Syncretism Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (European Association of Cultural Anthropologists)

228 Pages·1994·1.9 MB·English

by  C. Stewart

Syncretism/Anti-syncretism
Syncretism refers to the synthesis of different religious forms. It is a contentious
and contested term which has undergone many historical transformations in
meaning. Some see it as a disparaging, ethnocentric label for religious traditions
(such as independent African churches), which are deemed ‘impure’ or
‘inauthentic’ because they are permeated by local ideas and practices. Yet in other
contexts religious synthesis may have positive connotations as a form of resistance
to cultural dominance, as a link with a lost history, or as a means of establishing
a national identity in a multicultural state. In the present era of displacement,
migration, urbanization, global capitalism and generally increasing ‘cultural
compression’, syncretic processes are multiplied and intensified. The
appropriation of ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ is often accompanied by the
syncretic appropriation of world religions.
These processes are examined by the contributors to Syncretism/Anti-syncretism
across such topics as multiculturalism in India, new religious movements in Japan,
interpretations of circumcision as crucifixion in Papua New Guinea and Turkish
migrants’ efforts to remain Muslims in Germany. In these studies, the politics of
discourses about syncretism are treated as part of the politics of religious synthesis.
Who has the authority to describe a particular religious tradition, including their
own, as syncretic? What are the political consequences of such pronouncements
in, for example, South Africa, India or the USA?
Syncretism/Anti-syncretism will be of interest to scholars and students of
anthropology, religious studies, sociology, history and cultural studies.
Charles Stewart is Lecturer in Anthropology and Ancient History at University
College, London. Rosalind Shaw is Assistant Professor of Sociocultural
Anthropology, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA.
European Association of Social Anthropologists
The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was inaugurated in
January 1989, in response to a widely felt need for a professional association
which would represent social anthropologists in Europe and foster co-operation
and interchange in teaching and research. As Europe transforms itself in the
nineties, the EASA is dedicated to the renewal of the distinctive European
tradition in social anthropology.
Other titles in the series
Conceptualizing Society
Adam Kuper
Revitalizing European Rituals
Jeremy Boissevain
Other Histories
Kirsten Hastrup
Alcohol, Gender and Culture
Dimitra Gefou-Madianou
Understanding Rituals
Daniel de Coppet
Gendered Anthropology
Teresa del Valle
Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge
Kirsten Hastrup and Peter Hervik
Fieldwork and Footnotes
Han F.Vermeulen and Arturo Alvarez Roldan
Syncretism/
Anti-syncretism
The politics of religious synthesis
Edited by
Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw
London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1994 Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, selection and editorial material; individual
chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-45109-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-45663-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-11116-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-11117-X (pbk)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: problematizing syncretism 1
Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart
1 What ‘Alhaji Airplane’ saw in Mecca, and what 25
happened when he came home: ritual
transformation in a Mende community (Sierra
Leone)
Mariane Ferme
2 Beyond syncretism: translation and diabolization in 43
the appropriation of Protestantism in Africa
Birgit Meyer
3 Variation on a Christian theme: the healing synthesis 65
of Zulu Zionism
Jim Kiernan
4 The politics of religious synthesis: Roman 79
Catholicism and Hindu village society in Tamil Nadu,
India
David Mosse
5 Ritual, power and colonial domination: male 101
initiation among the Ngaing of Papua New Guinea
Wolfgang Kempf
6 Syncretism as a dimension of nationalist discourse in 119
modern Greece
Charles Stewart
7 Syncretic inventions: ‘Indianness’ and the Day of the 137
Monkey
vi
David M.Guss
8 Manipulated identities: syncretism and uniqueness 153
of tradition in modern Japanese discourse
Klaus-Peter Koepping
9 Are fireworks Islamic? Towards an understanding of 169
Turkish migrants and Islam in Germany
Lale Yalçim-Heckmann
10 Syncretism, multiculturalism and the discourse of 185
tolerance
Peter van der Veer
Afterword 201
Richard Werbner
Name index 205
Subject index 209
Contributors
Mariane Ferme received her PhD from the University of Chicago and is
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
She has conducted extensive field research among the Mende of Sierra Leone
and is currently studying Sierra Leoneans in Egypt.
David M.Guss is currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard University as well as
a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tufts
University. His most recent book is To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol and Narrative
in the South American Rain Forest (1989).
Wolfgang Kempf received his MA from Tübingen University and is
currently a doctorand at the Department of Anthropology, University of
Tübingen. He has conducted fieldwork for 22 months among the Ngaing in
Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.
Jim Kiernan received his PhD from the University of Manchester and is
Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Natal, Durban, South
Africa. His research on Zulu Zionists has produced numerous journal articles
and a book, The Production and Management of Therapeutic Power (1990).
Klaus-Peter Koepping is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Heidelberg. His current interests are modernization and religious movements
in Japan, but he has also conducted field research in Afghanistan, South
Australia and Taiwan. He is the author of Adolf Bastian and the Psychic Unity of
Mankind (1983).
Birgit Meyer studied pedagogy and comparative religion at the University
of Bremen and cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She is
currently an associate of the Amsterdam School for Social Research where she
is writing her doctoral thesis on local Christianity in Ghana.
David Mosse obtained his DPhil in social anthropology from Oxford
University. He is currently Lecturer at the Centre for Development Studies,
University of Wales, where he is working on social organization and
environmental change in South India.
viii
Rosalind Shaw is Assistant Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Tufts
University. She co-edited Dreaming, Religion and Society in Africa (1992) and is
Deputy Editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa. She is currently preparing a
book on gender and divination among the Temne of Sierra Leone.
Charles Stewart is Lecturer in Anthropology and Ancient History at
University College London. He is the author of Demons and the Devil: Moral
Imagination in Modern Greek Culture (1991).
Peter van der Veer is Professor of Comparative Religion in the Faculty of
Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Gods on
Earth (1988) and Religious Nationalism (1994) and co-editor, with Carol A.
Breckenridge, of Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament (1993).
Richard Werbner is Professor in African Anthropology at the University of
Manchester. His most recent book is Tears of the Dead: The Social Biography of
an African Family (1991), winner of the Amaury Talbot Prize of the Royal
Anthropological Institute.
Lale Yalçin-Heckmann is Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg
and works on Islam and migrants in Germany. She obtained her PhD in social
anthropology at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Tribe
and Kinship among the Kurds in Turkey (1991).
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the following for their specialist suggestions and
advice, which have enriched this volume: Louis Brenner, Tim Bryson, Kenneth
George, Eric Hirsch, Adam Kuper, Ruth Mandel, D.P.Martinez, J.Lorand
Matory, J.D.Y.Peel, Jonathan Spencer, Linda Thomas, A.R.Vasavi and Richard
Werbner. They are also grateful to Daniel Stephanos for help with computers
and e-mail and to the series editor, Marilyn Strathern, for her support. Rosalind
Shaw gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from the Provost’s Office, Tufts
University.