Vascularizing the Study of Religion: Multi-Agent Figurations and Cosmopolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vásquez
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Contested Spaces ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Human Actors

Drawing from Bruno Latour and using the case of La Luz del Mundo, a Mexican Pentecostal church in Atlanta, as an example, this chapter demonstrates the payoffs of a non-reductive, materialist, networks approach to the study of religion. By embedding embodied, historical human actors in vascularized and inter-active ecological figurations from which they have evolved, and through and within which they carve out shared and contested spaces of livelihood, this approach moves beyond the Cartesian-Kantian model of the sovereign, unified, and buffered subject dominant in Western modernity and religious studies, more specifically, allowing for a rich exploration of the multiple processes and materials that make religious phenomena efficacious. The chapter concludes by endorsing Isabelle Stengers’s notion of a cosmopolitics that is maximally inclusive in its engagement with alterity.

Surface Media: McLuhan, the Bauhaus and the Tactile Values of TV

2021 ◽  
pp. 1357034X2110089
Author(s):  
Henning Schmidgen
Keyword(s):  
Media Use ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Sense Of Touch ◽  
Light Beams ◽  
Digital Computers

Marshall McLuhan understood television (TV) as a tactile medium. This understanding implied what Bruno Latour might call a ‘symmetrical’ conception of tactility. According to McLuhan, not only human actors are endowed with the sense of touch. In addition, TV, digital computers and other ‘electric media’ use light beams and similar scanning techniques for ceaselessly ‘caressing the contours’ of their surroundings. This notion of tactility was crucially shaped by the holistic aesthetics of the early Bauhaus. To get at the specific features of the TV image, McLuhan relied on the writings of László Moholy-Nagy and Sigfried Giedion, in particular their use of photography for capturing and highlighting the ‘texture’ of surfaces. However, he hardly reflected the social and political factors that, in the age of electric media, contribute to the ‘symmetricization’ of touch.

Religiosity Rejected

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-254
Author(s):  
Renee Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Belief Systems ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Collective Group ◽  
Ultimate Concern ◽  
The World ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Religious Nature

As the descendant of Werner Erhard's 1970s Human Potential group est (Erhard Seminars Training), Landmark Education has continuously denied being a religious organization. Despite ample discourse on the religious nature of the group within popular online and print media, a conspicuous void within academia - particularly within Religious Studies - speaks volumes. Rarely are the boundaries of what constitutes a ‘religion’ expanded in order to explore those groups that, though not understood to be ‘religious’ in a traditional sense, clearly contribute to contemporary 'spiritual' life. And yet, that Landmark Education is perceived as being somehow religious demands deeper analysis. This article highlights the problematics of 'religion' within late Western modernity as illustrated by the contention surrounding the religious status of both Scientology and Transcendental Meditation. A discussion of Landmark Education is offered in light of these issues, along with a dissection of the religio-spiritual dimensions of the organisation and its primary product, the Landmark Forum. Incorporating several eastern spiritual practices, the highly emotional nature of the Landmark Forum’s weekend training is such as to create Durkheimian notions of 'religious effervescence', altering pre-existing belief systems and producing a sense of the sacred collective. Group-specific language contributes to this, whilst simultaneously shrouding Landmark Education in mystery and esotericism. The Forum is replete with stories of miracles, healings, and salvation apposite for a modern western paradigm. Indeed, the sacred pervades the training, manifested in the form of the Self, capable of altering the very nature of the world and representing the 'ultimate concern'.

Talking about Associations and Descriptions or a Short Story about Associology

2017 ◽  
pp. 220-233
Author(s):  
Beate Ochsner
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Agency And Structure

In 1999, Bruno Latour advocated for “abandoning what was wrong with ANT, that is ‘actor,' ‘network,' ‘theory' without forgetting the hyphen.” However, it seems that the “hyphen,” which brings with it the operation of hyphenating or connecting, was abandoned too quickly. If one investigates what something is by asking what it is meant as well as how it emerges, by (re-)tracing the strategy in materials in situated practices and sets of relations, and, by bypassing the distinction between agency and structure, one shifts from studying “what causes what” to describing “how things happen.” This perspective not only makes it necessary for us to clarify the changing positions and displacements of human and non-human actors in the assemblage, but, also question the role (the enrolment) of the researcher him/herself: What kind of “relation” connects the researcher to his/her research and associates him/her with the subject, how to prevent (or not) his/her own involvement, and, to what degree s/he ignores the relationality of his/her writing in a “sociology of association?”

scholarly journals A.I. in Religion, A.I. for Religion, A.I. and Religion: Towards a Theory of Religious Studies and Artificial Intelligence

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 401
Author(s):  
Randall Reed
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The New Testament

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in a variety of fields and disciplines. Its promise is often seen in a variety of tasks, from playing games to driving cars. In this article, I will sketch a theory that opens the door to the use of artificial intelligence in the study of religion. Focusing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, I will show that if, following Smith, the study of religion is considered primarily an act of classification, it can be aided by narrow artificial intelligence that excels at classification and prediction. Then, using a web A.I. called EMMA to classify the New Testament texts as Pauline or non-Pauline as a toy example, I will explore the issues that occur in the application of A.I. Finally, I will turn to Bruno Latour and actor–network theory as a way to theorize the larger issues brought up by the productive use of artificial intelligence in the study of religion

scholarly journals Telewizja w sieci nowych mediów

2021 ◽  
pp. 387-400
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Powierska
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Accurate Representation ◽  
Media Services ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Viewing Practices

Television in the Network of New Media New media have had a considerable influence on television and the viewing practices of consumers. Social media services made it possible for everyone not only to express their opinion on shows, but also, on an increasing scale, to watch them via mobile applications. To describe these processes the author introduces the concept of the ‘connectivity of television,’ developed based on the ANT theory as proposed by Bruno Latour. According to that theory, describing television as a network incorporating both human and non-human actors is an accurate representation of the modern TV entangled with new media. Additionally, it allows to depart from hierarchical definitions of television (such as John Fiske’s three orders of text) and a strict division between the broadcaster and the audience.

scholarly journals Assessing Latour: The case of the sickle cell body in history

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-230
Author(s):  
Simon M. Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Sickle Cell ◽  
Cell Body ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Genetic Condition ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Human Actors

The work of Bruno Latour has animated debates in sociology, anthropology and philosophy over several decades, while attracting criticisms of the ontological, epistemological and political implications of his focus on networks. This article takes a particular depth example – the case of the genetic condition of sickle cell – and, drawing upon anthropological, archaeological and sociological evidence of the sickle cell body in history, appraises early, and later, Latourian ideas. The article concludes that while methodologically useful in drawing attention to the complicated links of humans, animals and things, concerns remain about Latourian ontological claims. Limitations include an empiricist failure to account for absence; an insufficiently robust conception of emergence; an unwarranted curtailment of counterfactual human knowledge; a lack of concern for serial ‘undeserving losers’; a tendency to accord excessive freedoms to human actors; and a lack of a conception of how things may be considered as agents rather than actants.

Beyond the Doctrine of Man

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Direct Reference ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Analytical Work ◽  
The Way

Beyond the Doctrine of Man responds to the question of how individuals and communities can live and have lived beyond the way the human person is defined in colonial modernity. This volume brings together essays that interrogate the problem of modern/colonial definitions of the human person and that take up the struggle to decolonize these descriptive statements. As the problem of coloniality transcends disciplinary constructions, so do the contributions in this book. They engage work from various fields, including ethnic studies, religious studies, theology, queer theory, philosophy, and literary studies. The essays in Beyond the Doctrine of Man were catalyzed by Sylvia Wynter’s questioning of modern/colonial descriptions of the human person. Wynter asks this question within a larger project of unsettling and countering these definitions. Contributors to this collection follow in this move—sometimes in direct reference to Wynter’s work and sometimes primarily focusing on the work of others—of asking how Western modernity has naturalized itself through a discourse on the human. This analytical work taken up by contributors is at the service of unsettling and countering this naturalization.

scholarly journals Latour - Semiotics and Science Studies

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roar Høstaker
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Technical Mediation ◽  
Theoretical Tool ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of this article is to study the relationship between Bruno Latour’s theories and semiotics. In particular the article compares Latour’s concepts to those of the linguist A.J. Greimas. From Latour’s earliest texts in science studies onwards, semiotics has been a basic theoretical tool. As the article will show, Latour privileges the autonomy of language in order to avoid the ascription of substance to human and non-human actors. It is within this autonomous field that his general associology based on trials of strength can come into play. Furthermore, the article analyses Latour’s theories concerning the gradual emergence of actors, circulation of references and technical mediation. Finally, the article tries to show how Latour’s approach reaches a limit when it comes to the study of the settings of social action. A way out of this problem is sketched while at the same time remaining within a semiotic universe. *Key words*: Bruno Latour, science studies, semiotics

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