Page 22 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

What this book could be about 11

contend with the civil variety, particularly in the US. What happens
when – as the evidence seems to show – the civil rituals are more widely
circulated and participated in than the traditional ones? It is important to
point out that most scholars would argue that such rituals play an impor-
tant social role in developing and maintaining social solidarity, conveying
fundamental values and ideals. But to separate those from “religion”
(particularly in as “religious” a context as the US) is still an important
challenge to our evolving understandings of contemporary religion.
There has also been a great deal written and said about media and glob-
alization. We live in an increasingly globalized economic and social
environment, and the media are directly implicated in these developments. 27
The world has shrunk, at least for some social sectors and social classes,
and our knowledge of the world and of “the other” is a different kind of
knowledge than our parents or grandparents had. Religion depends in some
fundamental ways on ideas about the world, about difference, about soli-
darity, and about the conditions of meaning and truth rooted in
understandings of place. Scholarship in the world of religion has recognized
the effects of globalization for some time, but a more sustained focus on
28
the role and implications of media in these issues awaits doing. 29
What scholars know as debates over postmodernity and late modernity
have also outlined a role for media that has implications for religion. So-
called “medium theory” has held that one important implication of the
30
media for social consciousness rests in their tendency to expose both the
“frontstage” and “backstage” of social, civic, cultural, and political action.
Combined with increasing levels of public knowledge and education, this
has led to a situation where the public is far more self-conscious and
reflexive about how things work publicly and about their place in those
things than in the past. Whether this is empowering or disempowering is
31
a matter of some debate 32 but it obviously conditions a wide range of
social contexts, practices, and behaviors. To the extent that religion is
rooted in individual consciousness (and, for both commonsensical and
more informed reasons, we tend to think that it is) this knowledge and
reflexivity clearly has implications. Whether it merely leads to an increased
skepticism about institutional authority, makes modern life that much
more of a challenge for individuals, or greatly complicates social and struc-
tural processes, this media-generated reflexivity is an important issue for
our understanding of contemporary religion.
Another claimed effect of the media in late modernity is their role in
33
undermining traditional linguistic truth claims. Postmodernity is suppos-
edly partly rooted in the notion that the relationship between words,
symbols, and images, and the things they represent, has been undermined.
In an era dominated by the media and their playful deconstruction and
reconstruction of traditional meanings, the solidity of the relationships
between “signs” and the things they refer to (“referents”) comes under