Page 98 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Culture 81

religion—tends to assume a reality of its own which renders problematic
its very representability.
(2003: 1) 12

In her inaugural lecture at The Free University in 2006, Meyer pursued
further the rich contradiction in cultural production that the mediation of
religious life makes particularly apparent—that much of what is most human
about being human (i.e., thinking and the imagination, the “social” itself as
relations between people) must be concretized through material mediation:
what I have called above “materializing process.” Indeed, Meyer calls it a
“materiality that is not opposed to, but rather a condition for, spirituality”
(2006a: 32). Possibly the study of the religion-media nexus can, in fact, offer
something back to cultural theory itself, speaking to this central problematic
of its processual dynamics that involve us inevitably in mediation of all
kinds.

Notes

1 Tomoko Masuzawa, in yet another “Critical Terms” book, notes that “the
categories religion and culture…are both historically specific, fairly recent
formations, and our daily employment of these terms…is in fact mobilizing and
energizing a powerful ideology of modernity…” (1998: 71).
2 In texts such as Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason,
Rite, and Art, published in 1942 and Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953),
Langer linked new work in symbolic logic based in mathematical and linguistic
forms to aesthetics and drama.
3 E.B. Tylor in Primitive Cultures (1874: 1) is credited with that first definition:
“…that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society.” This anthropologically inclusive notion of culture emerged into wider
social circulation after World War II, with Ruth Benedict’s work (1934/1959;
Masuzawa 1998: 79). When I first came to graduate school in the mid-seventies,
I recall being given Geertz’s essays by a fellow student who was, of all things, a
geographer! This was part of my own motivation for pursuing an education in
anthropological theory.
4 In England, the Birmingham School of cultural studies, in many respects, picked
up where Frankfort School critical theory left off (Agger 1992: 1–23) and was
deeply influenced by the writings of Raymond Williams (e.g., 1981) and Stuart
Hall (e.g., 1985).
5 See Catherine Bell’s book, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, indebted to Bourdieu
and influential in religious studies (Bell 1992).
6 These titles include Religions of India in Practice (1995), Buddhism in Practice
(1995), Religions of China in Practice (1996), Religions of Tibet in Practice