Abstract
This chapter introduces the life stories of Marion and Prakash to the reader. It is based on a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and biographic interviews conducted in India and Germany. It addresses the complementarity of these methods and their appropriateness for the study of indifference to religion and religiosity, and reconsiders the relational approach to the study of nonreligion with a focus on indifference. On this basis the chapter, first, contrasts different understandings of religious indifference and highlights its conceptualisation as a situational stance opting for the path of least possible engagement. Second, the chapter analyses the conditions for the possibility of displaying such an indifferent stance in the German and Indian case. The chapter concludes by comparing the stances adopted by Marion and Prakash to thereby address the limits of the concept of religious indifference.
[I]f the anthropological study of religious commitment is underdeveloped, the anthropological study of religious noncommitment is nonexistent. (Clifford Geertz 1973, 2004, 42)
[T]here is only one method in social anthropology, the comparative method – and that is impossible. (Evans-Pritchard, see Needham 1975, 365)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Asad used the singular. But given the diversity of nonreligion the book series started by the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN) in collaboration with DeGruyter is called ‘Religion and Its Others’ http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/247534.
- 2.
Our hypothesis that dismissing an explicit focus on religion in the initial stimulus nevertheless underlines the theme of religion was confirmed in the interviews.
- 3.
Over the course of this research, this stimulus was not always used exactly as presented here. One example of an interview where an important redirection of the interview took place in the initial stage of the interview is the first example presented below.
- 4.
The respective absolute numbers are roughly three times higher in East Germany if compared to the West.
- 5.
Related studies show that religion and spirituality are continuously ranked lowest when Germans are asked which aspects of life are most important to them. Family, friends, and leisure time activities come first, and work and politics are considered significantly more important than religious matters (Bertelsmann 2013, 13–14). Here again, the importance of religion is considered to be steadily declining and we seem to be dealing with cohorts.
- 6.
We are dealing, however, only with a limited degree of reflexive loops and narratives of self-(re)negotiation characteristic for people with a lot of therapeutic experiences.
- 7.
Compared to other adults who start to study at university after their Abitur (A-level).
- 8.
The degree to which such an implicit individualised and intellectualised understanding of ‘religion’ is common in Germany will be discussed below. I would like to thank Mascha Schulz for pointing this out to me.
- 9.
In contrast to other types of nonreligiosity, she does not express any interest in meeting people with similar worldviews. The tendency is that she finds people with ‘a different opinion or conviction’ more exciting. Still, she does not describe any engagement with such people.
- 10.
The separation of church and state is not as strict as commonly assumed with respect to Germany. To give but two examples: While religious education in state schools is under government supervision and realised by the federal state institutions in most cases this means, however, that religious education is designed, executed and supervised by representatives of the Protestant and Catholic church (Alberts 2007, 328). The secular alternatives, as chosen by Marion, are not always an available option. Secondly, parts of the German welfare state are under the authority of the two major churches, as for example through the Deutsche Caritasverband (Catholic church) and the Diakonie Deutschland (Protestant church). They run various kinds of institutions, ranging from kindergartens to hospitals to hospices. Together they are in charge of more than one Million salaried employees and another 1.2 million volunteers. While these organisations are largely funded by the ‘secular’ state they use as employers guidelines aligned with their religious orientations.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
The Mandal Commission of 2006 lists 41% of the Indian society amongst the educationally- and socially-disadvantaged castes labeled ‘Other Backward Class’ (OBC).
- 14.
A friend of a friend had asked him whether he would like to participate in an interview on religion. When Prakash had asked me what my interest in religion was I had told him: ‘There are lots of studies about religion in India and usually they ask the pundits, the mawlawis / moulvi, and the priests what religion is all about while I am interested in the life and perspective of people who are not at the center of religion.’
- 15.
There is the ‘Chota’ Char Dham (the ‘small’ four abodes) referring to four pilgrimage sites in the Himalaya: Badrinath, Yamunotri, Gangotri and Kedarnath, while the ‘large’ Char Dham includes four places at the geographical borders of the subcontinent: Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram.
- 16.
On the possible correlation of ‘indifference to religion’ and ‘indifference to politics’ note the discussion in the introduction referring to the problematic association of religious indifference with overall apathy and immorality.
- 17.
One of the most famous cases being a large pilgrimage in the name of the Hindu God Ram, the Ram Rath Yatra (God’s chariot procession) to Ajodhya in 1990 that resulted in communal riots and later in the demolishment of the mosque in Ajodhya 1992 and further nation-wide riots. According to the BJP one aim of this yatra, ‘contrary to what the pseudo-secularists claim, . . . was to raise “fundamental questions” such as: “What is secularism? What is communalism?”’ (See http://www.bjp.org/leadership/shri-lk-advani/yatras/?u=ram-rath-yatra).
- 18.
These political groups stage religion through large public processions (yatras) and use every opportunity to brand their opponents as favouring non-Hindu minorities and therefore as “pseudo-secular” and anti-Hindu. Moreover, a tragic history of murder, attacks, riots, and bloodshed in the name of religion continues to influence the perception of other religious groups, feelings of threats and vulnerability, and related debates of accusation and suspicion. Examples hereof are the traumatic experience of partition, the large-scale riots against Muslims in Gujarat 2002, and the ‘Mumbai blasts’ in 2011. Finally, prevailing debates about the relationship between religion and superstition on the one hand and science, and rationality and modernity on the other hand influence public discourse. These date back at least to the 19th century, fuelled by Jawaharlal Nehru’s modernist agenda, and are perpetuated today not only by rationalist groups, but also within academia (see Nanda-Nandy debate, Quack 2012, 302–311) as well as in public media.
- 19.
One may differentiate here, however, between an indifference towards the religious ‘meanings’ but not towards the underlying social conventions and norms.
- 20.
This argument holds for non-religious as well as inter-religious settings. The daughters of two major figures within the recent ‘rightwing’ Hindu nationalist movement, A.K. Advani and Subramanian Swamy, married Muslims. This would be much more problematic within the lower cadres of this movement.
- 21.
Gender also is at stake here, but elaborations on this aspect will take place elsewhere.
- 22.
Notably, both Marion and Prakash belong(ed) to the majority religious tradition within each country. However, neither should religion in Germany be reduced to Christianity nor India to Hinduism. Interviews e.g. with (former) Muslims in both countries reveal differences in position and positioning to be elaborated upon elsewhere.
- 23.
In Bourdieuian terms one could add that the conceptual point that a position is continuously defined by both, its actual and by its potential location in the structure of the field. The potential is thereby as important as the actual. It captures the (limited) ways in which positions can change, e.g. by reactivating dormant relationships or by forming new relationships available to such positions. The notion ‘disposition’ refers to these (limited) potentialities of relationships that are currently not manifest in a particular case and therefore not directly observable. Potential relationships can further be inferred by reconstructing the general positions within the structure of the field.
- 24.
In the specific case of someone who was religious early in her life and later became indifferent, it would be necessary to assess how important these early experiences are for the person she is now. One could argue that the degree to which these matters are biographically relevant to this person influences the degree to which she is indifferent.
- 25.
Related debates are discussed – albeit in a rather different context – under the label ‘belonging without believing’ in Europe in the aftermath of Grace Davie’s Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (1994).
- 26.
Against this background it comes with little surprise that the notion ‘secular’ primarily indicates to be not-communal in India (‘communal’ denotes religio-ethnic ideologies favouring some communities over others and is often associated with violence). This kind of secularity is labelled ‘pseudo-secularism’ by the Hindu-right, because it supposedly favours minority groups over the postulated Hindu majority. Further notions of ‘Indian secularism’ (sarva dharma sama bhava, all religions are equal) include the political equal support of all recognised religious groups as well as the ideology that all religions lead to the same truth – all of which is not the ‘Other’ of religion the secular is attributed with in other parts of the world.
References
Alberts, Wanda. 2007. Integrative Religious Education in Europe. A Study-of-Religions Approach, vol. 45, Religion and Reason. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Arnold, David, and Stuart Blackburn, eds. 2004. Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Assmann, Jan. 2003. Die Mosaische Unterscheidung dder der Preis des Monotheismus. München: Hanser.
Bailey, Frederick George. 1996. The Civility of Indifference: On Domesticating Ethnicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bertelsmann Stiftung. 2013. Religionsmonitor. Verstehen was verbindet. Religiosität im Internationalen Vergleich. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung.
Bhargava, Rajeev. 2004. What Is Secularism For? In Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev Bhargava, 486–542. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Blankholm, Joseph. 2017. The Limits of Religious Indifference. In Religious Indifferences: New Perspectives from Studies on Secularization and Nonreligion, ed. Johannes Quack and Cora Schuh, 242–261. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. Gene’se et structure du champ religieux. Revue Francaise de Sociologie 12(3): 295–334.
———. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bruce, Steve. 2002. God Is Dead. Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell.
Copeman, Jacob. 2011. The Gift and Its Forms of Life in Contemporary India. Modern Asian Studies 45(5): 1051–1094.
Copeman, Jacob, and Johannes Quack. 2015. ‘Godless People’ and Dead Bodies: Materiality and the Morality of Atheist Materialism. Social Analysis. 59(2): 40–61.
Davie, Grace. 1994. Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fischer-Rosenthal, Wolfram, and Gabriele Rosenthal. 1997. Narrationsanalyse biographischer Selbstpräsentation. In Sozialwissenschaftliche Hermeneutik. Eine Einführung, ed. R. Hitzler and A. Honer, 133–165. Opladen: Budrich.
Geertz, Clifford. 2004. Religion as a Cultural System. In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Banton, 1–46. London: Routledge.
Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. 2006. The Role of Religion in Establishing Social Cohesion. Religion in the New Europe: 45–63.
Marriott, McKim, ed. 1990. India Through Hindu Categories. Vol. 5, Contributions to Indian Sociology: Occasional Studies; 5. New Delhi: Sage.
Needham, Rodney. 1975. Polythetic Classification: Convergence and Consequences. Man, New Series 10(3): 349–369.
Quack, Johannes. 2012. Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2013. Was ist ‘Nichtreligion’? Feldtheoretische Argumente für ein relationales Verständnis eines eigenständigen Forschungsgebietes. In Säkularität in religionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, ed. Peter Antes and Steffen Führding, 87–107. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress.
———. 2014. Outline of a Relational Approach to ‘Nonreligion’. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 26(4–5): 439–469.
Quack, Johannes and Cora Schuh. 2017. Conceptualizing Religious Indifferences in Relation to Religion and Nonreligion. In Religious Indifferences: New Perspectives from Studies on Secularization and Nonreligion, ed. Johannes Quack and Cora Schuh, 8–30. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Rosenthal, Gabriele. 1995. Erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte. Gestalt und Struktur biographischer Selbstbeschreibungen. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.
Schütze, Fritz. 1983. Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis 3: 283–293.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Vandenberghe, Frédéric. 1999. ‘The Real is Relational’: An Epistemological Analysis of Pierre Bourdieu’s Generative Structuralism. Sociological Theory 17(1): 32–67.
Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika. 2009. Das stabile Drittel: Religionslosigkeit in Deutschland. In Woran glaubt die Welt? Analysen und Kommentare zum Religionsmonitor 2008, ed. Bertelsmann Stiftung, 151–168. Gütersloh: Verlag Bertelsmann-Stiftung.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the very stimulating discussions during the workshops on religious indifference at Strasburg in May 2013 and at Frankfurt in November 2014, with particularly fruitful comments by Pascal Siegers and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. Further, I am much obliged to the helpful suggestions by Sandra Bärnreuther, Alexander Blechschmidt, Anne Breubeck, Miriam Meuth, Susanne Schenk, Cora Schuh, Mascha Schulz, and Nina Rageth on earlier versions of the paper. Finally, I would like to thank Janine Murphy for her efficient and rigorous proofreading. The work was generously funded by the German Research Council (DFG) as part of the Emmy Noether-Project (QU 338/1–1), “The Diversity of Nonreligion”.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Quack, J. (2017). Bio- and Ethnographic Approaches to Indifference, Detachment, and Disengagement in the Study of Religion. In: Quack, J., Schuh, C. (eds) Religious Indifference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48476-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48476-1_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48474-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48476-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)