Page 34 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

What this book could be about 23

The problem of defining religion is not a new one to social scientists
and to anthropologists in particular. Religious essentialists and formalists
have been critical of Clifford Geertz, a scholar to whom much of the
conceptual and theoretical legacy here can be traced, for adopting a defini-
tion of religion that is too deductive and too inclined to see anything as
“religion” as long as informants say it is. In fact, Geertz’s definition of reli-
gion is one that provides precisely the kind of foundation needed by the
kind of exploration I am undertaking here. Geertz describes religion as

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish a powerful, perva-
sive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3)
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing
these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods
and motivations seem uniquely realistic. 84

The way this works practically is that, for a social meaning or practice to be
significant of what we want to understand as “religious,” it must be some-
thing that – in the perspective of the individuals involved – moves beyond
the mundane to the level of particular significance and is something that she
herself sees in those terms. There is, of course, debate about whether this is
an unequivocal definition, and things we encounter that are attributed to
religion (or “spirituality,” a term of emerging social significance) will also
avail themselves of further exploration. This is one of the values of the kind
of embedded, descriptive research we will be doing. We are able to look at
the ways people describe themselves and their practices as religious. This
will tell us things not just about the particular media-centered practices of
concern to our explorations here, but also about the nature of contemporary
religious evolution. The point is not to “validate” what they say about reli-
gion in relation to media culture; it is to embed these ideas in the larger
context of their social lives and (by extension) the broader culture. So, for
better or worse, it will be Geertz’s definition that will be the working defini-
tion of religion employed as we proceed with this study.
While it might be thought that a definition of “media” is probably a
more straightforward matter than a definition of “religion,” there is still
some complexity here. Traditionally, and in common discourse, media are
thought of primarily in technological terms. “Media” are devices, services,
publications, and channels. I’d like to suggest instead that we begin to
think of media as practices, not just as institutions, texts, or objects. First,
there is a range of things that are significant to our inquiries here that
transcend “media” as traditionally understood. For example, public
performances of various kinds, as well as sacred spaces, rituals, encounter
groups, classes, seminars, objects such as paintings, sculptures, and what
have been called “religious kitsch” items all appear in our interviews and
in other studies as religiously significant. That these may be religious is