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- Convenors:
-
Bruno Reinhardt
(Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Jean-Michel Landry (Carleton University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
What is to be called to a life project or mission? This phenomenon has not yet flourished as a robust subject of anthropological inquiry. This panel invites papers that explore the ethical, temporal, and political dimensions of the Calling at the thresholds of the religious and the secular.
Long Abstract:
What does it mean to be called to a life project or mission? How do different subjects conceive of and inhabit their calling? Similarly to "inspiration", having "a calling" testifies to the complex entanglements of secular and religious grammars in modernity. Its ambiguity is highlighted by Max Weber's famous engagement with beruf - a German word that condenses notions of profession, vocation, and divine calling - both in his work on Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism and his essays on science and politics as vocations. A "calling" might entail a transcendental limit to moral deliberation and agency, as in Luther's "Here I stand. I can do no other". Or it might be encompassed and authenticated by traditions and institutions authoritatively. Although the frameworks that make "a calling" intelligible and viable are multiple, this phenomenon has not yet flourished as a robust subject of anthropological inquiry. How, we ask, do culturally or religiously embedded conceptions of the Calling conceive human agency vis-à-vis transcendence, immanence, and imminence? How such process articulates the ontological and ethical predicaments of religious and secular times? Finally, how the affective force of a Calling resonates with or counters the entrepreneurial call of neoliberalism, to which we have all been exposed? We invite papers that explore - ethnographically and comparatively - actualizations of callings that propel religious movements, political organizations, humanitarianism, development, business, labor, the military, and science, as well as their intersections.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This project introduces the term pragmatic faith to theorize how transcendent aspects of subjects' callings resonate with and counter everyday concerns, specifically about corruption and greed. Pragmatic faith as a concept opens opportunities to examine a Calling as an action and response.
Paper long abstract:
This project introduces the term pragmatic faith to theorize how transcendent aspects of subjects' callings resonate with and counter everyday concerns, specifically about corruption and greed. Pragmatic faith as a concept opens opportunities to examine a Calling as an action and response to what Reinhardt and Landry aptly call 'entanglements of secular and religious grammars in modernity.' The concept also allows that a Calling is delimited by more than traditions and institutions; it is culturally imbued with sense of intuition that does not demand or need proof. That is, by faith. Reflecting on the life and works of a Tanzanian Lutheran Bishop who championed socialist policy and today eschews Pentecostalism, the paper argues that relationships of affinity and consanguinity, and illocutionary acts of promise and forewarning in Lutheran east-central Africa authorize an ethical unmasking of what an episcopacy sees as corrupt and immoral actions and deeds; namely, as examined in this paper, the works of Pentecostalite preachers whom the episcopacy presents (for purposes of speaking to rural and non-English speaking parishes) as auctioning Jesus's blood in the marketplace. Ethnographically the paper overviews how a bishop was called to church vocation; how a calling entailed little separation of a church from state until recently; and how today's Tanzanian episcopacy grounds a Calling in an everyday social fact of being that, We argue, reframes Luther's "Here I stand. I can do no other" as "Here I stand. I can be no other."
Paper short abstract:
Exploring how male gender activists aiming at the reformation of male subjectivities in South Africa employ the notion of 'being called', the paper discusses relational aspects as well as the intersections between 'secular' and 'religious' dimensions of the calling.
Paper long abstract:
Building on ethnographic research conducted in metropolitan areas of Gauteng province, the paper explores the undertakings of activists aiming at the reformation of male subjectivities and gender roles in South Africa. The male gender activists attempt to influence other men to change their attitudes, pattern of behaviour and, ultimately, their self-understanding as men. When talking about their engagement, the men that will be at the centre of analysis draw on the idea of 'being called' or 'being sucked into activism'. By analysing narrative patterns and dramatic structures of these 'stories', this paper illustrates the ways in which ideas concerning professional aspirations are intertwined with the notion of sacrifice and divine intervention. Gender activists regularly invoke the idea of 'being called' to reassure and remind themselves as well as others of the significance of their engagement. What is more, narrative accounts of 'being called' are frequently used as a means to persuade listeners to reform themselves. Focusing on the question of how gender activists attempt to mobilise others through narrating their experience, the paper seeks to examine relational aspects of the calling. In doing so, the paper concludes that the intersection of 'secular' and 'religious' dimensions of the calling in these 'stories' adds to the persuasiveness and legitimacy of the activists' undertakings.
Paper short abstract:
The politics of secularism entail the negotiation of the fraught relationship between two principles of modern Western politics: freedom of conscience and ethical community. This paper discusses negotiations of this relationship in a Masonic lodge in Paris and a Christian fellowship in Mexico.
Paper long abstract:
The origins of the calling, as Weber tells it, are intertwined with the Protestant notion of freedom of conscience, exemplified in Luther's "Here I stand and I can do no other." Freedom of conscience has since become an axiomatic principle of Western politics. Freedom of conscience, however, sits in tension, if not outright contradiction, with another axiomatic modern political principle: functional associations of human beings require a minimum of shared understanding of ethical goods and normative bases for rules of governance, some degree of ethical community. The politics of secularism are usefully understood in terms of the negotiation of the strained relationship between these two principles of political common sense. While scholars usually analyze the politics of secularism at the scale of nation-states, where the ethical negotiations are harder to see, this paper focuses on everyday life maneuverings between freedom of conscience and ethical community as they play out at the individual and organizational level, at the level of vocation. The paper compares a liberal mode of negotiation in a Parisian Masonic lodge with an integral mode in a charismatic Christian businessmen's brotherhood in Mexico City. Freemasons draw on esoteric symbolism in attempt to conjoin freedom of conscience and ethical community in a way that defends public/private, church/world distinctions. The charismatic Christian businessmen, on the other hand, use performative proclamation in attempt to dismiss public/private, church/world distinctions and lay claim to an ethical conscience that is as indiscriminate as it is intimate.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses the narratives of commitment of young activists who have taken part in political movements during the so-called 'Arab Spring' in Morocco and Tunisia and reflects upon the marking events which had a bearing on their sense of having a new goal in life.
Paper long abstract:
Where does the Calling spring from? What are the events that influence the sense of having a mission in life? How can we study the sense of awareness of having a specific goal in life? And how does Beruf as 'vocation' may shape one's personal future, leading, for instance, to Beruf as 'profession'? Drawing from the results of the research project "Globally Sensitive. Revolt, Citizenship, and Expectations for the Future in North Africa" (https://globallysens.hypotheses.org/), this paper aims to address these questions through the analysis of the pathways of commitment of young activists who have taken part in the political movements appeared in North Africa during the so-called 'Arab Spring'. In particular, I present and discuss the narratives whereby my Moroccan and Tunisian interlocutors relate their experiences and emotions before and during the revolts and the events that they consider had a bearing on their personal choices. Although I address a sense of Beruf which is mostly secular, I explore the analogies with the feelings of transcendence and immediacy commonly evoked in narratives of religious conversion and argue that the Calling is an insight about oneself in which a new moral order arises out of a progressive series of shifts that are meaningful, but often also unaware.