ASAM 71 - Lecture Week 1 - 5 PDF

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April 4 ● Asian American population ○ 42% Christian, 14% Buddhist, 26% unaffiliated (spiritual but not religious) ○ 75% of the general public are Christian ● Polly Bemis, 1994 ○ Picture of her being converted because of her right hand on a bible ○ But confirmed that the bible was a prop because bibl...

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April 4 ● Asian American population ○ 42% Christian, 14% Buddhist, 26% unaffiliated (spiritual but not religious) ○ 75% of the general public are Christian ● Polly Bemis, 1994 ○ Picture of her being converted because of her right hand on a bible ○ But confirmed that the bible was a prop because bibles were expensive. It was used to make her look more majestic. ○ Significant figure because she was a Chinese American that became successful, but she wasn't actually Chinese, but from the Mongol tribe. ● Counterdisciplinarity approach: combination of religious studies and Asian American studies ○ Refuse to accept the regimes of discipline April 6 ● Religion itself as a secular idea ● religion can be seen similar to the devotion someone has for a certain sport Types of definition of religion ● Functional Definitions (A & B): understanding religion as instrumental, doing something for someone ○ Positive ■ Spiro: ● "culturally patterned interaction" - rituals ● "culturally postulated superhuman beings" - forces, beings, spirits, gods, goddesses ■ West: religion is an institution that gives people comfort and satisfaction ■ Durkheim: religion has a functional purpose that gives people a reason to live and what is going to happen in the afterlife ○ Negative ■ Marx: ● religion is simply a stream, and illusion for the true suffering that workers experience within corporations ● the church is aligned with the government so the church encourages people to work hard because it will benefit their afterlife. If people work hard, the government benefits ■ Freud: ● believing in a certain religion is like having the mindset of a child that arose from the Oedipus Complex ● god is referred to the father, relationship between a god and a person is similar to how a son feels about his earthly father ● religion is a mass neurosis ● Substantive Definitions ○ considered about the essence of religion and what it is

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appraise the universe: grasp the entity and what it means to being a part of the world Das Heilige: the idea of the holy ● the holy is the thing that science couldn't grasp, completely different from us Ganz Andere: wholly other, completely different the otherness is Numinous Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans: this unknown thing is awesome because we can't measure it or touch it or understand it with science. We are compelled to try to understand what it is and wired to connect with it Ahnung: to understand religion, you have to rely on intuition

■ Eliade ■ Homo religiosus: when you strip away modern technology, we were connected, We lost the ability to connect with the greater being ■ hierophany: the appearance of the hierarchy to give you a mission or direction, the hierophany is different depending on specific culture and time period

April 11 ● There are things in the universe that science cannot account for. ● Eliade: “grasped at the same level” ○ Quality of religion cannot be derived from other subjects Iike economics ○ Religion is Sui generis (self created, originated from itself) ○ Science is a limited human activity ○ Homo religiosus- humans perceive themselves in their true form from a religious perspective, and we’ve lost that ● Religion is just a mental awareness because if you ask people to imagine a god, it's all different because religion has a connection to culture ● Durkheim: ○ 4 C’s of religion: creed (statement that describes the systematic set of beliefs), cultus (practicing rituals), code (rules and expectations) community (body of believers) ○ All ties into the sacred ○ Humans are wired to behave a certain way in front of sacred ○ These four c can be used in different ways ■ Bellah: American Civil Religion: Americans participate in this religion as a community of Americans ○ John Jacque Rousseau: the sacred combat ■ You needed to have some kind of religion that would instill in citizens the idea of civil responsibility ■ In america: creed (constitution), cultus (voting), creed (American dream) ■ Every nation has their own version of a civil religion

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Bellah gave a warning to Americans, America was born with the relation between God, choseness-American exceptionalism

April 13 ● The sacred was Sui generis, it was just there ○ There's no need to figure out how or where the sacred came from because it's just there. ● The moments people experience the sacred is when humans are most human because they are connected with something out of the world ● Idea of modern days- The advancement of technologies and the fallacies will save us ● Americans have a sense of chosenness and exceptionalism because God chose us to be here ● Mistake of American exceptionalism, Americans aren't really chosen ● Fei doesn't envy the lives of Americans because Americans culture is artificial, Americans move around so much that there's no grounded culture and aren't comfortable with ghosts. But Chinese people grew up with ghosts and appreciate and understand their ancestors ● Three types of anti-Asian enterey ○ Exclusion: laws passed to prohibit the entry of Asian ○ Caste: local policies. Want to keep Asians from moving freely ■ Didn't allow boats that looked Chinese so they can keep them out of the fishing industry ○ Harassment -ridiculous laws ● ●

When there is a need for cheap labor, the immigration laws get weaker, but if it's unneeded, the immigration law gets more strict Asian American religions are tied to these laws ○ The first Chinese temple was created to function under the laws ■ Ex: helps the Chinese get through the harsh environments and bury the dead because Chinese weren't allowed to be buried in public cemeteries

April 18 Review ● American Civil Religion ○ Assumptions: Chosenness, American Exceptionalism, Covenant (he will do stuff for us if we do stuff for him) ○ Ideology: promoting sameness/unity, one moral community ○ 4 C's of Religion in American Civil Religion? ○ Ghosts vs Superman ●

Will Herberg, 1955 - Protestant Catholic-Jew ○ an American Jew, wrote this during the era of post-WWII, idea of conformity ○ argued that in order to be an American, you have to be a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, if you were any other religion, you weren't considered American

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more important to be seen going to church, temple, etc because it was a cultural thing to fit in (sociability) ○ Religion then just became this social club, this idea lost the edge of religion ○ After his piece, Judaism became a more popular religion in the culture (he was Jewish) ○ mentioned to have fun in your church but also don't forget that these religions have power ● Antonio Gramsci - trying to organize industrialized workers who were being underpaid and didn't get benefits → wanted to rouse industrial workers into a revolution ○ failed because the workers were fine with because they were distracted by popular entertainments (music, church events, family gatherings, etc.) ○ Cultural Hegemony - You can coerce people by instilling in their minds certain values and ideas that they accept as good ■ people were fooled to think their life was okay because of all the entertainments ■ Ideas/cultural forms: pervasive, normal, natural, common sense, true ■ ideas reinforced by institutions, folklore, popular culture, mass media, and religion ■ EX: how Americans believe Democracy is the best kind of government system ○ Dominant ideas promoted by the dominant class as a way to maintain control ● Context: Immigration and Naturalization (citizenship) policies ○ With regard to Asians, these laws are of three types: ■ 1. Exclusion - 1790 Naturalization Act (Good character, 2 years residency, free white ■ 2. Caste - 1890 Bingham Ordinance (creating a certain space specifically for a group of people to live in) ■ 3. Harassment ● Immigration and Naturalization laws as formal methods to criminalize groups ○ 1875 Page Act - prohibit the immigration of women from China (an assumption that Chinese women came to America to be a prostitute) ○ 1892 Geary Act - extension to the Page Act ■ People wanted to come in for a job but the jobs should be given to the American citizens first. ○ McCreary Amendment 1983 - Chinese in the United States were required to have identity papers (internal passport system) ■ Required photographs to accompany registration of Chinese in US ■ *the only other group of people that took use of this technology (photographs) were criminals Models of Race and Ethnicity ● 1. Prescriptive type: ○ Assimilation/"Anglo Conformity" Model - A + B + C = A (A is the dominant race) ■ everyone assimilates the dominant race

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"Make it better", presumed to be good for society and a normal way to understand race ● ex: Robert Park's "Race Relations Cycle" ● Groups come into contact → creates conflict/competition → Accommodation (where people start finding their niche in society, accommodating by giving up their own culture) → Assimilation (fold into dominant society) ○ the cycle is apparently progressive and irreversible ○ things may slack the tempo of the movement and halt it altogether for a time, but cannot change its direction, cannot at any rate reverse it ○ The Melting Pot Model - A + B + C = D ■ Israel Zangwill "America is God's crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming" ■ Everyone gains some and lose some ○ Cultural Pluralism Model - A + B + C = A + B + C ■ We are allowed and encouraged to hold onto our own culture and customs ■ Horace Kallen - the Assimilation Model was too democratic ■ people can participate in the dominant culture but there is also a lot of room for people to practice their original culture ■ "Multiculturalism" - pretends everybody is the same and wants to be recognized, but some people don't want to be recognized ● assumes everyone is equal and wants to be recognized and that everyone has the chance to experience different cultures 2. Descriptive type: ○ Internal Colonialism Model - the US democratic system is divided in different groups

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Ethnic Immigrants

Colonized Minorities

Entry

Free

Unfree

Labor

Free/Upward

Unfree/Caste

Culture

Ability to keep/nurture

Prohibition against culture

Entry - entry point determines how you live life Labor - limited in what kind of job depending on where you live and your race ■ Culture 3. Constructive type:

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Racial Formation Theory - the meaning of race is defined and contested throughout society, in both collective action and personal practice. In the process racial categories are formed, transformed, destroyed and reformed. Race is a socially constructed idea and it's not biological. Ideas of race are contested by society, it's malleable "one day you can be white, one day you can be black because the law says so" ex: Susie Guillory Phipps ■ gets a passport because she wanted to go out of the country → when she got her passport in Louisiana, she was labeled "colored" even though she was white ■ State of Louisiana rule: 1/32 Negro Blood, The Law of Hypodescent/ One Drop Rule - if you have some sort of African blood in you, you're considered "colored" ■ Was in court for 5 years but lost - Remained colored in Louisiana (Racial Formation Theory)

April 21 ● Racial formation theory ○ California civil code, section 60 (1880), all marriage of white persons with negroes or mulattoes are illegal and void. ○ (1905) - all marriage of white people with negroes, Mongolians or mulattoes are illegal and void, (Mongolians refer to people from Asia) ● Timothy Yatko ○ Represents a typical image of a filipino in his 20’s ○ Married a white women at a baptist church in San Diego ○ California vs Yatko ■ Met at a taxi dance hall where women were paid to dance with men for ten cents ■ A lot of these women were sister and related to butlers ■ Yatko sees his wife having an affair, and he stabs the guy she had an affair with ■ The wife disappeared Yatko surrendered himself ■ Yatko couldn't get a court system because wives were not allowed to testify for their husband, so she did not have a witness. ■ Their marriage was never void because he was filipino. ○ What race are Filipinos? ■ California vs Yatko, Filipino are Mongolians ■ Stella Robinson vs le lampton -Filipino are Mongolians ● Her mom sues her daughter because she didn't want her daughter to get married to a Filipino ■ Roldan vs la county ● Ruling

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Johann Blumenbach - 5 races including Mongolians and Malays ○ Common sense “Mongolians” = Chinese ○ Therefore, Filipinos are not Mongolians but Malays (1933) - All marriages of a white persons with negroes, Mongolians, and members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void Racial formation theory: toward science ○ First academic race category system ○ Intersection of religion and science ○ Crisis of knowledge ■ Colonialism/travel ■ Classification of the world ○ 2 soul theory ■ Anima: sensitive and non rational ■ Animus: spiritual and rational ○ Assuming monogenesis Francis bernier’s racial classification theory ○ First race: Europe, Northern Africa, Middle East, India, parts of Southeast Asia, Americans ○ Second race: sub Saharan Africa ○ Third race: Japan, China, Indonesia, Philippines, tartars, inner Asia, eastern borderland of Muscovy ○ Fourth race: finlands Orientalism ○ Edward said: this thing called the orient are constructed by the western to degrade them ○ The west needs to control the orient to define themselves, they need to find what they are not to define themselves ○ Asymmetrical relationship between the orient and oxidant ○ Jane Iwamura: the Oriental Monk Figure ■ In popular culture there are indeed the oriental monk figure that are single men uninterested in marriage, and carry knowledge about Asia ● The bridge figure takes the information from these monk figures and spread it to the east ○ Ex: Luke Skywalker and yoda, kid from karate kid ■ Americans are bored with their religious traditions, and the oriental monk brings new spiritual sustenance

April 25 ● Oriental Realism ○ Shinto, Daoism, Buddhism ○ Zoroastrianism (don't allow marriage outside the community) ● Other

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Islam, Christianity, Judaism ■ Islam - a majority of the population come from the Middle East The list of normal world religions don't include religions that originated from Asia **but all religions in that list are oriental religions ○ Indigenous Traditions, Wicca The construction of world religions have certain criterias: books and male founder or reformer ○ *these two criterias separate world religions from ethnic religions ○ *but this idea is outdated Orientalism can be seen as a racial formation theory ○ there's a label by various societies and people Max Muller (1832-1900) ○ German theologist, linguist ○ believed that the study of language could unlock secrets of culture and religion ○ 1845: went to Paris and studied with Eugene Burnouf (early Sansaritists) ○ Sanskrit Text was the key to understanding ancient Buddhism ■ East India Company (colonial enterprise responsible for collecting all these texts and sending it to Europe) ■ 1600-1858, East Asia Company was the effective capital farm for European empire ○ He was responsible for the Western study of Buddhism to be a "thing" ■ first one to find actual text, by the time he finds this text, there are no Buddhist in India ■ Got together a team of scholars and studied the connection by collecting the texts of Oriental religion and translate it to English so the world has access to the religions ○ He is responsible for the Sacred Books of the East (1879-1910) Religion Wissenschaft: the study of the science of religion ○ Only four "important religions" in the world: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Others ○ History of the origin of the study of religion connects to the origin of expansionism Eugene Burnouf ○ 1844: Introduction to the History of Buddhism in India ○ If you can get to the first document of what Buddha said, these texts would give the true essence of what Buddhism was and what the Buddha taught ○ essence of Buddhism lies in original text, the rituals were all part of culture and what people made up Why does Buddhism become popular in the west? ○ Buddhism isn't this mystical, magical religion, it's a moral philosophy and the Buddha is a moral philosopher ○ Europeans were attracted to the idea that there is no afterlife, there's nothing after death ○ Protestant Idea ○ American Buddhism is discovered through the text

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1835, Strouse: The Life of Jesus ○ Doing the same thing as Eugene but for Christianity ○ Looking for the closest document they had about Jesus *Both emphasis on the ancient, authentic documents and sources and everything that came after was just culture Sir William Jones ○ Englishmen, linguistic prodigy (15 language) ○ Jones was one of the first one to study Sanskrit ○ Sansari Greek and Latin shared a similar root, common ancestor for India and Europe ○ This discovery energized a whole new generation of thinkers who found the relation between India and Europe interesting, found interest in Asia Renaissance in knowledge about the orient Buddhism in US ○ Two Birthdays ■ 1. 1852 - Tiem Hou Temple in San Francisco ● Earliest known practice of Buddhism by Asians in the United States ● A Chinese immigrant institution, not focused on spreading Buddhism to Americans but for the Chinese community in San Francisco ● Temple functioned as an institution for ethnic maintenance ■ 2. 1893 - World's Parliament of Religions ● An event where the organizers of parliaments wanted to bring in representatives of world religions to the American public ● The Buddhist representatives were successful ● Purpose was for the Americans to see that Christianity was the most superior religion compared to other religions but unexpectedly the Buddhist representatives were good Why does Buddhism become popular in the west? ○ Buddhism isn't this mystical, magical religion, it's a moral philosophy and the Buddha is a moral philosopher ○ Europeans were attracted to the idea that there is no afterlife, there's nothing after death ○ Protestant Idea ○ American Buddhism is discovered through the text Protestantization: process for constructing world religion ○ Scripture (Book), Male founder reformer ○ Focus on doctrine beliefs vs rituals or supernatural or external expression of religion (processor, idols, etc) ○ Focus on the individual as the agent of one's own salvation ○ This is the subfunction of orientalism ○ Resistance to the authority of institutions

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Buddhism was seen as the reformation of the idea of enlightenment coming in the afterlife (they can get enlightenment right now)

April 27 ● Orientalism serves as a screen that keeps the west from getting an objective view of Asia ● Protestantization: process for constructing world religion ○ Scripture (Book), Male founder reformer ○ Focus on doctrine beliefs vs rituals or supernatural or external expression of religion (processor, idols, etc) ○ Focus on the individual as the agent of one's own salvation ○ This is the subfunction of orientalism ○ Resistance to the authority of institutions ● Buddhism was seen as the reformation of the idea of enlightenment coming in the afterlife (they can get enlightenment right now) ● World's Parliament of Religion (1893) ○ Don David Hewavitarne (1864) ■ Born into a wealthy, Buddhist family in Islam ■ Educated in an English Christian Institution ■ Missionaries in the West were not good for the Asians ○ 1880, changed his name to Anagarika Dharmapala (homeless protector of Buddhism) ■ symbol of rejecting Christianized, American name ■ he is discovering his roots as a Buddhist ■ He has an affair with a women from Texas and she recreates the Buddhist nun community ■ Claimed that monks and others didn't have to p...