Page 28 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

What this book could be about 17

instruments and effects in audiences. They allow the audience to speak in
its own terms about its relationship to media. They also allow study of
phenomena, such as religion, where there is some reason (as I said above)
to suspect that relationships may flow in both directions. Second, culturalist
scholars are typically interested in questions and issues that are more
complex and diffuse than can be easily operationalized in a survey instru-
ment. Religion, as we have seen, certainly invokes such questions. Its
relationship to social life may exist and operate on a number of levels, and
it is hard to say at the outset where among those levels media might reside.
Third, such methods allow for the interpretation of patterns of action and
interaction that are recursive as well as sequential. This is significant, for
example, if we take seriously the notion that ritual is an important dimen-
sion to consider. Fourth, they allow the researcher to identify unexpected
patterns both in media texts and in audience practices. As there is much we
don’t know at this point in our explorations, such openness is a necessity.
Fifth, they allow social, cultural, and historical context to be taken into
account and to be seen in terms of its contribution to the outcomes of
media consumption, something that we can assume will make important
differences here. Finally, such methods allow for the investigation of
outcomes such as meaning and identity, themselves highly complex issues,
as we will see in later chapters of this book.
The significance of this culturalist turn to the overall burden of this
book – questions of media and religion – goes somewhat beyond Carey’s
metaphoric use of a classic term in religion – ritual – to lay out his new
direction. In fact, Carey is precious little help with the matter of religion
per se. Instead, the contribution of culturalism to our understanding of
media and religion lies in its ability to address something as complex,
nuanced, diffuse, and changeable as contemporary religion is. We are not
easily able to apply a normative definition to contemporary religion. In
fact, a prominent religion scholar has argued that the field must instead
always be described as the study of religions. Other observers of contem-
64
porary religion point out that the label “religion” is itself increasingly
problematic in describing the contemporary scene. Culturalist media
studies allows both religion and media to be identified and studied in
nearer to their “own terms” than has been the case with previous work.
Culturalism has occasioned a developing trend in media studies toward
more serious and sustained study of religion and media, and this book is
part of that trend. It would be wrong to credit this movement entirely to
the fields of communication and media studies, however. Other fields,
notably religious studies, history, art history, folklore, and anthropology are
each beginning to contribute to a rich and – necessarily – interdisciplinary
dialogue about religion and media. 65 This dialogue has been encouraged
and nurtured through the kinds of things scholars do: conferences, publica-
tions, seminars, research, and teaching. A series of specialized conferences