Page 153 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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Practice

Pamela E. Klassen

“Everyday” uses of the notion of practice
A brief genealogy of the concept of practice
The effects of practice

As an object of study, the intersection of religion and media offers a never-
ending supply of primary sources, whether niche-market Bibles, televised
depictions of Hindu epics, or Internet sites selling online ritual services.
Even the more traditional textual sources that have long been the focus of
religious studies—canonical and extra-canonical scriptures, spiritual diaries,
law codes—are themselves excellent sources for the study of how religion is
“mediated” or conveyed. Despite this plethora of sources, scholars have only
relatively recently considered texts and images of religious communication
as something more than containers of doctrine, debate, or other kinds of
data. Spurred in part by a reinvigorated interdisciplinary interest in book
history and print culture, scholars of Christianity, for example, have begun to
study not only competing interpretations of biblical texts but how Christians
have cultivated reading itself as virtuous and profitable (in both spiritual and
financial senses) (Brown 2004; Coleman 2006; Cressy 1986; Gutjahr 2001;
Hall 1989; Johns 1996; Klassen 2006; Nord 2004; Peters 1999). A common
denominator in the shift from the study of the theological or intellectual
meanings of texts and images to the investigation of their production,
consumption, and physicality is the theoretical concept of practice.
In his study of “visual piety,” David Morgan clarifies the utility of
“practice” for the study of how particular media—in his study, religious
images—are made, sold, bought, and used:

practice…is helpful here because it stresses that thinking, wanting,
deciding, speaking, and looking, as well as ritual performance and gift-
giving, are all part of the concrete world-making activities that constitute
social behaviour. These are not mindless actions but embodied forms of
cognition and collective memory that reside in the concrete conditions of
social life.
(Morgan 1998: 4)