As we can see, since the late 1930s, scholars from different disciplines approach to religion syncretism variously and they have contributed their methods, as well as insights in helping us to understand it from different perspectives. Although they interpret it differently, they haven’t closely worked with each other. Peel and Horton think their intellectualist approach is compatible with Ifeka-Moller’s structural method. However, they both go into extremity and defend their own points of view and methods at the expense of underestimating other scholars’ constructive contributions. In fact, both historical and structural methods are needed in exploring religious change in the Atlantic world. If intellectualists, sociologists, anthropologists and scholars from other disciplines could collaborate with each other from different disciplines, our understanding of religious confusion will be greatly enriched.
As our studies on religious syncretism keep on going, our understanding of syncretism is always updating. Boas’s universalist/particularist strategy was firstly criticized by his student Herskovits in the late 1930s, and then Herskovits’s cultural relativism was displaced by the social structural and intellectualist methods in the 1970s. In the 1980s, scholars questioned traditional methods on interpreting it and asked themselves to reexamine it. Since the 1990s, scholars realized that syncretism was never a static concept, which was much more complex than what we could imagine. During the past years, it has been defined and redefined by various scholars. In the future, it will be reconsidered again and our understanding of religious change will also be renewed.
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Friday, December 16, 2011
David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson's book Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000
In 2007, David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson edit Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000, in which they attempt to beyond traditional canons on syncretism. As two authoritative experts on African studies, Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff presume “that curious mix of consent and contestation, desire and disgust, appropriation and accommodation, refusal and refiguration, ethnicization and hybridization — subsumed in the term ‘the colonial encounter.’” Following them, in editing the book, both David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson believe that the “curious mix” is in need of further consideration. Moreover, as the Comaroffs also recognize, the study of such encounters is inextricably tied to the meaning of “conversion” and points to a needed complexification of that term. In the book, “it looks at the ways in which different indigenous peoples have responded to the intrusion of foreign Christian missionaries into their worlds, and offers a number of case studies with an eye to identifying strategies and processes by which this negotiation typically takes place. Its aim is to point to a more nuanced and differentiated picture of such interchanges than is conveyed by terms presently in use.”
During this phase, as we can see, traditional cannons and methods are greatly questioned. As scholars are equipped with post-structural and post-colonial theories, they attempt to reconsider religious syncretism in various ways. Accompanying with this historical tide, scholars adopt more fashionable methods to discuss it and explore the undeveloped frontiers of religious syncretism.
During this phase, as we can see, traditional cannons and methods are greatly questioned. As scholars are equipped with post-structural and post-colonial theories, they attempt to reconsider religious syncretism in various ways. Accompanying with this historical tide, scholars adopt more fashionable methods to discuss it and explore the undeveloped frontiers of religious syncretism.
J.D.Y. Peel: Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba
Also, J.D.Y. Peel publishes a book entitled Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba in 2000, in which he discusses Yoruba religious history in the nineteenth century and revises his intellectualist theory. Focusing on Yoruba religion’s encounter with missionaries during the 60-70 years long mutual engagement of the two religious cultures, Peel argues that Christian conversion began to transform Christianity partially into a Yoruba experience. According to him, Yoruba endogenous cultures develops as a complex sequence of world events occurred — the rise of capitalism, missions, European colonialism, modern nation-states, and globalization. Moreover, as Peel notices, the process of transforming Christian conversion into a Yoruba experience came full circle in twentieth-century Aladura Christianity, when a fully formed Yoruba Christianity emerged, with few trappings of the European Christian mission. Indeed, mission Christianity made a unifying Yoruba identity possible at a later date, transforming new Yoruba converts into Western European Christianity with its own values, ideology, and worldview. By so doing, Christianity also created new Christian elite, discontented with their Yorubaness. Rather than merely discuss the exchange of ideas, he also discusses the social structural factors and their influences in shaping African’s religious views, especially on their conversion to Christianity. To some degree, he revises Horton’s intellectualist theory and tries to consider religious proselytization in a comprehensive way.
Christine Leigh Heyrman's book Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
Another classic is Christine Leigh Heyrman’s Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. In this book, Heyrman describes the arrival of the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians in the antebellum South and examines how evangelicalism displaced Anglicanism as the dominant religion of the South, as well as how southern evangelicalism came to embrace southern attitudes on slavery, race, gender and dominated the religious landscape of the South. As she mentions in the book, Evangelicalism came late to the American south, as an exotic import rather than an indigenous development. Before the 1740s, the South was dominated by the Anglicanism and Evangelicalism played little significance in it.
However, two factors greatly changed the religious landscape in the South. One was the demographical fluidity, which caused a large number of Scots-Irish Presbyterians and German pietists to come to the south. As she points out, “settlers began to spill south and west of Pennsylvania, pushing into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia during the 1740s, into the backcountry of the Carolinas and Georgia during the 1750s and 1760s, and later into adjacent Kentucky and Tennessee. These newcomers came mainly from the ranks of Scots-Irish Presbyterians and German pietists like the Moravians, Dunkers, Mennonites, and Schwenkfelders.” Also, the evangelical revivals in the northern colonies in the first half of the 18th century greatly transmitted evangelical ideas in the south and inspired the southerners to become evangelicals. As she notices, “in the late 1740s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont; by the 1750s, a group known as the Separate Baptists moved from New England to central North Carolina and quickly extended their influence to surrounding colonies; and in the late 1760s, the first English Methodist missionaries began preaching in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.” As more and more Methodist missionaries and Presbyterians preached in the south, traditional religious views of the Anglicanism were greatly challenged and more people converted to evangelicals rather than Anglicans.
Through examining various religious groups and their roles in southern states, Christine discusses religious dissemination and its impact on religious proselytization. Rather than focus on a specific religious group in a state, Christine explores it from an inter-state perspective, which greatly enriches our understanding of religious change in the American south.
However, two factors greatly changed the religious landscape in the South. One was the demographical fluidity, which caused a large number of Scots-Irish Presbyterians and German pietists to come to the south. As she points out, “settlers began to spill south and west of Pennsylvania, pushing into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia during the 1740s, into the backcountry of the Carolinas and Georgia during the 1750s and 1760s, and later into adjacent Kentucky and Tennessee. These newcomers came mainly from the ranks of Scots-Irish Presbyterians and German pietists like the Moravians, Dunkers, Mennonites, and Schwenkfelders.” Also, the evangelical revivals in the northern colonies in the first half of the 18th century greatly transmitted evangelical ideas in the south and inspired the southerners to become evangelicals. As she notices, “in the late 1740s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont; by the 1750s, a group known as the Separate Baptists moved from New England to central North Carolina and quickly extended their influence to surrounding colonies; and in the late 1760s, the first English Methodist missionaries began preaching in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.” As more and more Methodist missionaries and Presbyterians preached in the south, traditional religious views of the Anglicanism were greatly challenged and more people converted to evangelicals rather than Anglicans.
Through examining various religious groups and their roles in southern states, Christine discusses religious dissemination and its impact on religious proselytization. Rather than focus on a specific religious group in a state, Christine explores it from an inter-state perspective, which greatly enriches our understanding of religious change in the American south.
New Phase on Religious Syncretism
New Phase on Religious Syncretism
Since the 1990s, several classics are published, in which religious syncretism is greatly reconsidered. One of the most classical one was Syncretism/anti-syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, which is edited by Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Assuming that “embracing a term which has acquired pejorative meanings can lead to a more challenging critique of the assumptions on which those meanings are based,” Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw collect essays on the politics and processes of religious synthesis and attempt to rehabilitate syncretism. Rather than simply use the term as a label to define the boundaries of tradition and innovation, or the confines of culture and religion, they explore the fluidity, permeability and political contingency of these boundaries to become “part of the very subject-matter of syncretism.” Thus, syncretistic form continually created and recreated as particular actors struggle to promote or resist religious synthesis.
They are concerned to the complexities and contradictions inherent in processes of hybridization, which shapes the strength and novelty of their book.
For example, in discussing the changes introduced in male initiation rites in northeast Papua New Guinea, Wolfgang Kempf challenges our traditional understanding of syncretism through accounting the paradoxical nature of syncretism. Focusing on the circumcision ritual as a product of the Yawing’s encounter with Western colonial values and practices, Kempf points to the contradictions emerging from Yawing men’s subversive appropriation of Christian concepts. In their struggle to resist Christian hegemony, the Yawing end up reproducing the very discourse they try to challenge, thereby contributing to the legitimation of Christian values. Rather than discuss how Christians forced Yawing men to accept their Christian views or how Yawming men directly responded to European Christianization, he tells us the Yawming could appropriate Christian views in their own ways, which could not be simply explained by traditional approaches. Therefore, the complexity and ambiguities of religious change is still in need of further explorations for scholars.
Since the 1990s, several classics are published, in which religious syncretism is greatly reconsidered. One of the most classical one was Syncretism/anti-syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, which is edited by Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Assuming that “embracing a term which has acquired pejorative meanings can lead to a more challenging critique of the assumptions on which those meanings are based,” Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw collect essays on the politics and processes of religious synthesis and attempt to rehabilitate syncretism. Rather than simply use the term as a label to define the boundaries of tradition and innovation, or the confines of culture and religion, they explore the fluidity, permeability and political contingency of these boundaries to become “part of the very subject-matter of syncretism.” Thus, syncretistic form continually created and recreated as particular actors struggle to promote or resist religious synthesis.
They are concerned to the complexities and contradictions inherent in processes of hybridization, which shapes the strength and novelty of their book.
For example, in discussing the changes introduced in male initiation rites in northeast Papua New Guinea, Wolfgang Kempf challenges our traditional understanding of syncretism through accounting the paradoxical nature of syncretism. Focusing on the circumcision ritual as a product of the Yawing’s encounter with Western colonial values and practices, Kempf points to the contradictions emerging from Yawing men’s subversive appropriation of Christian concepts. In their struggle to resist Christian hegemony, the Yawing end up reproducing the very discourse they try to challenge, thereby contributing to the legitimation of Christian values. Rather than discuss how Christians forced Yawing men to accept their Christian views or how Yawming men directly responded to European Christianization, he tells us the Yawming could appropriate Christian views in their own ways, which could not be simply explained by traditional approaches. Therefore, the complexity and ambiguities of religious change is still in need of further explorations for scholars.
Evandro M. Camara on Religious Syncretism
In contrast with Thornton, sociologist Evandro M. Camara rediscovers the religious tradition established by Max Weber and believes that a Weberian perspective could explain Afro-American religious syncretism in Brazil and the United States. Focusing on the nature of ritual life and religious belief, Camara examines the relationship of Catholicism in Brazil and Protestantism in the United States with West African religions, in the framework of Max Weber's typology of religions of salvation and considers the impact of structural dimension on the interaction between the Christian churches and West African religious culture. Catholicism, according to him, “as practiced in colonial and imperial Brazil, differed from the orthodox version of Rome for having a complex of ritual and belief that brought it much closer to ‘primitive’ religion, as exemplified by the religious systems of the slaves. In reference to the category of this-worldly religion, this brand of Catholicism was a structural analogue to the West African religions. The other-worldly, ascetic Protestantism of the U.S., on the other hand, was antithetical to them. The basic dichotomy in the analysis, therefore, is not between Christian and non-Christian models, but between this-worldly and other-worldly ones.” Camara argues Brazilian Catholicism aided the preservation of religious Africanisms via a strong structural parallelism. However, evangelical Protestantism in the United States was inimical to the continuation of African religious practices due to their structural incomspatibility, and to the resulting systematic suppression of African cultural traits by Protestant clergymen.
In the historiography of African religious syncretism, the 1980s is a turbulent era. During that time, although scholars from different disciplines criticize both the social structural and intellectualist approaches, they could not convincing their colleagues by providing a new method and persuade their critics. Although there are no authoritive cannons at this time, it asks scholars to explore the unknown field of religious conversion study and reexamine traditional methods, as well as their definitions on syncretism.
In the historiography of African religious syncretism, the 1980s is a turbulent era. During that time, although scholars from different disciplines criticize both the social structural and intellectualist approaches, they could not convincing their colleagues by providing a new method and persuade their critics. Although there are no authoritive cannons at this time, it asks scholars to explore the unknown field of religious conversion study and reexamine traditional methods, as well as their definitions on syncretism.
John Thornton on Religious Syncretism
Thornton presumes that traditional methods simplified religious amalgamation, and then he proclaims a new perspective to reinterpret it. Thornton suggests a modified view of the development of New World religions that blended African and Christian elements. Instead of looking solely at the New World situation, Thornton focuses on the religious developments in the New World as an outgrowth of the prior conversion of a portion of Africa, and the development there of an African variant of Christianity. He argues that the development of an African Catholic Church not only took place especially in the Central African Kingdom of Kongo, but also in a number of other places along the West African coast. Then he points out they provided the philosophical underpinnings which clergy in the African ports and the New World largely took whole and disseminated among those slaves who were not already cognizant of African Christianity. The clergy in America, overworked and lacking opportunities to engage in substantial teaching in any case, found African Christianity acceptable, while Africans who came from non-Christian parts of Africa found it comprehensible and adapted it easily. Much of the philosophy that underlies the syncretic or mixed religious cults of the New World could be traced to African Christianity, and even much of the action taken by American clergy to suppress some types of religious practice among slaves came from African Christianity.
Criticism on Religious Syncretism
Following Fisher and Ubah, Luc de Heusc believes that both scholars should combine social structural and intellectualist theories together. In doing his research on Haitian voodoo, Luc de Heusc argues that any religion, including Christianity, was ultimately a syncretic phenomenon. In approaching to it, “historical and structural interpretations have to be brought together within the scope of the anthropology of religion.” Instead of choosing between two opposed explanations,” Luc de Heusc thinks scholars need to show how both work together, because they want a full understanding of syncretism.
As a pioneer in the field of African religious study, John Thornton also questions traditional approaches on religious conversion. As he notices, most approaches to cultural amalgamation assume that the process took place in the Americas, with slaves arriving directly from Africa, carrying with them memories of their own religion, meeting a society which insisted with greater or less determination on converting them to Christianity. Thus, their traditional African beliefs could not survive and they would be assimilated into American society when they encountered Americans and integrated themselves into the American society. Moreover, their religious views would be conversed by Christian doctrines. This perspective is useful in helping us to understand religious encounters between Africans and Americans in the new world, but it ignores African variant of Christianity before they arrived in the New World.
As a pioneer in the field of African religious study, John Thornton also questions traditional approaches on religious conversion. As he notices, most approaches to cultural amalgamation assume that the process took place in the Americas, with slaves arriving directly from Africa, carrying with them memories of their own religion, meeting a society which insisted with greater or less determination on converting them to Christianity. Thus, their traditional African beliefs could not survive and they would be assimilated into American society when they encountered Americans and integrated themselves into the American society. Moreover, their religious views would be conversed by Christian doctrines. This perspective is useful in helping us to understand religious encounters between Africans and Americans in the new world, but it ignores African variant of Christianity before they arrived in the New World.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Dissenting Voices on Both Social Structural and Intellectualist Approaches
Dissenting Voices on Both Social Structural and Intellectualist Approaches
In the 1980s, scholars are dissatisfied with both social structural and intellectualist theories. Although Ifeka-Moller and Horton and Peel offer scholars two lenses to explore religious syncretism, some scholars still suspect their feasibility. Unlike Horton and other scholars who have done their researches on Christian conversion, Humphrey J. Fisher examines Muslim conversion and suggests that Muslim/Christian comparisons might considerably enlarge our understandings upon black Africa. He points out, Horton “overestimated the survival, admittedly in considerably developed forms, of original African elements of religion; and more important, has underestimated the willingness and ability of Africans to make even rigorous Islam and Christianity their own.” Take the Knight of Eden and the Phoenix Knight in Africa as two case studies, he thinks Muslim or Christian conversion in Africa was inherent in the traditional African faiths. In discussing religious change among the Igbo during the colonial period, C. N. Ubah assumes that both the intellectualist and social structural theories had their drawbacks, because they ignored two major factors in explaining the spread of Christianity in Igboland. According to him, “the first is the tolerant nature of Igbo traditional religion,” secondly, “there were the structural and organizational weaknesses of Igbo traditional religion.”
In the 1980s, scholars are dissatisfied with both social structural and intellectualist theories. Although Ifeka-Moller and Horton and Peel offer scholars two lenses to explore religious syncretism, some scholars still suspect their feasibility. Unlike Horton and other scholars who have done their researches on Christian conversion, Humphrey J. Fisher examines Muslim conversion and suggests that Muslim/Christian comparisons might considerably enlarge our understandings upon black Africa. He points out, Horton “overestimated the survival, admittedly in considerably developed forms, of original African elements of religion; and more important, has underestimated the willingness and ability of Africans to make even rigorous Islam and Christianity their own.” Take the Knight of Eden and the Phoenix Knight in Africa as two case studies, he thinks Muslim or Christian conversion in Africa was inherent in the traditional African faiths. In discussing religious change among the Igbo during the colonial period, C. N. Ubah assumes that both the intellectualist and social structural theories had their drawbacks, because they ignored two major factors in explaining the spread of Christianity in Igboland. According to him, “the first is the tolerant nature of Igbo traditional religion,” secondly, “there were the structural and organizational weaknesses of Igbo traditional religion.”
Robin Horton and J. D. Y. Peel on Religious Syncretism
Replying to Ifeka-Moller's criticism, both Robin Horton and J. D. Y. Peel point out, at the root of Ifeka-Moller’s muddles, she “is the misleading antithesis between ‘social-structural’ and ‘intellectualist’ approaches, which vitiated her analysis in both directions. Moreover, they assert that her social-structural approach was in error, because it “is the direct result of failure to take serious account of the intellectual basis of the institution concerned.” Like Ifeka-Moller who questions intellectualist theory without hesitation, both Horton and Peel defend their arguments and actively respond to their criticism.
It is hard to say which approach is much better. However, it is undeniable a fact that both social structural and intellectualist theories could help us renew our understandings of religious change. The social structural approach pays more attention to the structural factors and its impact on people’s inner minds, while the intellectualist approach focuses on the internal factors and its influences in shaping people’s religious proselytization. It seems that Ifeka-Moller overestimates the incompatibilities of these two methods and underestimates their compatibilities in helping us to explain religious conversion. While in fact, there is no need to put them in an antithesis relationship with each other.
It is hard to say which approach is much better. However, it is undeniable a fact that both social structural and intellectualist theories could help us renew our understandings of religious change. The social structural approach pays more attention to the structural factors and its impact on people’s inner minds, while the intellectualist approach focuses on the internal factors and its influences in shaping people’s religious proselytization. It seems that Ifeka-Moller overestimates the incompatibilities of these two methods and underestimates their compatibilities in helping us to explain religious conversion. While in fact, there is no need to put them in an antithesis relationship with each other.
Ifeka-Moller on Religious Syncretism
However, ignoring social structural changes and its impact on people’s inner minds, Horton’s approach is harshly criticized by Ifeka-Moller, who assumes that a social structural theory is much more fruitful than his approach. By saying “conversion,” Ifeka-Moller believes that “neither Peel nor Horton spell out clearly what they mean.” Instead, she takes conversion to mean “a change of affiliation from cult to church, or from orthodox Christianity to spiritualist church” and leaves aside problems “concerning the extent to which a move from one kind of religious group to another is associated with changes of attitude and behavior.” Ifeka-Moller doubts Horton’s intellectualist theory, because she assumes that his argument “is open to the charge of tautology,” “his ‘thought-experiment’ is question begging,” “his monolatric theory also leads him to contradict himself,” and there is no ethnographic evidence could support his monolatric hypothesis. In replying to Ifeka-Moller’s criticism, Horton and Peel list her principle objections according to their understandings:
“1. Horton claims that responses to the world religions would, given the appropriate conditions, have occurred in some recognizable form even in the absence of such religions. However, he produces no independent evidence of anything of the sort occurring in the absence of the world religions; and his reasoning in this respect is circular and question-begging.
2. Horton makes the weakening of the boundaries insulating the local community from the wider world crucial for the development of a more monolatric religious life. But the comparative evidence from India and other places suggests that such weakening of boundaries is by no means always followed by monolatric developments.
3. Horton claims that prior changes in traditional beliefs facilitated acceptance of mission Christianity. But if such prior changes had already taken place, why did people bother to change their religious affiliation? Why did they not simply greet the new message with: Oh yes! There is God: just what hw thought he would be?
4. Horton’s monolatric theory also leads to contradict himself. He says that mission Christianity is in some respects so like the modified traditional religion that people can easily switch from the one to the other. If this is so, Horton cannot at the same time argue that conversion to the Aladuras comes about on account of the tension and conflict that exists between mission cosmology and traditional modes of thought.
5. Horton would have been better equipped to deal with these and other problems if he had bothered to analyze the social factors in which religious change is encapsulated, rather than leaving them unexamined and unexplained. This being so, he is unable to assess the significance in conversion of intellectual factors.”
Ifeka-Moller considers that Horton’s intellectualist theory is unconvincing. She points out, “first, ethnographic evidence does not support Horton's hypothesis that monolatric innovation in traditional cult facilitated conversion to mission Christianity. Second, Horton’s intellectualist theory obscures rather than clarifies the situational complexity of religious change.” In discussing the causes of conversion to mission Christianity and the growth of Aladura churches in eastern Nigeria from 1921 to 1966, she argues that mass conversion was a consequence of social change rather than the exchange of ideas. Then she discusses how they were incorporated into the new world economy, the imposition of new political roles under the colonial system, and a growing realization among the inhabitants of these communities that they had failed to obtain the rewards promised by acceptance of these radical changes. Noticing the structural changes and their significant roles in influencing people’s conversion to other religions, she believes that “social structural factors are the most fruitful field of research, rather than the ideas and values which form the core of a belief system.”
“1. Horton claims that responses to the world religions would, given the appropriate conditions, have occurred in some recognizable form even in the absence of such religions. However, he produces no independent evidence of anything of the sort occurring in the absence of the world religions; and his reasoning in this respect is circular and question-begging.
2. Horton makes the weakening of the boundaries insulating the local community from the wider world crucial for the development of a more monolatric religious life. But the comparative evidence from India and other places suggests that such weakening of boundaries is by no means always followed by monolatric developments.
3. Horton claims that prior changes in traditional beliefs facilitated acceptance of mission Christianity. But if such prior changes had already taken place, why did people bother to change their religious affiliation? Why did they not simply greet the new message with: Oh yes! There is God: just what hw thought he would be?
4. Horton’s monolatric theory also leads to contradict himself. He says that mission Christianity is in some respects so like the modified traditional religion that people can easily switch from the one to the other. If this is so, Horton cannot at the same time argue that conversion to the Aladuras comes about on account of the tension and conflict that exists between mission cosmology and traditional modes of thought.
5. Horton would have been better equipped to deal with these and other problems if he had bothered to analyze the social factors in which religious change is encapsulated, rather than leaving them unexamined and unexplained. This being so, he is unable to assess the significance in conversion of intellectual factors.”
Ifeka-Moller considers that Horton’s intellectualist theory is unconvincing. She points out, “first, ethnographic evidence does not support Horton's hypothesis that monolatric innovation in traditional cult facilitated conversion to mission Christianity. Second, Horton’s intellectualist theory obscures rather than clarifies the situational complexity of religious change.” In discussing the causes of conversion to mission Christianity and the growth of Aladura churches in eastern Nigeria from 1921 to 1966, she argues that mass conversion was a consequence of social change rather than the exchange of ideas. Then she discusses how they were incorporated into the new world economy, the imposition of new political roles under the colonial system, and a growing realization among the inhabitants of these communities that they had failed to obtain the rewards promised by acceptance of these radical changes. Noticing the structural changes and their significant roles in influencing people’s conversion to other religions, she believes that “social structural factors are the most fruitful field of research, rather than the ideas and values which form the core of a belief system.”
Herskovits on Religious Syncretism
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the dominant view in American social science presumes African Americans discarded their remnants of African culture. However, this view is greatly challenged by Herskovits. In his classic — The Myth of the Negro Past (1941), he argues that blacks in the United States retain African cultural elements in their music and art, social structure and family life, religion and speech patterns and they are not completely assimilated in American population.
Herskovits credits Arthur Ramos as one of the first to employ the concept of syncretism to account for the identification of African deities with Catholic saints in Brazilian Candomblé. However, it is him who greatly promotes the study of African religious syncretism in scholarship in the 1930s and 1940s. When The Myth of the Negro Past was published for the first time in 1941, as Sidney W. Mintz points out, “it was a work almost without precedent” and “that the field in which he was a pioneer, the Afro-American tradition, was nearly a perfect vacuum at the time reflects the way society conditions the insights of the social sciences.” Like Mintz, Andrew Apter also believes that Herkovits has made great contribution to the study of African religious syncretism. According to him, “Herskovits more than any other scholar posed the African-American connection as a theoretical problem that, in the service of a progressive if intellectually circumscribed political agenda, demanded systematic research into an unprecedented range of West African and New World cultures.” Herskovits of course is not the first scholar who firstly pays attention to the Afro-American religious syncretism, but his studies on it encourage more scholars to explore it, which greatly promotes the rise of religious syncretism study in American scholarship.
Herskovits credits Arthur Ramos as one of the first to employ the concept of syncretism to account for the identification of African deities with Catholic saints in Brazilian Candomblé. However, it is him who greatly promotes the study of African religious syncretism in scholarship in the 1930s and 1940s. When The Myth of the Negro Past was published for the first time in 1941, as Sidney W. Mintz points out, “it was a work almost without precedent” and “that the field in which he was a pioneer, the Afro-American tradition, was nearly a perfect vacuum at the time reflects the way society conditions the insights of the social sciences.” Like Mintz, Andrew Apter also believes that Herkovits has made great contribution to the study of African religious syncretism. According to him, “Herskovits more than any other scholar posed the African-American connection as a theoretical problem that, in the service of a progressive if intellectually circumscribed political agenda, demanded systematic research into an unprecedented range of West African and New World cultures.” Herskovits of course is not the first scholar who firstly pays attention to the Afro-American religious syncretism, but his studies on it encourage more scholars to explore it, which greatly promotes the rise of religious syncretism study in American scholarship.
Religious Syncretism: Intellectualist Theory Vs Social Structural Theory
Intellectualist Theory Vs Social Structural Theory
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, regarding to the approaches to the Afro-American religious syncretism, there is a big debate in scholarship. Focusing on ideas and its impact on African Christian’s minds, J. D. Y. Peel and Robin Horton assert their intellectualist theory. However, Caroline Ifeka-Moller questions his theory, because she assumes that it is social structural factors rather than intellectual exchange that cause religious confusion. Later, in response to her criticism, both Robin Horton and J. D. Y. Peel write a rejoinder to reply and attempt to defend their intellectualist approach.
In the late 1960s, both Peel and Horton advocate scholars to do their researches on the combination of African religious views with Christianity from an intellectualist approach. In analyzing religious Change in Yorubaland and attempting to understand alien belief systems, Peel demonstrates that an intellectualist approach is very helpful for him to understand African religious history. In 1971, in Journal of the International African Institute, Robin Horton published his article — “African Conversion,” in which he asserted his intellectualist theory on religious conversion in detail. For one thing, he believes that when people faced with new situations, they tended to adapt themselves to it as far as possible in terms of their existing ideas and attitudes; for another thing, he argues that people would assimilate new ideas, they did so because ideas could make sense to them in terms of the notions they already held. Based on these two assumptions, he explains his intellectualist approach. According to Him, there are four important implications in the field of religious change:
“1. Given the appropriate social changes, certain religious innovations normally associated with the influence of Islam and Christianity (e.g. development of the concept and cult of an active, morally-concerned supreme being) are likely to occur even in the absence of these world faiths.
2. Even where Islam and/or Christianity are present, the ideational changes normally associated with them are likely to occur only in the presence of the appropriate social changes.
3. Given the appropriate social changes and the presence of Islam and/or Christianity, acceptance of ideas from the world faiths will be highly selective. Just what is accepted and what rejected will be determined very largely by the structure of the basic cosmology, and by the limits which this structure sets to the cosmology's potential for adaptive change.
4. It follows from these three points that African responses to Islam and Christianity are responses which, given the appropriate social and economic conditions, might well have occurred in some recognizable form even in the absence of these world faiths.”
Central to Horton’s theory is the exchange of ideas when people face with new circumstances. Moreover, he believes that his theory not only offers a key to the understanding of religious encounters, but provides a way to explain the response of Africans to the exterior religions. Therefore, in order to understand African conversion, it is very necessary for scholars to discuss why people change their minds in terms of religious views, as well as how they adapt themselves to the new atmospheres.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, regarding to the approaches to the Afro-American religious syncretism, there is a big debate in scholarship. Focusing on ideas and its impact on African Christian’s minds, J. D. Y. Peel and Robin Horton assert their intellectualist theory. However, Caroline Ifeka-Moller questions his theory, because she assumes that it is social structural factors rather than intellectual exchange that cause religious confusion. Later, in response to her criticism, both Robin Horton and J. D. Y. Peel write a rejoinder to reply and attempt to defend their intellectualist approach.
In the late 1960s, both Peel and Horton advocate scholars to do their researches on the combination of African religious views with Christianity from an intellectualist approach. In analyzing religious Change in Yorubaland and attempting to understand alien belief systems, Peel demonstrates that an intellectualist approach is very helpful for him to understand African religious history. In 1971, in Journal of the International African Institute, Robin Horton published his article — “African Conversion,” in which he asserted his intellectualist theory on religious conversion in detail. For one thing, he believes that when people faced with new situations, they tended to adapt themselves to it as far as possible in terms of their existing ideas and attitudes; for another thing, he argues that people would assimilate new ideas, they did so because ideas could make sense to them in terms of the notions they already held. Based on these two assumptions, he explains his intellectualist approach. According to Him, there are four important implications in the field of religious change:
“1. Given the appropriate social changes, certain religious innovations normally associated with the influence of Islam and Christianity (e.g. development of the concept and cult of an active, morally-concerned supreme being) are likely to occur even in the absence of these world faiths.
2. Even where Islam and/or Christianity are present, the ideational changes normally associated with them are likely to occur only in the presence of the appropriate social changes.
3. Given the appropriate social changes and the presence of Islam and/or Christianity, acceptance of ideas from the world faiths will be highly selective. Just what is accepted and what rejected will be determined very largely by the structure of the basic cosmology, and by the limits which this structure sets to the cosmology's potential for adaptive change.
4. It follows from these three points that African responses to Islam and Christianity are responses which, given the appropriate social and economic conditions, might well have occurred in some recognizable form even in the absence of these world faiths.”
Central to Horton’s theory is the exchange of ideas when people face with new circumstances. Moreover, he believes that his theory not only offers a key to the understanding of religious encounters, but provides a way to explain the response of Africans to the exterior religions. Therefore, in order to understand African conversion, it is very necessary for scholars to discuss why people change their minds in terms of religious views, as well as how they adapt themselves to the new atmospheres.
Anthropologists and Sociologists on Religious Syncretism
Following Herskovits, sociologists and anthropologists turn their interests to the study of African religious syncretism. As an anthropologist, Alfred Métraux is concerned to uncover the African substructure of Voodooism and he explores the motives of conversion of Vodun believers to Protestantism. In his Voodoo in Haiti, he mainly discusses the native religion of Haiti. He traces the origins of Voodoo from the religious beliefs practiced by the indigenous peoples of West Africa who were brought to the New World accompanying with the Atlantic slave trade. Moreover, he analyzes Voodoo clergy, houses of worship, rituals, initiation rites, holidays, sacraments, and the role of magic in the religion. Through examining the interaction of Voodoo and Christianity, he shows how Voodoo had in turn borrowed from French Catholicism and converted to its magical uses Catholic saints, rituals, and religious objects. Although he touches religious proselytism and adopted comparative method, he doesn’t mainly focus on the interaction of Voodoo and Christianity.
Unlike anthropologists, sociologists approach to it rather differently. In African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations, Roger Bastide believes that the correspondences between saints and African deities transplanted to America were analogous to those found in Brazil. Moreover, he thinks that this phenomenon could be explained only by the structural, cultural, and sociological parallels that facilitated the infiltration of Catholicism into the African sects and its reinterpretation in African terms. According to him, they were:
“1. The structural parallel between the Catholic theology of the saints’ intercession with the Virgin Mary, the Virgin’s intercession with Jesus, and the intercession of Jesus with God the Father and the African cosmology of the orixás as mediators between man and Olorun.
2. The cultural parallel between the functional conception of the saints, each of whom presides over a certain human activity or is responsible for healing a certain disease, and the equally functional conception of the voduns and orixás, each of whom is in charge of a certain sector of nature and who, like the saints, are the patrons of trades and occupations, protecting the hunter, the smith, the healer, etc.
3. The sociological parallel between the Brazilian ‘nations’ or the Cuban cabildos and the Catholic fraternities.”
Compared with Boas and Herskovits, Bastide’s method was more concrete. He analyzes it from a sociological perspective and furthers our understandings of religious conversion. Although he explores it from a synchronic perspective, a historical process of religious conversion is still absent.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, religious syncretism as a topic is greatly paid attention to by scholars. Although Herskovits’s cultural relativism is helpful for them to understand African religious confusion, rarely have they approached it in terms of his method. It is an undeniable fact that scholars start to focus on religious encounters and their impacts on African indigenous people, as well as on Africans in the new world during their African diasporas. However, as for the suitable methods to discuss it, scholars are still in need of further explorations.
Unlike anthropologists, sociologists approach to it rather differently. In African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations, Roger Bastide believes that the correspondences between saints and African deities transplanted to America were analogous to those found in Brazil. Moreover, he thinks that this phenomenon could be explained only by the structural, cultural, and sociological parallels that facilitated the infiltration of Catholicism into the African sects and its reinterpretation in African terms. According to him, they were:
“1. The structural parallel between the Catholic theology of the saints’ intercession with the Virgin Mary, the Virgin’s intercession with Jesus, and the intercession of Jesus with God the Father and the African cosmology of the orixás as mediators between man and Olorun.
2. The cultural parallel between the functional conception of the saints, each of whom presides over a certain human activity or is responsible for healing a certain disease, and the equally functional conception of the voduns and orixás, each of whom is in charge of a certain sector of nature and who, like the saints, are the patrons of trades and occupations, protecting the hunter, the smith, the healer, etc.
3. The sociological parallel between the Brazilian ‘nations’ or the Cuban cabildos and the Catholic fraternities.”
Compared with Boas and Herskovits, Bastide’s method was more concrete. He analyzes it from a sociological perspective and furthers our understandings of religious conversion. Although he explores it from a synchronic perspective, a historical process of religious conversion is still absent.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, religious syncretism as a topic is greatly paid attention to by scholars. Although Herskovits’s cultural relativism is helpful for them to understand African religious confusion, rarely have they approached it in terms of his method. It is an undeniable fact that scholars start to focus on religious encounters and their impacts on African indigenous people, as well as on Africans in the new world during their African diasporas. However, as for the suitable methods to discuss it, scholars are still in need of further explorations.
Herskovits and the Religious Syncretism
Herskovits also challenges sociological interpretations of American and New World Negro institutions and practices. Sociologists E. Franklin Frazier and Robert E. Park argue that the Afro-American culture represented functional adaptations to socioeconomic conditions rather than African cultural survivals. Regarding to this interpretation, Herskovits disagrees with them. He points out, syncretism was produced in situations of contact between cultures from “the tendency to identify those elements in the new culture with similar elements in the old one, enabling the persons experiencing the contact to move from one to the other, and back again, with psychological ease.” Then he “called for greater sensitivity to history and culture in the acculturative process, arguing effectively that synchronic sociological reductionism not only violated the ethnographic record, but worse, supported the racist myth that the Negro had no meaningful African history or heritage.”
In order to explain his understanding of religious conversion, Herskovits demonstrates his ethnohistorical method and thoughts in detail. He claims that anthropologists should combine ethnology and history together “to recover the predominant regional and tribal origins of the New World Negroes” and “to establish the cultural base-lines from which the processes of change began.” To assess the relative purity of African retentions and to specify their social domains, Herskovits adopts several related concepts which together can be glossed as the “syncretic paradigm,” these concepts were: (1) scale of intensity, (2) cultural focus, (3) syncretism proper, (4) reinterpretation, and (5) cultural imponderables.
In order to explain his understanding of religious conversion, Herskovits demonstrates his ethnohistorical method and thoughts in detail. He claims that anthropologists should combine ethnology and history together “to recover the predominant regional and tribal origins of the New World Negroes” and “to establish the cultural base-lines from which the processes of change began.” To assess the relative purity of African retentions and to specify their social domains, Herskovits adopts several related concepts which together can be glossed as the “syncretic paradigm,” these concepts were: (1) scale of intensity, (2) cultural focus, (3) syncretism proper, (4) reinterpretation, and (5) cultural imponderables.
Herskovits and the “Syncretic Paradigm”
Scholars have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity in the New World since the late 1930s. However, rarely have they examined the historiography of religious syncretism. In this paper, rather than discuss the impact of religious syncretism on a specific people, I am going to consider African religious syncretism from a historiographical perspective and discuss its contributions in helping us to renew our understandings of the African religious change in the Atlantic world.
Herskovits and the “Syncretic Paradigm”
In analyzing race and ethnicity, anthropologist Franz Boas firstly questions traditional beliefs and proposed his own strategies to deal with it after the World War I. Traditional anthropologists argue that blacks were genetically inferior and “unassimilable” to American culture. However, through adopting two conflicting strategies, namely, universalist and particularist, Boas attempts to reinterpret it. He thinks race as an important category for understanding mental and emotional characteristics of individuals and his universalist strategy predicted that modern technology was creating a uniform culture in America to which blacks were rapidly assimilating. Moreover, he even assumes that blacks would be assimilated in the United States.
Boas confidently believes that his dualist approach could explain African religious conversion and he never confronts the contradiction between his universalism and particularism. However, Melville Herskovits, the only Boas student who mainly conducts investigations on Afro-American cultures, deeply reflects the drawbacks of his methods. Herskovits is very interested in considering the relationship between Afro-American and white American culture, as well as the historical diffusion of African culture in the New World. Unlike Boas, he recognizes that the universalist/particularist classification was problematic and develops a theory of cultural relativism. According to him, “the somewhat more thoroughgoing assimilation of Christian and pagan beliefs which has taken place among New World Negroes has, however, gone in large measure unrecognized.” In the case of the New World Negroes who lived under Catholic influence in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, he presumes that the religious exchange was not one-sided and Boas’s dualist method limits our understanding of African history and culture.
Herskovits and the “Syncretic Paradigm”
In analyzing race and ethnicity, anthropologist Franz Boas firstly questions traditional beliefs and proposed his own strategies to deal with it after the World War I. Traditional anthropologists argue that blacks were genetically inferior and “unassimilable” to American culture. However, through adopting two conflicting strategies, namely, universalist and particularist, Boas attempts to reinterpret it. He thinks race as an important category for understanding mental and emotional characteristics of individuals and his universalist strategy predicted that modern technology was creating a uniform culture in America to which blacks were rapidly assimilating. Moreover, he even assumes that blacks would be assimilated in the United States.
Boas confidently believes that his dualist approach could explain African religious conversion and he never confronts the contradiction between his universalism and particularism. However, Melville Herskovits, the only Boas student who mainly conducts investigations on Afro-American cultures, deeply reflects the drawbacks of his methods. Herskovits is very interested in considering the relationship between Afro-American and white American culture, as well as the historical diffusion of African culture in the New World. Unlike Boas, he recognizes that the universalist/particularist classification was problematic and develops a theory of cultural relativism. According to him, “the somewhat more thoroughgoing assimilation of Christian and pagan beliefs which has taken place among New World Negroes has, however, gone in large measure unrecognized.” In the case of the New World Negroes who lived under Catholic influence in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, he presumes that the religious exchange was not one-sided and Boas’s dualist method limits our understanding of African history and culture.
Themes and Trends of Religious Syncretism in Africa and Americas
Since the Great Discovery in late 15th century, religious encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans were inescapable. As Europeans traveled around the world, it not only happened in Africa, but also in Americas. On the one hand, European missionaries transmitted their religious views to non-Europeans; on the other hand, non-Europeans responded to European religious penetration, assimilated new ideas and adapted themselves to new circumstances. As an important historical topic, scholars are interested in discussing how African and European religious views and practices were mixed together in the Atlantic world. Although it was quite a popular phenomenon in world history, it was until the late 1930s that scholars started to focus on it and attempted to explore it in understanding cultural acculturation.
In the history of the development of religious conversion study, it experiences four phases. From late 1930s to 1960s, Melville Herskovits doubts Franz Boas’s dualist approach and poses his cultural relativism in examining Afro-American culture. Then from late 1960s to the late 1970s, J. D. Y. Peel and Robin Horton propose his intellectualist theory and Caroline Ifeka-Moller presents her social structural theory, which causes a big debate regarding to the methods on it. From late 1970s to late 1980s, scholars rethink their various methods on interpreting it. In this context, Evandro M. Camara rediscovers Max Weber’s religious tradition and advocates a Weberian sociological analysis in approaching it. Since the 1990s, as social scientists are equipped with new theories, they define syncretism as a contested concept, explore its complexity, and attempt to beyond traditional cannons and methods on it.
In the history of the development of religious conversion study, it experiences four phases. From late 1930s to 1960s, Melville Herskovits doubts Franz Boas’s dualist approach and poses his cultural relativism in examining Afro-American culture. Then from late 1960s to the late 1970s, J. D. Y. Peel and Robin Horton propose his intellectualist theory and Caroline Ifeka-Moller presents her social structural theory, which causes a big debate regarding to the methods on it. From late 1970s to late 1980s, scholars rethink their various methods on interpreting it. In this context, Evandro M. Camara rediscovers Max Weber’s religious tradition and advocates a Weberian sociological analysis in approaching it. Since the 1990s, as social scientists are equipped with new theories, they define syncretism as a contested concept, explore its complexity, and attempt to beyond traditional cannons and methods on it.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
In the first half of the 19th century, the south was transformed from a declining tobacco economy stretched along the eastern seaboard to a thriving cotton economy that reached westward as far as Texas. Accompanying with this transformation, the lives of slaveholders and slaves were also changed. According to Johnson, “the transformation of the slaveholders’ economy brought with it a transformation of the lives of the slaves upon whom it depended. Most important were the separations. The trade decimated the slave communities of the upper South through waves of exportation determined by slaveholder’s shifting demand — first men, then women, and finally children became featured categories of trade.” In the half century before the Civil War, the back-and-force bargaining of slaveholder and slave was repeated two million times in a pattern that traced the outline of southern history.
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
Central to his book, he attempts to reinterpret the slave history in American south. In order to persuade his reader of his new approach, Johnson discusses how the lives of slave traders, buyers and slaves were closely connected, as well as the role of each participant played in it in detail. He points out, “the slave trade did not begin or end in the same place for traders, buyers, and slaves. For slaves, the slave trade was often much more than a financial exchange bounded in space and time. A slave trader’s short-term speculation might have been a slave’s lifelong fear; a one-time economic miscalculation or a fit of pique on the part of an owner might lead to a life-changing sale for a slave. For buyers, too, the slave market was a place they thought about and talked about long before they entered the confines of the pens and long after they left with a slave.” Obviously, the lives of slave trader, buyers and slaves should not be separated from each other. Otherwise, it is impossible for us to understand their history in southern states in the 19th century.
Unlike W. E. Du Bois who assumed the slaveholders were in an antithesis relationship with their slaves, Johnson thinks historians should explain the slave history in southern states from both sides rather than adopt an one-side perspective. After all, without slaveholder, we don’t know how much profit they could make on slave trade; meanwhile, without slaves, we couldn’t understand how cruel physically and fearful psychologically slaves had experienced. Although historians discuss slave trade a lot from an Atlantic perspective, rarely have they pay attention to domestic slave trade in the United States from three different perspectives. To some degree, Johnson contributes his original insights about the interstate slave market for the lives of slaves.
Central to his book, he attempts to reinterpret the slave history in American south. In order to persuade his reader of his new approach, Johnson discusses how the lives of slave traders, buyers and slaves were closely connected, as well as the role of each participant played in it in detail. He points out, “the slave trade did not begin or end in the same place for traders, buyers, and slaves. For slaves, the slave trade was often much more than a financial exchange bounded in space and time. A slave trader’s short-term speculation might have been a slave’s lifelong fear; a one-time economic miscalculation or a fit of pique on the part of an owner might lead to a life-changing sale for a slave. For buyers, too, the slave market was a place they thought about and talked about long before they entered the confines of the pens and long after they left with a slave.” Obviously, the lives of slave trader, buyers and slaves should not be separated from each other. Otherwise, it is impossible for us to understand their history in southern states in the 19th century.
Unlike W. E. Du Bois who assumed the slaveholders were in an antithesis relationship with their slaves, Johnson thinks historians should explain the slave history in southern states from both sides rather than adopt an one-side perspective. After all, without slaveholder, we don’t know how much profit they could make on slave trade; meanwhile, without slaves, we couldn’t understand how cruel physically and fearful psychologically slaves had experienced. Although historians discuss slave trade a lot from an Atlantic perspective, rarely have they pay attention to domestic slave trade in the United States from three different perspectives. To some degree, Johnson contributes his original insights about the interstate slave market for the lives of slaves.
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
It is very helpful for us to understand southern slave history through analyzing the relationships between slaves and slaveholders. However, Johnson believes that it is still necessary for historians to put slave traders, buyers and slaves together. According to him, the history of African American slaves in American south “is a story of back and forth glances and estimations, of hushed conspiracies and loud boasts, of power, fear, and desire, of mistrust and dissimulation, of human beings broken down into parts and recomposed as commodities, of futures promised, purchased, and resisted.
It is, in no small measure, the story of antebellum slavery.” Moreover, he points out, the southern history “begins with the efforts of various historical actors — traders, buyers, or slaves — to imagine, assimilate, respond to, or resist the slave trade, with the desires and fears that gave the trade its daily shape.” Rather than just discuss the role of slaves, buyers, or traders in the southern slave trade, Johnson explores the interdependence of these agents, as well as their significance in southern slave trade. Johnson argues that the historical writing of the slave history in American south should bring all the participants in together. In fact, in order to understand southern history, he has “tried to understand a slave sale from the contingent perspective of each of its participants — to assess their asymmetric information, expectations, and power, to search out their mutual misunderstandings and calculated misrepresentations, to investigate what each had at stake and how each tried to shape the outcome.”
It is, in no small measure, the story of antebellum slavery.” Moreover, he points out, the southern history “begins with the efforts of various historical actors — traders, buyers, or slaves — to imagine, assimilate, respond to, or resist the slave trade, with the desires and fears that gave the trade its daily shape.” Rather than just discuss the role of slaves, buyers, or traders in the southern slave trade, Johnson explores the interdependence of these agents, as well as their significance in southern slave trade. Johnson argues that the historical writing of the slave history in American south should bring all the participants in together. In fact, in order to understand southern history, he has “tried to understand a slave sale from the contingent perspective of each of its participants — to assess their asymmetric information, expectations, and power, to search out their mutual misunderstandings and calculated misrepresentations, to investigate what each had at stake and how each tried to shape the outcome.”
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
In American south, slavery system was deeply existed and slave trade was quite a normal phenomenon in the 19th century. At the end of the eighteenth century, slaves continued to cultivate tobacco, rice, and indigo, which greatly promoted the first expansion of American slavery. Meanwhile, with the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, and the subjugation of southern Indians, the movement of the native Indians along the Trail of Tears in 1838, American slavery was expanded to new regions in the South. Slaveholders called it a “kingdom” for cotton, according to Johnson, “they populated the new states of the emerging Southwest — Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — with slaves brought from the east: 155,000 in the 1820s; 288,000 in the 1830s; 189,000 in the 1840s; 250,000 in the 1850s.” Domestic slave trade played such an important role for southerners that it is worth historians to pay more attention to it. In order to understand American southern history, focusing on interstate slave trade in American south, Johnson attempts to interpret slave history in another way and renew our understanding of southern history.
To understand southern slave history, Johnson considers the relationships between slaves and slaveholders in slave market. Johnson firstly talks about the “chattel principle,” which he means “any slave’s identity might be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from one hand to another.” That’s to say, a slave’s identity could change as his or her price changed on the market. Then he points out, “slaveholders and slaves were fused into an unstable mutuality which made it hard to tell where one’s history ended and the other’s began. Every slave had a price, and slave’s communities, their families, and their own bodies were suffused with the threat of sale, whether they were in the pens or not. And every slaveholder lived through the stolen body of a slave.” For slaves, their bodies shaped their slavery; for the slaveholder, slave bodies were properties with particular values for them. In southern slave market, every slave had a price, which was coexisted with the commercial culture in American south. Under the “chattel principle,” slave owners found justifications for selling slaves and negotiating with slave traders.
In American south, slavery system was deeply existed and slave trade was quite a normal phenomenon in the 19th century. At the end of the eighteenth century, slaves continued to cultivate tobacco, rice, and indigo, which greatly promoted the first expansion of American slavery. Meanwhile, with the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, and the subjugation of southern Indians, the movement of the native Indians along the Trail of Tears in 1838, American slavery was expanded to new regions in the South. Slaveholders called it a “kingdom” for cotton, according to Johnson, “they populated the new states of the emerging Southwest — Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — with slaves brought from the east: 155,000 in the 1820s; 288,000 in the 1830s; 189,000 in the 1840s; 250,000 in the 1850s.” Domestic slave trade played such an important role for southerners that it is worth historians to pay more attention to it. In order to understand American southern history, focusing on interstate slave trade in American south, Johnson attempts to interpret slave history in another way and renew our understanding of southern history.
To understand southern slave history, Johnson considers the relationships between slaves and slaveholders in slave market. Johnson firstly talks about the “chattel principle,” which he means “any slave’s identity might be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from one hand to another.” That’s to say, a slave’s identity could change as his or her price changed on the market. Then he points out, “slaveholders and slaves were fused into an unstable mutuality which made it hard to tell where one’s history ended and the other’s began. Every slave had a price, and slave’s communities, their families, and their own bodies were suffused with the threat of sale, whether they were in the pens or not. And every slaveholder lived through the stolen body of a slave.” For slaves, their bodies shaped their slavery; for the slaveholder, slave bodies were properties with particular values for them. In southern slave market, every slave had a price, which was coexisted with the commercial culture in American south. Under the “chattel principle,” slave owners found justifications for selling slaves and negotiating with slave traders.
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)
In African American history, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 was naturally a classic. In that book, Du Bois examines the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. He discussed the struggle of African Americans in reconstruction era with their slave masters, but his approach was “one-sided.” It is so “incomplete” that Walter Johnson argues their history should be “told from the perspectives of all of those whose agency shaped the outcome.”[1] Following W. E. B. Du, Johnson pays his attention to the nineteenth-century New Orleans slave market and attempts to renew our understanding of African American history. Rather than explore the opposition between slaves and their masters, Johnson discusses the slave life, as well as the roles of the participants in the interstate slave trade. In this paper, focusing on his Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, I am going to discuss his contribution to slave history in American south. [1] Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 8.
In African American history, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 was naturally a classic. In that book, Du Bois examines the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. He discussed the struggle of African Americans in reconstruction era with their slave masters, but his approach was “one-sided.” It is so “incomplete” that Walter Johnson argues their history should be “told from the perspectives of all of those whose agency shaped the outcome.”[1] Following W. E. B. Du, Johnson pays his attention to the nineteenth-century New Orleans slave market and attempts to renew our understanding of African American history. Rather than explore the opposition between slaves and their masters, Johnson discusses the slave life, as well as the roles of the participants in the interstate slave trade. In this paper, focusing on his Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, I am going to discuss his contribution to slave history in American south. [1] Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 8.
Friday, November 18, 2011
American History and Culture in Film Syllabus
American History and Culture in Film
Syllabus
“[Film] is life with the dull bits cut out.”——A. Hitchcock
Course Description
Films with historical themes have been produced for over a century, but only in the last generation have historians seriously considered cinema’s capacity to convey a useful past. This course will select several movies in the history of American film which cover American history from the colonial period to contemporary America. These films portray the past, present historical events, cultures and attitudes and present historical content. Through exploring these movies, students will learn how the time period in which the film was made interpreted historical personalities and events in American history. As historians we always analyze and use traditional primary and secondary sources. Putting films in American history, it is possible and helpful for us to apply many of those same skills to our approaches to non-traditional sources, such as these films. All movies are rated G, PG or PG13, no R-rated movies will be shown.
Course Objectives:
At the end of this course, you will be able to: define film as valid form of historical discourse; analyze how film has shaped and impacted our understanding of American history; recognize films as vehicles for the promotion of ideology, mythology, and political agenda setting; assess the ways in which film engages our emotions, cultivate our interests, instructs us and affect our beliefs about the past; and recognize yourself as a historical subject whose viewing experiences are contextually influenced and filled with meaning.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to attend all classes, read all assigned texts, watch all assigned films, and participate in class. Students are also expected to write two short response essays (3-5 pages) and take a midterm and a final exam. In writing essays, students should choose particular films dealing with a United States History topic and analyze the portrayal of the past in the film, exploring the perspective of the filmmakers, the historical accuracy of the portrayal, and the relative success and reliability of the film as a primary and secondary source of historical information. Students must cite all images, clips, facts, ideas, paraphrasing, and quotes, in footnotes and bibliography, using either Turabian (7th edition) or the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition), including the movies themselves and any reviews of them that you have used. Attendance is required; there will be no make-ups for missed exams.
Grading:
Final grades will be determined based on class participation (20%), on performance on the midterm and final exams (25% each), as well as two response essays (30%).Completion of all assignments is required to pass the class.
Texts
Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002
Steven Mintz and Randy Roberts, eds. Hollywood's America: United States History Through Its Films (St. James: Brandywine Press, 1993)
Steven Mintz, Randy Roberts, Hollywood's America: Twentieth-Century America Through Film (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
TOPICS & MOVIES
1) No movie – Introduction
2) The Colonial Experience
Pocahontas (1995) 81 minutes
3) The American Revolution
The Crossing (2000) 89 minutes
4) The Expansion of the New Nation
How the West was Won (1962) 162 minutes
5) The Civil War
The Red Badge of Courage (1951) 70 minutes
6) The Westward Movement
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) 132 minutes
7) Immigration
Far and Away (1992) 140 minutes
8) World War I
1918 (1985) 91 Minutes
Midterm Exam
9) The Roaring Twenties
Inherit the Wind (1960) 128 minutes
10) The Great Depression
Warm Springs (2005) 121 minutes
11) World War II
The Great Escape (1963) 172 minutes
12) The Cold War
October Sky (1999) 108 minutes
13) The Civil Rights Movement
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) 129 minutes
14) Life in the 50’s and 60’s
American Graffiti (1973) 110 minutes
14) Vietnam War
Forrest Gump (1994) 142 minutes
15) 1970 to present
Apollo 13 (1995) 140 minutes
16) 1970 to Present Continued
All the President’s Men (1976)
Final Exam
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