Ethnic Religions
Ethnic religions are belief systems that are closely tied to a particular ethnic group or culture. They are often passed down through generations and are deeply ingrained in the traditions and customs of the community. These religions typically do not seek converts and are closely linked to the identity and heritage of the people who practice them.
3 Key excerpts on "Ethnic Religions"
eBook - ePub- Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...There are also many studies of the interrelation of ethnicity and religion in conflict situations (for example Kakar’s (1996) study of Hindu and Muslim rioters in Hyderabad). Such research raises important theoretical and explanatory questions. Where ethnicity and religion are intertwined, is religion simply a legitimatory resource for other interests? Or do religious beliefs themselves inform the framing of interests and assumptions about the world to a point where, in Walter Benjamin’s terms, religion is the puppet-master pulling the strings of seemingly secular groups (Benjamin 1969 : 253–255)? And how are religious and ethnic ideas and aims put to use in processes of mobilisation and intra-group contest? As we show below, attempts to answer these questions have required some reframing of concepts of ethnicity. Concepts of religion and ethnicity Classical scholarship on ethnicity and ethno-nationalism carefully distinguished religion from ethnicity. Anthony D. Smith defined ethnicity as involving each of the following six features: a common name; a myth of common ancestry; shared historical memories; elements of common culture; a link to a homeland; a sense of solidarity (Smith 1986 : 21–31). Definitions are contested in the wider literature, but there is some consensus that central to ethnicity is perceived territorially based descent, which in turn tends to generate quasi-kin feelings of solidarity (Conversi 2002). Religion may be defined substantively as beliefs and practices concerned with the sacred, with particular religions identified in terms of institutionally based and bounded sets of such beliefs and practices, and the religious (confessional) groups who participate in them. On Smith’s definition of ethnicity, religion may form the common culture that partially constitutes the ethnie, but ethnicity requires also a territorial and descent-related emphasis...
eBook - ePub- Sherin Wing(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 11 Geography and Space DOI: 10.4324/9781315798226-11 A little known fact amongst non-geographers is that geography began as an enquiry into religion: it investigated spatial relationships linking cosmology, religious beliefs, and people. 1 As it developed into an independent academic discipline, scholars began exploring secular aspects of geography, focusing on the relationship between human behavior and sites. 2 Over time, secular geographical inquiries replaced religious ones. Subfields like cultural geography developed, which examine human perceptions of geography. 3 Others dedicated themselves to describing the “cultural landscape.” 4 Such studies are furthered by anthropologists and psychologists delving into “reactions to density and crowding, privacy and territoriality,” 5 that result in clashes over community and national boundaries. During this time, studies on religion have languished. Because secular inquiries have become the focus of geography, rigorous and refined analyses are reserved for it alone; all other investigations are portrayed in broad generalizations. 6 Religious spaces have become one of those broadly portrayed disciplines. Once their sacrality is identified, religious spaces are seen as inherently and forever transcendent. 7 In other words, geographically designated sacred spaces remain permanently sacred. 8 In short, they are merely territories that require safeguarding. 9 Other geographers view religious spaces as endlessly relative, in which religious practitioners project multiple meanings onto spaces they consider inherently sacred. 10 Recent geographers only see dynamism in religious pilgrimages. 11 Such studies are more concerned with religious practice primarily as it shapes the movements and migration of people rather than religious spaces as they interact with people. 12 What they all ignore about religious geography is that interpretations and meanings result from interactions between people and space...
eBook - ePub- John Grim, Mary Evelyn Tucker(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Island Press(Publisher)
...Religions in the West are also closely identified with ethics regulating human behavior. But even ethics, as critical as they are, do not encompass all aspects of religions in their myriad manifestations across cultures and history. Rather, religions rely on stories and symbols for guidance and rituals and meditations for individual cultivation and community vitality. Religions thus manifest themselves not simply in texts, statements, and doctrines, but even more directly in practice. 13 The variety of religious practices and rituals around the planet is such that it is difficult to define religion from a single conceptual framework. Moreover, central to these practices and rituals are symbols and symbolic knowing. Symbol Systems and Symbolic Knowing For many, religion draws on complex symbol systems that mediate between human imagination and practice. This was the view of anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), who understood religion as that which draws together a worldview replete with symbols and an ethos of behavior that creates coherent ways of living. He defined religion as: “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in [individuals] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” 14 Geertz saw that the symbol systems of religion evoked symbolic knowing, thus opening the world to interpretation and meaning. Just as Geertz understood that symbols transmitted in cultural practices have a profound effect on human consciousness in shaping worldviews, so also symbols give expression to empirical knowing. 15 Symbolic knowledge is also used in mathematics and science to communicate and interpret concepts...
