Page 287 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1588 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

syncretism cannot specify their field of study in advance Further Reading
and must be sensitive to the ways in which people nego- Aijmer, G. (Ed.). (1995). Syncretism and the commerce of symbols. Gote-
borg, Sweden: Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology.
tiate and redefine the boundaries of their ideas and prac-
Baird, R. D. (1971). Category formation in the history of religions. The
tices. For example, since Vatican II the Roman Catholic Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
Church has implemented a concerted program of “incul- Bastide, R. (1978). The African religions of Brazil:Toward a sociology of
the interpenetration of civilizations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
turation” whereby local communities were encouraged to versity Press.
apprehend the Christian message “on their own terms.” Beyer, P. (1994). Religion and globalization. New York: Sage.
Clifford, J. (1988). The predicament of culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Is this, too, a type of syncretism? Shaw and Stewart
University Press.
pointed out that global religions—like Christianity, Hin- Cumont, F. (1956). Oriental religions in Roman paganism. New York:
duism, Buddhism, and Islam—have been able to effec- Dover.
Droogers, A. (1989). Syncretism: The problem of definition, the defini-
tively “standardize” their responses to syncretism. They tion of the problem. In J. D. Gort, H. M.Vroom, et al. (Eds.), Dialogue
suggested, for example, that antisyncretism within Islam and syncretism: An interdisciplinary approach (pp. 7–25). Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
can be seen as a standardized response to global capi-
Friedman, J. (1995). Cultural identity and global process. London: Sage.
talism, labor migration, and travel—not least of which is Glazier, S. D. (1985). Syncretism and separation: Ritual change in an
participation in the hajj. Shaw and Stewart also under- Afro-Caribbean faith. Journal of American Folklore, 98(387), 49–62.
Greenfield, S., & Droogers,A. (Eds.). (2001). Reinventing religions: Syn-
scored the need to examine problems of agency, espe- cretism and transformation in Africa and the Americas. New York:
cially when agency is ascribed to religious traditions Rowman & Littlefield.
Herskovits, M. J. (1947). Cultural dynamics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
without reference to religious specialists. A difficulty is
Lawson, E.T. (2003). Agency and religious agency in cognitive perspec-
that when one ascribes agency to a religion, religions are tive. In S. D. Glazier & C.A. Flowerday (Eds.), Selected readings in the
portrayed as having their own dispositions like “free- anthropology of religion: Theoretical and methodological essays (pp.
99–106).Westport, CT: Praeger.
flowing rivers.” Such is seldom the case. Peel, J.Y. D. (1968). Syncretism and religious change. Comparative Stud-
At times, syncretism is largely intentional, while at other ies in Society and History, 10, 121–141.
Stewart, C., & Shaw, R. (Eds.). (1994). Syncretism/anti-syncretism: The
times it is largely unintentional. Whatever the case, there
politics of religious synthesis. New York: Routledge.
are always unexpected consequences. Syncretism some- Werbner, R. (1994). Afterword. In C. Stewart & R. Shaw (Eds.),
times proceeds from misinterpretations and radical mis- Syncretism/anti-syncretism: The politics of religious synthesis (pp.
212–215). New York & London: Routledge.
understandings; for example, Christian missionaries
working among the Ewe in Ghana identified one Ewe
deity, Mawu, as the Christian God and labeled all other
Ewe deities as “devils.” An unintended consequence of this
labeling was that the Ewe devoted a seemingly dispropor- Renaissance
tionate amount of ritual time to honoring their “devils.”
It is imperative for scholars to chart the increasingly he Renaissance was a period defined less by a span
complex interconnections between syncretism, social Tof time than by the application of certain ideas to
change, and resistance. Stewart and Shaw concluded almost every aspect of life.About the mid-fourteenth cen-
their study of syncretism by suggesting that the term be tury in Italy, people realized that the essential values of the
recast as the politics of religious synthesis.A major focus, Middle Ages no longer suited an environment that was
they postulated, should be on antisyncretism and the increasingly urban, secular, mercantile, and educated. In
antagonisms shown by agents who are largely concerned particular, city-states, such as Florence and Venice,
with the defense of religious boundaries. required a new perspective that validated the lives of the
wealthy merchants who governed their communities.
Stephen D. Glazier
The Italian city-states had been made wealthy as a con-
See also African-American and Caribbean Religions sequence of the Crusades and the recovery of long-distance