).

            Stout does a very brief treatment of chemical states of the brain during various activities (flow, meditation, trance) and of world religions and denominations as they utilize various media. The cultural religions of Oprah, Elvis, Grateful Dead and Jimmy Buffett fans (deadheads and parrotheads), trekkies, and sports all provide their fans with some degree of numinous activity. The rise of the “megachurch” demonstrates the tricky and tangled relationship between religion and media, between secular and divine culture.

            Different approaches to media can be utilized in various ways of critiquing it. Didactic criticism is a dualistic way of examining a text—it is either positive or negative. Audience response criticism lets the people decide what is good or bad (rock music was once shunned, now it is embraced in many churches). Formalism examines the content of a text (plot, character, etc.) as it may or may not promote religious themes. Ethical criticism deals with the artist’s integrity or morality in creating a text. Marxist criticism looks at media in the larger context of economics and politics. Media literacy is a necessity for religious leaders.

            Stout examines the Internet, entertainment media, and the news to uncover the numinous potential within each. The flexibility of the Internet makes it relevant to the needs of most; while authority of some of its sources can be dubious, the ease of social networking and multi-mediated experiences provides all the elements of religion: community, ritual, belief, feeling. Entertainment media do the same (and are increasingly intertwined with the internet) and emphasize through storytelling that communicates universal truths. The news media provide a complex set of possibilities for the numinous; people can have their communities or beliefs strengthened, but where they turn for news matters. The power of choice and authority goes for other media also.

            Advertising and religion have many things in common. They are both goal-oriented and persuasive in nature. “When new media emerge, advertisers and religionists move quickly to exploit them for their purposes. Advertising and religions have enjoyed a reciprocal relationship; they make use of each other’s techniques and tactics” (114). Furthermore, the essential elements of advertising (salience, persuasion, call-to-action) are also necessary in a sermon. In the view of Neil Postman (who fantastically suggests putting Jesus in a wine commercial due to his miracle in Cana; it would end with the tagline—"one sip, and you'll be a believer too."), “the overproduction of religious symbolism undermines its sanctity and historical significance” (119). This is what Stewart Hoover calls symbol flattening: a condition where symbols (cross, star), are no longer held in a hierarchical relationship to other (secular) symbols. Stout notes that sex is losing its shock value in advertising and may be replaced by religion to capture one’s attention. Overall, advertising is a complex form of communication and its potential for the numinous is difficult to study. 

Stout, D. A., (2012). Media and Religion:Foundations of an Emerging Field. New York and London: Routledge Publications.

What if we learned music like we do language?

My college roommate was a great bass player who naturally loved Victor Wooten. Of course, he couldn't jam with me for more than 15 minutes because I was so bad at guitar...this video by his idol would make him feel guilty about that.

http://blog.ted.com/2012/08/13/the-music-teacher-you-wish-you-had/

Culture is like the wind?

            In Matthew Engelke’s essay Religion and the Media Turn he examines recent collections of essays that investigate the “media turn” in religious studies. They focus on the idea of religion as essentially mediation, which involves a turn away from belief toward materiality and practice. While this movement is not organized and “nobody is yet passing out membership cards”, there is an emerging body of solid literature that demonstrates how religion is not returning, but returning to focus.

Religion needs material practice. A focus on practice facilitates a shift from concentrating purely on the message of a text, image, or sound (transmission view?) to considering the medium in its many dimensions (ritual view?). Considerations like who controls it, to which human sense is it directed, what does its audience do with its messages, how are religious dispositions transformed by these media, etc. This results in movement away from belief and toward materiality, away from formalism and toward practice.

            Culture is not a thing but a process. However, we can only measure it by its material “things”. Much of human life involves rending the invisible, or mediating it into our sphere of perception. Mediation scholars can learn from religious scholars in continuing to create corpus on the subject. Two concerns that may assist their study are “relations to” and “relations of”.

“Relations to” have to do with “how mediation positions people and their gods in relation to one another. They are concerned with distance and, often, presence” (376). The nature of a medium can factor into calibrating the proper distance between the human and divine. Technology can close the gap in some cases, but it also transforms the “aura” of a text. Distance and proximity also relate to control: the more widely disseminated a text is, the harder it is for its sender to control its distribution, reception, etc. This seems to be increasing exponentially from the days of Guttenberg (where one person controlled a certain printing press and thus every bible that came from it, to contemporary digital media where remix, bricolage, and transmedia dictate that most cultural texts are a sort of “leftover stew” made up of other cultural bits and pieces.

“Relations of” power and empowerment have to do with whether a particular medium or text is a path to freedom or enslavement, to authentic devotion or debilitating hypocrisy? This will also help us understand how religious mediation differs from other kinds of mediation (political, economic, etc.). It mediation as a concept a solid, objective tool that can be applied where we wish? If we examine how stained glass windows affected and moved (spiritually or emotionally) medieval folk, would our findings help us understand how television does the same thing today?

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 371–379, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425.

Not a history of religion, but a genealogy

             In Genealogies of Religion, Talal Asad explores how religion has come to be a unique historical category. Western forms of history-making have been biased by its own concept of religion. The Western world typically privileges its own history over others, and uses it as a biased lens through which to view other histories, religions, and cultures.

            “History” can be a dynamic concept. People everywhere are making, contesting, borrowing, and reconstructing their own cultural existence. History is the unceasing work of human creators and as such it is unstable. Generally speaking, modernity has removed the omnipotent veil of religion and relegated it to the private sphere. Furthermore, once it became a matter of individual taste (and was equal among other considerations) it became more political; modernity has put religion and politics side-by-side. Asad posits that the search for the essence of religion necessitates this conceptual separation of it from the domain of power. He proceeds from Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion (shortly before demonstrating that no universal definition of religion is plausible):

 “Religion is a system of symbols which act to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (30)

            Religious symbols cannot be understood apart from their historical relations with nonreligious symbols in and of social life. Religious symbols cannot be abstracted and studied objectively; they are inextricably bound up with certain cultures and tend to support the dominant political power. While this does not mean they are purely a vacuous social construction, their authoritative status has to be understood as a product of historically distinctive disciplines and forces.

            Asad notes that rituals and rites were once performed to shape, mold, educate, or reinforce certain behaviors, ideas, or disciplines, but now they are more symbolic in meaning. One of the major factors in the Reformation was the question of the nature of the sacraments: is the Eucharist symbolic of Christ’s blood, or the real blood itself?

            Asad then traces the progression of medieval Christian uses of pain and discipline. Judicial torture (to extract confessions) and monastic disciplines (to cultivate proper characteristics like humility or devotion) were widely used and were evidence of attempts to wrestle with the notion of divine power vs. human agency. This demonstrates the gradual shift of religion from universal to individual, from institutional to self-imposed. (My conclusion, not his)

             While Ernest Gellner’s essay “Concepts and Society” is inherently faulty, it remains popular in British universities because of its ease of comprehension and reproduction. Due to modern imperialism and capitalism, there exists an inequality of languages in the world that makes translation and criticism simultaneously impossible (199). Anthropologists who wish to describe (instead of moralize) will consider a tradition on its own terms and can thus better compare it with others. They must, however, suppress their personal distaste for particular traditions if they wish to understand them. So while most Westerners view the Muslim tradition as having an unnatural aversion to change and criticism, the truth is their practice of nasiha (communal correction from any upstanding Muslim to another) demonstrates their capacity for gentle, kind correction. There is simply a fundamental difference in what is “rational”. Modern liberalism (Western) teaches that one is responsible only for oneself, while nasiha (Muslim) reflects the principle that “well-regulated polity depends on its members being virtuous individuals who are partly responsible for one another’s moral condition—and therefore in part on continuous moral criticism” (233).

            Asad ends with a look at how Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses sparked controversy in Britain between Muslims and the dominant Anglo culture. Multiculturalism is tricky, in that it can veer too far in any direction—on the one hand, it can stamp out all cultural difference/uniqueness, creating one bland homogenous culture; on the other hand, it can ignore the power of latent individual and institutional racism. The presence of unassimilated immigrants constitutes a perceived threat to social cohesion and authority. Governments should respond by divining homogeneities and differences, not homogeneities versus differences. Anthropologists can assist (through their discursive interventions) in articulating the politics of difference in the spaces defined by the modern state.

Asad, T. (1993). Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Tupac holograms, the Gulf War, and video games

            In The Mediatization of Society Stig Hjarvard presents a theory of mediatization as the key concept for influencing change in society and culture. Mediatization is a distinctly late-modern process and it is only in the 20^th century with the proliferation of mass media that media have begun to be studied and understood in their own right.

            It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between mediated and live performances. Musical records were once made to reproduce live sound; now live music is made to emulate recordings. Even dead performers can have a stage presence: at a recent Coachella music festival, late rapper Tupac was projected via hologram and “performed” on-stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Media representations of reality have assumed such dominance in our society that our perception of reality (and our behavior) are steered by the media, so that even phenomena like war are long longer what they once were. Signs and symbols of media culture (images, sound, advertisements) form a simulacra (Baudrillard) and these semblances of reality not only seem more real than “reality” but actually replace it.

            Media have their own logic or modus operandi, and these dictate the ways in which media distribute material and symbolic resources. Media logic influences the form that communication takes. A tree lends itself to certain functions: it may be a nest, shade, or food depending on the animal’s own needs.

            Direct mediatization is when banking goes online. Indirect is when one attempts to eat at a fast-food restaurant and is bombarded with toys or narratives that link to other media. Direct mediatization makes visible how a given social activity is transformed into a mediated form, and thus facilitates establishing a “before” and “after” in order to examine differences. When the media are thereafter necessary for participation, the mediatization is also said to be a “strong”. Indirect mediatization, however, is subtler and does not necessarily directly affect the way an audience participates.

            Before 1920, media were insturments of other institutions, but with the advent of radio they gradually became institutions unto themselves. From 1920-1980 media were largely steered by the public in an attempt to inform them, but since then media institutions have become more independent in their competition for audiences.

            Mediated interaction is neither more nor less real than non-mediated interaction, but mediation affects the circumstances of the interaction between individuals who do not share physical space. In face-to-face interactions, social norms are naturally enforced out of fear of ridicule, gossip, or scolding. The distancing of interaction that results from mediation changes or complicates those norm-enforcing mechanisms. The “stage” is the face-to-face interaction where gossiping about someone (within earshot) would be a gross violation, but “backstage”, where it is printed in a tabloid, there are a different set of governing rules.

The 3 functions of media on the macrosocial level are: to serve as a nexus between institutions, an interpretive frame for understanding society, and as an arena in which members of a society can discuss and debate matters of common interest. Consequently, these functions will increasingly affect society.  The logic of  media (the institutional, technological, and expressive characteristics of media) are becoming more global. Globalization presumes the existence of technical means to extend communication over long distances while simultaneously institutionalizing mediated communication and interaction in many new contexts. The mediatization of society is the construction of a shared experiential world, a world that is regulated by media logic.

Hjarvard presents a helpful graph that illustrates (instead of an x-axis and y-axis) a Centrifugal—Centripetal axis, and a Homogenization—Generalization axis. Homogenized forces that are centrifugal lead to globalization; when they are centripetal the result is nationalization. Differentiated forces that are centrifugal lead to individualization; when they are centripetal the result is localization. 

Puppies are cute

This has nothing to do with anything.

Meet Sir Winston Fur Chill!
We adopted an 8-week old pembroke welsh corgi puppy two days ago and man, he is cute. Both of his parents are award-winning corgi showdogs (his dad has a blog). However, he is a fluffy one (literally—it's a genetic corgi variation) his this gene precludes him from being in shows. We have been hanging out quite a bit so I thought I would put this up here.

After all, if you don't have cute animals pictures on your blog, the internet won't recognize it.

Philosophy & Religious Media

           In Religion and Media, Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber have edited a volume of essays that situate themselves at the various intersections of religion and media. Though primarily philosophical, they are aimed at an interdisciplinary approach to studying religion and media. De Vries notes that religion has reappeared on the contemporary geopolitical stage as a highly ambiguous force and has thus prompted recent investigation. Technology has changed things, as well: “Surely, new media never merely convey the same message, albeit on a different scale at a different pace; they bring about a qualitative leap and instantiate a certain supplementary ambiguity as well” (33).

Samuel Weber traces the emergence of media in the place and site of mediation, or repetition. “In media advertising—and such message are increasingly inseparable from the media—the promise of happiness is tied to repetition under the very conditions [of] staying tuned in” (46). The development of electronic media, like all technology, is an extension of human capacities, simultaneously distancing and undermining what it extends. As the audience of modern media, we are suspended in tension: we are spectators, called upon to frame and give meaning to the spectacle, while being a part of the show. “The spectator is never merely a spectator, any more than merely a performer, and at the same time, a bit of both” (54).

After musing that God must have told Abraham to keep quiet (after testing Abraham with the near-sacrifice of his son Isaac), Jacques Derrida notes that there was a secret and unconditional alliance between God and Abraham that was never to be made into “news” or information for outsiders. He contrasts the prohibition of the image in Judaism and Islam with Christians’ acceptance of the distinction of icon/idol.  “In Christian televisualiation, we confront a phenomenon that is utterly singular, that ties the future of media, the history of the world development of media, from the religious point of view to eh history of the ‘real presence,’ of the time of the mass and of the religious act” (59). This is uniquely Christian (and in some cases uniquely American) to have an actual hierarchy in place (Pope) to deliberately and globally distribute religious discourse. He likens the sending and receiving of information, a medium and mediation (especially of television), to that of the Spirit of Christ that distinguishes Christianity. “Spectrality permits the remote dispatching of bodies that are non-bodies, non-sensible sensations, incorporeal” (61). Television places the viewers at the scene of an event; there is no longer a need for faith, one can see for him or herself. Belief is simultaneously suspended and reinforced, in the name of intuition and knowledge.

Manfred Schneider declares that the fundamental opposition between Judaism and Christianity is because of the opposition of Jewish oral culture and Christian visuality. He utilizes McLuhan’s notion of hot and cold media to describe how Luther broke away from the church: “The printed word, which is accessible to everyone, is now a hot sign. The traditional Church understanding of the sacraments remained caught in the cool, elaborate ritual…” (209) The successful execution of a war requires proselytizing, which thrives on the violent imposition of new media and semiotics. Thus, Luther’s great revolution heated up a cool medium, much like the leap from Saul to Paul marked “the transition from Jewish orality and letter-magic to the pure and absolute visual spirituality of scripture” (212).

Jenny Slatman discusses the visual medium of television that asks us to believe in that which we have not personally, thereby blurring the distinction between faith and seeing. “Vision presupposes faith and faith expresses itself in vision” (219). The one who sees is also a visible entity, therefore the principle of reversibility it important. Reversibility rejects the notion of a person who comprehends the world by objectifying it (220), for seeing something means that the visible thing remains remote. The “tele-being” is thus akin to the “transcendent being”. Transmission from the camera lens to the spectator’s eye, then, “crosses the chiasm of the visible and the invisible, seeing and being seen, the human and the inhuman (226). Television simply offers another kind of vision that brings something remote closer to us, but never all the way.

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804734976
• ISBN-13: 978-0804734974

Shut up and play the hits

     LCD Soundsystem is one of my favorite artists. There are several wonderful albums and even a 45 minute long track designed to be used with Nike shoes or something. (Preview it here.) It was released when I lived in Florida so whenever I listen to it now I imagine driving through swampy-beach landscapes. Perhaps not what he had in mind, but still fun.

     Though I have never seen James Murphy live, I look forward to seeing the documentary on his final series of sold out shows. It is called Shut Up And Play The Hits, and I can't believe it's not playing in LA. It looks to pose some interesting quesitons. How many bands or television shows know when and how to go out at the top of their game? When you begin a creative project do you imagine how it will end?



See the trailer here.

           In Shaking The World For Jesus Heather Hendershot examines the media that conservative Evangelical culture has produced in the 20^th century. Evangelicals are roughly defined as Christians who profess a personal, salvific relationship with Jesus Christ and desire to spread the message of their faith to “save the world”. If fundamentalists wish to separate from the world, and liberal Christians are indistinguishable from the world, evangelicals straddle the dividing line and try to exist “in the world but not of it”.

            Hendershot attempts to “bring together industrial and textual analysis in order to understand how Christian media are produced and what they try to communicate to consumers” (3). Her examination of Christian media reveals complex ways that modern evangelicals are in AND of the world. The complexities arise from the border that traditionally circumscribed evangelical culture and secular culture—it has, for the most part, become blurry, porous, or disappeared completely. While some may feel that evangelicals have capitulated or “sold out” to secular culture, evangelicals have merely adjusted their tolerance for secular ideas (50).

Children’s videos, “Christian” bands, purity propaganda, and prosthelytizing through logical (scientific) or apocalyptical (emotional) films all generally suffer from the same malady: either the media is preaching to the choir, or else it falls on deaf ears. Christians for the most part fail to understand the attitudes/perceptions/etc. of non-Christians, and therefore cannot effectively cater an effective text to appeal to anyone outside of the homogeneous bubble.

            There are naturally a few exceptions. Irwin Moon made many “scientific” films in the 40’s and 50’s that reached people through soft-sell evangelism. Some “Christian” bands like Creed have (unfortunately) found mainstream success by downplaying their evangelical roots. Some churches (like Cathedral of Hope) have done a good job welcoming the GLBT community that most evangelical culture has repelled.

            Not all evangelical media is designed for the un-churched. Plenty of materials (devotionals, specialty bibles, small-group discussion videos, etc.) are created to help encourage individuals in their relationship with God. Sometimes the message is questionable; evangelical attempts at convincing teenagers to abstain from sexual activity offer questionable “substitutes” (weightlifting and dieting). For the most part, though, evangelical media seem to struggle most in that they attempt to reach outsiders while using insider language. This trend is likely to continue as post-modernity and media ubiquity increases the difficulty in isolating and/or reflecting upon any single, mediated meaning or message.


Hendershot, H. (2004). Shaking the world for Jesus: Media and conservative evangelical culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Are all media inherently religious?

           In Rethinking Media, Religion, And Culture (1997) Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby have collected essays that explore the oft-neglected analysis of media, religion, and culture. Traditionally, theories and research have only been proposed for two of these themes (religion and media, religion and culture, or media and culture), but their view in this text is “that media, religion, and culture should be thought of as an interrelated web within society.” (3) Part of the decline of religious structures and institutions can be attributed to the fact that, in much of the Judeo-Christian world, emphasis has long been placed on the individual authority and autonomy; therefore now individuals have more say in their own practices of faith and belief and rely less on complete guidance and identity from a single monolithic institution.

            Media relates to religion in two possible ways. The “substantive” view understands media as a potential delivery system for messages, whereas the “functional” view sees media as providing the raw material for construction of religious meanings (deliberate or not) for various people in various settings. Hoover and Lundby describe rallies (e.g., televangelism), rituals (phenomenological engagement in which media consumption assumes a quasi-religious role), and resistance (audience negotiation in the reading of a media text) as points of cultural construction that intersect the aforementioned “web” of media, religion, and culture.

            Clark and Hoover question traditional notions of secularization, asserting instead that “religion is integrated into everyday life, although not necessarily in the forms assumed by conventional scholarship…[it] is the site of the synthesis and symbolism of culturally meaningful belief systems.” (17) Underlying their analysis is the understanding that the shift into postmodernity has led to individual and collective identity negotiation. This involves a “creative reworking of the text at the site of the audience.” (32) In White’s essay he attempts to answer the question of how we are to conceive of “the presentation of the religious and the sacred in the public sphere in an era of radical pluralism that is suspicious of civil religions and equally suspicious of denominational revivals and other cultural revitalization movements” (61).  From a cultural studies standpoint, the phenomenology of religious studies resists the tendency to reduce all reality to flat rationality and is a reminder that cultural construction is a paradoxical, continually reversing process of image making and breaking.

            Murdock addresses the re-enchantment of the world. He posits that it results from “science’s failure to provide a coherent system of meaning comparable to those offered by religion.” (87) Martin-Barbero continues this discussion, noting that media have eliminated any distance between the sacred and the profane, and suggests that “we should look for the processes of re-enchantment in the continuing experience of ritual in communitarian celebration and in the other ways that the media bring people together.” (108) Mass media have created myriad symbols of the sacred, and we (young people especially) are becoming adept at forming our identities around these dynamic totems. Goethals and Bar-Haim discuss ritual as a “springboard for self-transcending, for an escape from time that cannot be denied to those who play the game—human or divine—with passion.” (131) The crisis of the ritual in contemporary society, however, is the conflict that arises when one’s individual identity is at odds with one’s collective identity. This has resulted in the triumph of the spectacle as a means for possible resolution.

            Horsfield examines religious institutions during periods of media convergence, noting that currently “confusion about their public role has further diminished church institutions’ relevance and visibility in public debate and issues.” (178).  Churches have attempted to compete with the secular and consequently commoditized its own message. Arthur notes that meaning can be made of virtually anything, and suggests that careful approach to religious studies will not adopt one single perspective but be open and agile.

            Linderman examines several models in which individual meaning is actualized. He wants to retain the idea of conventional signification systems as a key factor in facilitating human communication, since “each act of communication is related to one or more socially established signification systems.” (265) He says that in postmodern society, conventional systems are more functional than substantive. That is, the user constructs his or her own meaning in front of the text, instead of passively accepting the given meaning. Hoover traces how religious studies have been marginalized and how breaking “religious media” out of its genre classification is necessary since all media is inherently religious.  

Hoover, S. M., & Lundby, K. (1997). Rethinking media, religion, and culture. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.

We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us

           In Mediatization, Knut Lundby is editor for a series of essays that discuss the dynamic concept of mediatization. The term has roughly come to mean the process and resulting state of communication media influencing societal change while simultaneously being a vehicle for it.

Lundby notes that high-modern (or postmodern?) societies are media-saturated and people are shaped as they relate to their media environments. “As the concept emphasizes interaction and transaction processes in a dynamic perspective, mediatization goes beyond a simple causal logic dividing the world into dependent and independent variables. Thus, mediatization as a concept both transcends and includes media effects” (11). 

            Krotz discusses how mediatization is a valuable tool for measuring the ways in societies change. “What we need is a social theory of media and media changes, and the label mediatization can make it clear that we are concerned with a development of culture and society that by importance, impact, and meaning for culture and society should be treated in a similar way as globalization, individualization, and similar meta-processes” (26). He differentiates this from medium theory, which works with fixed socio-cultural states resulting from technologically given media logics. Mediatization, on the other hand, is a social and cultural approach that is more concerned with developments made by human beings and NOT as a consequence of technology (media logic, not technological determinism?). However, they both refer to the basic idea that the content transported by media is not relevant for ongoing changes of culture and society, but rather the changing communication practices of the people who refer to media (28).

            Schrott sets out to develop an analytical concept of mediatization that can be adopted within a wide thematic range of communication studies (41).  For her, mediatization is a social process of media-induced social change that functions by a specific mechanism. Said mechanism is the institutionalization (both a condition and a process) of media logic within social spheres that were previously considered to be separate from the mass media. She posits five dimensions of mediatization: 1) causes and rational criteria (defining the structuring idea of the institutionalization process); 2) context (limiting factor of media logic in the sphere of public communication); 3) control (power to exert sanctions); 4) contingencies (how do public actors handle deviation from media logic, or how are unintended consequences of mediatization actions processed); and 5) competition (what other institutions are in conflict with the actor’s behavior). The media have become a central institution for the socialization of society.

            Friesen and Hug discuss how pedagogy can work with media, citing Jenkins’ work on participatory culture, and McLuhan’s assertion that youth notice a gap between their TV environment world and cold, fixed classroom world.

            Clark defines, delineates, compares, and contrasts the important voices (Postman, McLuhan, Ong, Meyrowitz, Innis, etc.) in the fields of media studies, media ecology, cultural studies, and communication studies. Interesting topics were humans as cyborgs (techno/human hubrid), positive and negative feedback (all change is the product of positive feedback? 95), the viability of technological determinism (Williams said technologies can become meaningful and useful only when social practices exist before them 92), speed brings uncertainty (Paul Virilio?). The telegraph shaped future imaginings of telephone and radio, and “this recursive approach to studying the interactions at the nexus of the actor-network seems a good model for the kind of scholarship that can take place in the study of mediatization as a process that explores media ecology’s interest in communication technology and change is ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ in its determinism” (97).

            Lundby notes that is not viable to speak of an overall media logic but instead specify how various media capabilities are applied in various patters of social interactions. Social interaction always involves communication, and to paint it with a broad brush obscures the patters of interaction.           

            Hoover looks at how mediatization of and within religious culture is complex, nuanced, and layered. This is because media and religion have been integrated all along (128). Mediatization does not flow in a single direction. It can support and encourage traditional religious sensibilities and behaviors then oppose others (125).

            Hepp reiterates the idea that mediatization of certain cultural fields must be investigated carefully and cannot assume a singular media logic. There are certain molding forces in society that bring about change. We can investigate mediatization along three dimensions: the social dimension of individualization, the spatial dimension of deterritorialization, and the temporal dimension of the coming of an intermediacy (rapid delivery and ubiquitous availability)(154).

            Hjarvard discusses “soft individualism” and the media as it changes social character. Soft individualism depends on weak social ties. “A paradoxical combination of individualism and sensibility towards the outside world has gained ground. At the same time, strong social ties towards family, school, and the workplace experience increased competition from weaker social ties enabled through media network.” (160). Weak social ties mean less responsibility but more knowledge of the outside world. There are various levels of recognition that humans search for (love, self-confidence, respect, self-respect, esteem, and self-esteem), and the media have created a series of new interactional spaces and forms through which recognition may be exercised, and boundaries between them blurred (173).

            Skjulstad discusses contemporary, dynamic Web interfaces as culturally framed texts that mediate fashion (180). Various fashion brands are embracing unique Web interfaces that allow for a variety of potential meanings that can occur through processes of individual actions, albeit in common spaces.     

            Mediatization is defined, once again, as an inherently process-oriented concept, focused on how media influence has increased in a number of different respects. Stromback and Esser look at media logic vs. political logic and the dimensions wherein each one is dominant. They note media logic is gaining ground (219) and demonstrate the 4 dimensions of interactivity (216). They also discuss “media interventionism”.

Hartmann suggests that “the engagement with the media that is expressed in the idea of domestication (engagement meaning the whole range of possible encounters from nonuse to fandom, from imagination to conversion) is necessary fro mediatization processes” (235). Mediatized domestication vs. domesticated mediatization is part of Harmann’s discussion, and the conclusion seems to be simply that everyday mediated activities are a good nexus for studying where phenomenology and mediated communication theory meet.

Jansson examines the triangular relationship between mobility, mediatization, and belonging. Cultural praxis (our activity with people/places/products that are familiar to us) and cultural capital (the aspects of our identity we carry with us—education, taste, skills, attitude, etc.) are woven together in a cultural-materialist perspective and, once again, analysis of mediatization can find a bridge between phenomenological studies of mediatized spaces of belonging and structural studies of global geometries of communication (including both media and mobility) (259).

Rothenbuhler offers some observations about mediatization. Everything is changing and yet stays the same. We are tempted to see mediatization in terms of theoretical and historical continuity, as another example of communication in general and the long steady growth of social structures in size and complexity; yet, the concept does seem to organize our attention to a phenomenon that appears genuinely new and seems to work differently in its different settings. (290) Communication is self-propagating, and media is a catalyst. 

Lundby, K. (2009). Mediatization: Concept, changes, consequences. New York: Peter Lang.