20. Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases - eds. Hopkins et al.

"For the majority of cultures around the world, religion thoroughly permeates and decisively affects the everyday rituals of survival and hope." "The norm, therefore, is not a false divide between secularity and spirituality but the coexistence and interweaving of the so-called holy and profane." "Religious spirituality remains both endemic to controversy and empowering for social transformation." p.1

-This book "use theoretical and material approaches to explore religion in the context of globalization." p.2
-Pros & cons/questions raised about globalization: e.g. "Does globalization bring about more conformity or more heterogeneity? Can an overemphasis on globalization as a determinant miss seeing local agency?" p.3

PART ONE / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

"The Religion of Globalization" - Dwight N. Hopkins pp. 7-32
-The World Council of Churches (WCC)-evangelistic goal vs. the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions-pursues "civil conversation through mutual encounter" p.7
-Thesis of this article/chapter: "that globalization of monopoly finance capitalist culture is itself a religion." p.8
-Def.: "Religion is a system of beliefs and practices comprising a god (which is the object of one's faith), a faith (which is a belief in a desired power greater than oneself), a religious leadership (which determines the path of belief), religious institutions (which facilitate the ongoing organization of the religion), a theological anthropology (which defines what it means to be human), values (which set the standards to which the religion subscribes), a theology (which is the theoretical justification of the faith), and revelation (which is the diverse ways that the god manifests itself in and to the world)." p.9
-The religion of globalization crafts the new "value of individualism" -"accumulation of things for the individual's primary benefit. ...It downplays sharing. It weakens the art of negotiation and compromise. It blinds a vision of mutuality. And it fosters a utilitarian way of being in the world where people, places, and things become tools for, and stepping stones toward, increased personal profit." p.14
-"The 'West' becomes a place, like a utopia, of meaning to fulfill one's theological anthropology. ... For the elite who remain in developing countries, energies and resources are deployed, metaphorically or literally, to purchase or imitate the latest thought forms, things, and lifestyles from NY, Paris, and London. ... The religion of the new human being moves one's senses through space, time, and imagination to the 'altars' of the monopoly finance capitalist god of concentrated wealth." p.15
P: This is so true, I am part of the wannabes in this 'elite' in a developing country. ; worship should move Christians' senses through space, time, and imagination to the altar of God as effectively as the promotions of instagram/youtube/ads/movies move us to these desired hashtag roomgoals cafegoals fashiongoals (basically materialism)
-"Theological justification/their dogmatics: 1. emphasis on free markets--a movement to open up global markets, especially in the Third World. 2. Privatization-imposed by transnational corporations in Third World countries 3. deregulation-stripping governments of their historic role of regulating the harmful effects of business practices imposed on people and the ecology." p.16-17 basically, all for the benefits of monopolies/ "capitalist wealth concentration on a global scale" p.19 -pursues "the integration of all markets throughout the world. ...to lock developing countries into a dependent state by advancing loans and making these countries go into debt." p.19
-The notion of distanciation or time-space compression brought about by computer technological and telecommunications advances allows instantaneous international activity of concentrated monopoly finance capitalist wealth." -gives the god 'transcendence'-travel the world p.22
-Worse yet, "developing countries' governments make policy not for the benefit of labor, the environment, the domestic economy, or the marginalized sectors of society but in the interest of what will facilitate intensified wealth concentration." p.22-23
-"Television serves as a major pioneer in developing a common way of being and worldview. ... The vision of the real and the ideal, hopes and failures, can often be more powerful in molding a popular opinion ... television soap operas spark ways of imitating and incorporating the visual lessons from fictional people into the cultural trappings of the viewers. " p.25 Basically, the tv/media present to us what is the norm and people try to imitate it.
-"Globalization has become the vehicle of cultural invasion. Technology is power. It becomes the carrier to those systems and ideologies (values and cultures) within which it has been nurtured. The tendency is to create a mono-culture. By mono-culture we mean the undermining of economic, cultural and ecological diversity, the nearly universal acceptance of a technological culture as developed in the West and the adoption of its inherent values. The indigenous culture and its potential for human development are vastly ignored. The tendency is to accept efficiency with productivity without any concern for compassion or justice."  p.27-28 (quoted from K. C. Abraham, "Together in Mission and Unity: Beholding the Glory of God's Kingdom," Voices from the Third World 22, no. 1 (June 1999): 144-45.)
"Culture is an industry inventing and spreading aesthetic sensibilities, fantasy and imagination, the pursuit of pleasure, and the creation of compassion on a global scale." p.28
-EATWOT's understanding of religion and globalization accents agency and the coconstitution of a new human self with the God of freedom for the oppressed. EATWOT offers a new spirituality of resistance to domination and a sustained struggle for freedom and justice, anchored in the plight of the poor but yielding a full humanity for all."

"The Sociohistorical Meaning of Liberation Theology (Reflections about Its Origin and World Context)-Enrique Dussel pp. 33-45
-reflecting on the sociohistorical world "context" that gave birth to liberation theology's emergence.
-"liberation theology becomes a 'reinterpretative and critical reflection' arising at the end of modernity (in the ancient colonial world of the Hispanic and preindustrial modernity I), within the only southern and peripheral Christianity of the poor. This fact produces, inside a culturally 'dominant' Christianity, the awakening of a 'prophetic and political' responsibility, in radical contrast to Islamic 'fundamentalisms' that claim direct power from the Right. It also yields a Christianity that transforms from within: the definite 'popular imagination' that emerged from the impact of the Catholic modernity I. This is a 'critical' Christianity from the perspective of the impoverished masses of the South, which could not develop within the Christianities of the rich North of Europe and the United States. It is also a transmodern and postecumenical reflection, for its point of departure (rather than the divided churches--both Protestant and Catholic--of modernity) is its reference to the oppressed and exlcuded masses." p.35-36
-"This theological perspective emerges from a commitment to the poor of the South, that is, those who have been excluded from the present globalization modernizing process. Thus this is a critical reflection leading to a transmodern hope, aimed toward an alternative of greater justice for the people at the periphery." p.41

Society's Religion: The Rise of Social Theory, Globalization, and the Invention of Religion"-Eduardo Mendieta pp.46-65
-myth of secularization/to abolish religion by sublimating it
-"Modernity produced both the illusion of the end of religion and the birth of the religious proper. Before modernity there was no religion, just as there was no 'society.'" p.46 "the invention of the religious" p.47
-Theories of globalization:
1. Mono-metastructural: explains the rise of globalization in terms of "the expansion of one societal subsystem...Every other subsystem develops under the pressure of the dominant.../diffusionist perspective.../the expansion of modernity" p.48
2. Matrix Rearrangement and Differentiation: "globalization is seen as a radically new order in which the fundamental building blocks of social interaction enter into radically new relations" (intergrationist perspective) p.48
3. Metatheoretical Reflexivity (Luhmann's theory): "The global order is different not just in quantity and order but in kind from what has preceded it." "Religious revolutions, reformations, and so-called regressive fundamentalisms are not just defensive or counterreactions to the effects of economic globalization. Instead they are already aspects of a global culture." "From this theoretical perspective, then global modernities are already forms of the world order, of a globalized social system." "...we observe the observer." p.50 "globalization is a way in which society observes itself as an integrated system. ...society as a self-observing system, soceity itself can no longer conceive of itself as an aggregation of somewhat interrelated parts and elements...we must think society anew." p.50-51
-Def. social theory="the analysis of the means by which society reflects on itself--it is the observation of observation." and "social theory performs" whether the images/concepts produced by social theory is false or true, ideological or ideal models; "there is a history of the ways in which society has conceptualized its unity as a totality." e.g. "the major social transformations from ancient, to medieval, and then to modern society; from mercantile, to industrial, and then to finance capitalism. ...in tandem with the rise of different centers of social integration." p.51
-"Intellectual regimes...are ways of interacting; in short, a habitus, a group of social practices that are enabled or disabled by social spaces. Reflection is a social habitus that inhabits a certain social space." Therefore, "we could tell the history of the self-thematizations of Western society as the histories of the social spaces for the production of those self-thematizations: the monastery, the cloister, the semiprivate, semipublic spaces of the salons and academies of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the state-financed university, and the profit-driven 'infotainment' (to use Benjamin Barber's term) networks of the information age." p.52
P: Where is this social space where the Malaysian Chinese society self-thematizes? Newspapers, families, church, coffee shops?
-Question of the history of religion: "In Chinese it may be translated as Zong jiao (which may connote piety, lawfulness, respect, reverence, ritual), or it may also be translated as li (again rites, rituals)." vs. in Indian, Dharma-law, order, mores) ..."they reveal to what extent religion remained undifferentiated from other aspects or dimensions of society. Thus if we look at Socrates, we find a combination of ethics, religion, and civic duty." p.53
-The 16th century marks a nodal point in the history of the evolution of human society in general, and religion in particular. The Reformation, the printing press, and the debates between Sepulveda and de las Casas on the humanity of the Indians were key events and processes that altered the fabric of human relations in the so-called West first, but eventually throughout the entire world." p.54
-"at the moment that the world is presented as a unity, as a planetary totality, human cultures are relativized. Some will claim for themselves supremacy and a higher status. ...Perspectives become local; no one culture can claim a privileged point of view. ...The political, the economic, the cultural--all fall under the rubric of the social system." p.54-55 "Paradoxically, just as the social proper is discovered, humans discovered that society is made up of societies." "if society is its own totalizer, Religion is now seen as one of the subsystems of human interaction." p.55
-18th century, "social theory proper is forumulated as a formal, self-conscious, fairly distinct endeavor." to work out the epistemological convulsions brought about by the new perspective gained on humanity...to be worked out through theology, state theory, moral theory, even economics, before they could reach their proper conceptualization in social theory/sociology.
-The "process of marginalization or pushing out of the religious from society came to be called secularization."
-"society's self-thematization depends on the type of space from which a self-image and self-identity can be projected." p.56
-stages of social theory's development: personalized by key figures (Heilbron's view) 1. Montesquieu and Rousseau-preoccupation with the order of society, dissatisfaction with politics or economics->2. Condorcet & Cabanis-the social makes its appearance, but its appropriate science not formulated->3. Comte "father of social analysis" p.58-59
-"The questions of language, individualism, even of bodily and subjective experimentalism and celebration, were made possible by the presence of Christian values and norms. Similarly, the rise of the state apparatus, its legal and constitutional norms, its principles of legitimation, were in one way or another derived from and rooted in canon law, church functions, and theological insights that necessitate their own relativization." p.60
-Def. globalization="the creation of a new planetary social order in which the centrality of the state, in the form of both nationality and the rule-of-law state (Rechtstatt), the economy, as a system of hyperconnected interactions, and culture, as a new order of the production of world images, have been contested and repositioned." p.60

"Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas"-Lois Ann Lorentzen pp. 84-
-Mires: the indio/Indian has become a homogenizing concept signifying the 'not European,' expressed not as an affirmation of identity but as a negation. Alberto Huerto claims that 'en Mexico los indios son los naturales' This 'imaginary' Indian, according to Mires, emerges from a 'romantic naturalistic vision of history' reflecting the rediscoverers more than the actual indigenous community.
-"Is globalization the most important dynamic to consider--more important than intergroup conflict, the power of local caciques, the Mexican goverenment, regional inequities, ladino-indigenous dynamics, or more important than the characteristics of Maya religion and cosmology, with its capacity to absorb and re-create itself? ...I am reluctant to jump too quickly to macrodeterminants." p.98
"This indio, then, is agent. This indo is not just the 'discovered' indio. The ideology or discourse of Indianness..is a true product of globalization. ...The 'West' first invents and then discovers this 'authentic' indio who isn't Catholic, isn't Protestant, is ecologically pure, and practices centuries-old rituals." p.99-102

PART TWO / CASE STUDIES
"The African Transformation of Christianity: Comparative Reflections on Ethnicity and Religious Mobilization in Africa"-Lamin Sanneh pp. 105-134
-2 sides: "Africa was afflicted with a double jeopardy. It served as an outpost of Europe's mastery, exploitation, and world dominance, and while thus repressed, it was held to standards of freedom and progress it lost under European hegemony." ... "it oversimplifies a complex theme and overlooks the point of so-called native victims being able to turn to their own account the things to which Europeans introduced them, including mother tongue literacy. For that, European motives could be discounted. Furthermore, African societies, insofar as they were living societies, were no more immune to change than other societies, and to condemn to lost authenticity from having encountered Europeans seems particularly harsh, and without ground."p.107-8
-T: "The missionary sponsorship of Bible translation became the catalyst for profound changes in language, culture, and ethnicity, changes that invested ethnic identity with the materials for reawakened sense of local identity." p. 109
-18th century evangelical and humanitarian movement in Europe, in Scandinavia, France, and Britain...spawned the antislavery movement. & the contemporary missionary movement. p.110-111
-"the 'central and enduring character of Christian history is the rendering of God's eternal counsels into terms of everyday speech. By that path believers have come to stand before their God." p.111
-"In Bible translation, hitherto taboo ethnic groups and their languages and cultures were effectively destigmatized while at the same time superior cultures were stripped of their right to constitute themselves into exclusive standards of access to God." p.112
-"The striking mark of Christianity in its mission is its confidence that because God spoke to us all, then all human speech in its concrete ethnic diversity is hallowed for our ordinary and consecrated use." p.113 "incarnation...humanity is the chosen language of divine self-expression."
-Professor Diedrich Westermann of Berlin: "In this sense we speak of the soul of a people, and the most immediate, the most adequate exponent of the soul of a people is its language." p.113
-"...affected ethnic sensibility, gave it material expression, moral affirmation, and a historical vocation, even if at the same time it mediated the spread of European cultural ideas." p.116
-"Thus, if we started from the religious roots of knowledge, we should see that the impulse to understanding was grounded in the encounter with a personal God, with a God who had spoken and acted and, as the source of living and meaning, was graciously available to us in the habits and languages of human community, in fact in ethnic particularity, if you will. In philosophy it was the accepted custom to speak of God as the Supreme Being; in religion the divine was spoken of as the living God. As long as we kept close to the soil, we would not split God between an abstract form and a personal deity." p.118
-"The question for religion at this point was how the conception of a universal God could be reconciled with worship of God in all the particularity and concreteness necessarily involved in worship as such, notably in the particularity and concreteness of language, symbol, ritual, aesthetics, music, dance, and art. ...these were not opposite conceptions but different levels of apprehending the real. ...It is a matter of the 'One and the Many,' of the one God and the many representations." pp.118-9
-Johannes Christaller (missionary-linguist): "not to despise the sparks of truth entrusted to and preserved by their own people" p.119
-cultural intimacy p.120
-"It is the special power of the Bible clothed in the mother tongue thus to bring together individuality and universality..." p.121

"(In)Corporating Threshold Art: Kolam Competitions, Patronage, and Colgate"-Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan pp.161-186
P: a good, punny, specific, interesting title that is clear also.
-another layer of social complexity: "The Tamil women who eagerly participate in these globalized contexts also seemed to impart a certain kind of agency, expressing and acting out of a desire to become part of the local public sphere through this transforming of a 'domestic' ritual art tradition." p.182
-the presentation of 'traditional' rituals in public cultural spaces (topic ideas)

transnational belonging p.188
parallel development of processes of globalization and localization p.203

13 April-12 July, 2017
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001.