Taxonomies of ritual mixing: Ritual healing in the contemporary United States

History of Religions

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 221-238

  Sered, Susan ^a  

^a SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42449089571     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/524211     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. For the Israeli childbirth research, see Susan Sered, "Religious Rituals and Secular Rituals: Interpenetrating Models of Childbirth in a Modern Israeli Context," Sociology of Religion 54, no. 1 (1993): 101-14.
2. For the Boston research see Susan Sered, ed., Religious Healing in Boston: Body, Spirit, Community Field (Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 2004),
3. and Religious Healing in Boston: Reports from the Field (Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 2002);
4. Susan Sered and Linda Barnes, eds., Religious Healing in Boston: First Findings (Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 2001).
5. Fritz Graf, "Syncretism, Further Consideration," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. in chief Lindsay Jones, 2nd ed., 15 vols. (Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005), 13:8934-38, quote on 8934. Graf points out that the term "syncretism" has been used by scholars of religion to describe the influences of one religion on another, the interpenetration of two religious systems, the mutual influence of local religions, the appropriation of foreign divinities, and the combination of different divinities into one entity. Some of these phenomena are conscious, and others are unconscious. His article does not, however, address issues concerning the agents of syncretism.
6. Carsten Colpe, "Syncretism [First Edition]," in Jones, Encyclopedia of Religion, 13:8931. This piece, written in 1987, suggests a preliminary taxonomy that does make some distinctions between different kinds of religious mixing. His taxonomy distinguishes "synthesis" (a partial integration of cultures into a higher unity such as Hellenism), "evolution" (a process internal to a system that produces new elements - the result of the new process is not syncretism but a new religion such as Bahai), "harmonization" (the idea that all religions are true and lead to union with God). This taxonomy is useful in many ways but does not look at issues of power or consciousness, that is, why one but not the other mixing process takes place in a particular instance.
7. The notable exception to this trend is Roger Bastide, whose important work on African-influenced religions in the New World is cited throughout this essay. See Roger Bastide, African Civilisations in the New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
8. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic, 1973).
9. In the racist colonial discourse of the early twentieth century, to be a "hybrid" was a negative designation implying laziness or describing natives reverting to their primitive ways. See Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995).
10. See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2003).
11. Bastide came close to distinguishing between different mixing levels or contexts but unfortunately interpreted these differences in terms of religion versus magic: "For religion, the rule [of amalgamation or syncretism] is to work by establishing parallels; for magic, by simply accumulation" (Bastide, African Civilisations, 154).
12. Pamela E. Klassen uses the term "ritual proximity" to describe similar situations ("Appropriate Ritual and Ritual Appropriation: Christian Healing and Adaptations of Asian Religions," History and Anthropology 16, no. 3 [2005]: 377-91).
13. Galina Lindquist identifies the larger "pool from where signs, images, ideas, expressive forms, and practices are drawn" in terms of "cultural ecumene" ("Breaking the Waves: Voodoo Magic in the Russian Cultural Ecumene," in Creating Diversities: Folklore, Religion and the Politics of Heritage, ed. Anna-Leena Siikala, Barbro Klein, and Stein R. Mathisen [Helsinki: Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 2004], 89-106).
14. Sered, "Religious Rituals."
15. Susan Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle, Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
16. Susan Sered, "Bodies and Souls: Jewish Healing in America," Pastoral Sciences 24, no. 2 (2005): 81-95.
17. Susan Sered, "Healing as Resistance: Reflections upon New Forms of American Jewish Healing," in Religion and Healing in America, ed. Linda Barnes and Susan Sered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 231-54.
18. For a similar analysis regarding a Latin American society, see Bonnie Glass-Coffin, The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
19. I think here of Jewish women born in Kurdistan telling me about the non-Jews who used ashes from fires in Jewish communities as a remedy for eye diseases (Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992]).
20. Sered and Fernandopulle, Uninsured in America. In this study, uninsured men and women often talked about feeling like a "loser."
21. See, e.g., Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).
22. Bastide, African Civilisations.
23. Sered, "Healing as Resistance."
24. Justin Lee, "Investigating the Hybridity of 'Wellness' Practices," Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis 28 (2005), http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi ?article=1033&context= uclasoc.
25. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (London: Routledge, 1994).
26. Sered, "Bodies and Souls."
27. See Little Audrey Santo's Official Web page at www.littleaudreysanto.org, and Mathew N. Schmalz, "The Silent Body of Audrey Santo," in History of Religious 42, no. 2 (2002): 116-42.
28. In actual practice Audrey's family does not fully cut her off from medical technology. Still, the ultimate value of that technology is diminished through their discourse and abundant use of religious objects. As Paula Kane observes, "The ventilator and feeding tube that sustain her life are hard to notice amid the clutter of religious paintings, statues, and memorabilia from shrines around the world" (quoted in Sally Ann Flecker, "On the Trail of Miracles," http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/winter2003/ feature4.html).
29. For an example, see www.faithandthecity.org/ . /photo-gallery.shtml.
30. See http://www.multifaith.org.
31. Mary Ann Clark, "Seven African Powers: Hybridity and Appropriation," Material History of American Religion Project, http://www.materialreligion.org/journal/candles.html.
32. See, e.g., http://www.reiki.org/FAQ/WhatIsReiki.html.
33. See, e.g., "The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous," www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.
34. Clark, "Seven African Powers."
35. Wendy Rose, "The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on Whiteshamanism," in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End, 1992), 403-21.
36. Pamela Klassen astutely points out that even these examples are more complex: there are many Native American Christians who encourage the sensitive use of native symbols and rituals in Christian worship, and there are many Hindu practitioners of yoga who are happy to spread the practice of yoga without necessarily incorporating other Hindu ritual practices (personal communications, 2006).
37. David Hufford (personal communication, 2002).
38. For a nuanced study of yoga in the United States, see Sarah Strauss, Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts across Cultures (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
39. Bron Taylor, "Earthen Spirituality or Cultural Genocide? Radical Environmentalism's Appropriation of Native American Spirituality," Religion 27, no. 2 (1997): 183-215.
40. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978).
41. See http://www.adventuretrekkers.com.