S4 Asceticism and ethics PDF

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SAN2 Week 4 Systems of Power and Knowledge: Religious Anthropology, Asceticism and Ethics (seminar notes)...

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S4: Asceticism and ethics Weber M. 2002 (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism. Penguin Classics. Parts 1 and 2 (notes excluded).

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/tpavone/files/weber_the_protestant_ethic_and_the_spirit_of_capitalism_summary.pdf

Schielke S. 2009. Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians. JRAI 15: S24-S40. Cook J. 2010. Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life. Cambridge UP. Esp. Chapters 1 and 4. Laidlaw, J. (2014). The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esp. Chapter 1 and 4.

Ariane on Laidlaw and Schielke: ● Framing ideas as a set of techniques for self formation ● Being Good in Ramadan - young men in Egyptian village. ○ Risk of studying piety and religion together ○ Illusion of wholeness/ focus on perfection and consistency ○ Critiques of Mahmood ■ Looking at ideal religious disciple rather than accounting for those than

flirt with pious belief but fall short of perfection Focus on the attempt rather than outcome Equating pious women’s morality with discursive traditions. ● Link to Laidlaw on finding ethics in reflective freedom ○ Not studying religion as techniques in self-formation ■ Rather as techniques, we should see religion and self formation in tandem. ● Perhaps self formation should be used to study religion ○ Piety's emphasis on purity intensifies fragmentation in young people’s lives ○ Learn about moral and religious world in which belong ○ Critiques Shielke: his argument as structurally fragmented, focus on ambivalence as the place to start anthropology of ethics - particularly as people are not ambivalent in his ethnography, and doesn’t account for Mahmood’s goal in his critique; that she is looking at finding agency within the religion. Laidlaw: argues ethics should not be viewed as marginal, but should be part of anthropology. Focus on self-reflexivity. Freedom and responsibility. It is the capacity for self reflection that forms the capacity for ethics. ■ Morality as a social construct ■ Recurring Weaknesses: moral in society rather than individuals (as Durkheim does), morality as relative, us vs them approach (western assumption of same drivers - western viewing others as mirrors of ourselves - i.e Dumont), shallow interaction between anthro and philosophy ○ Pedagogical aspect of ethnographic work.- requires taking seriously the form of life, describing them as something we learn from not just learn about ○ No single liberal conception of freedom (chapter 4), ref Mahmood’s work in egypt. ■ ■

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Mahmood = Western feminism as having idealised resistance as autonomy. Vieling as not just an index of patriarchy, but as a practice of transformation to become pious form the outside in. Foucauldian technologies of the self (askesis) Sociological critiques to Mahmood’s The Politics of Piety in West and Cairo/Istanbul James’s work as an intervention into something larger than Mahmood,l but discusses Mahmood explicitly in chapter 4. Critiques her definition of liberalism which focuses on the self rather than plurality of self Also says it is unreflective - a closed loop system wherein the process of ethics is the constant choosing of the next step - suggests Mahmood is saying that there’s a step beyond this. James as rooting ethics in the cognitive self. Definitional concept for James is that ethics is self-reflective - involving an assumption of real

free-will If it doesn’t involve a choice then is it illusionary? Portrays this issue as analytical, but also reflects a political thing for James. Critiques Mahmood as her view is not politically desirable for James (and also doesn’t think its possible). Laidlaw’s book as intervention: ● His point on what he sees as ethics versus morality ● What is he claiming about the ethical or the moral prior to himself ● Ethics viewed as the science of unfreedom by focusing on macro durkheimian structures/ social facts. He is trying to make space for the micro and the individual. Locating the individual as a person with agency in their ethical life. ● Claim made about Durkeheim, involving what he did to Kant - D’s is neo kantian form of ethics in which the ‘good’ is the social/ following societal norm. This has the effect of setting up the question of what is moral as the social. So moral is no longer a discrete category. Science of unfreedom - in the model of the social as the moral, as applied across the whole discipline = we are studying humans in how they follow rules - the part of humanity that is not free, rather than the other part of the human subject that IS free. This is where the self-reflective stuff comes in - self reflective as the other half of Durkheimian description of the unfreedom of morality as social . ● Why do we locate this within particularly the Anth of religion? ○ Solution com,es out of religion (this is what Joe says) - i.e practices of selfcultivation. Says he think the accusation James makes about anthropology as the science of unfreedom can also be applied to i.e Kinship (previous way of analysing kinship as following rules). How is Durkheim neo-Kantian as kant is about the morality of following laws (God as generative of the laws), Durkheim views the structures which control as the social (social generates these structures/laws). Seeing Social as God. Religion and morality as society worshipping itself. More about how Durkheim is neo-Kantian in Laidlaw’s paper in JRAI on reading list.

Shazia’s presentation of Weber and Cook ● Filling gap in Marxist explanation of social change through his materialist understanding. ● Elective affinity ○ Elected to heaven. traced to, the Protestant ethic, particularly to the Calvinist notion of predestination (that one’s salvation has been determined, or that one has been elected, since eternity) ● Not just the base but the superstructure needs to be prepared for change to take place. ● Protestant ethic -> influenced by Lutheranism, Calvinism ● Weber as explaining the why of accumulating wealth, which Marx did not explain. ● Identity politics - Fascan’s ethics as shifted to focus on the individual ● Cook: looking at self-formation in buddhist monastic setting as a practice in ethical

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freedom. The observer becomes the observed. ○ Willing submission to an institute with only a vague ambiguous idea of what it will be like. ○ Finding this self-formation whilst being confined within bounds of power - selfformation but not resistance. What is the difference between Weber and Marx in their understanding of historical change? ○ For Marx what drives historical change - look back at Marx lectures - particularly his historical materialism - building on Hegel’s work ■ Superstructure is everything that isn’t the modes or means or forces of production (which is the infrastructure). ○ Weber says that both superstructure and infrastructure need to change at the same time. ■ Strong thesis of WEber (which says that changes in superstructure cause changes in infrastructure) ■ Weak of the two complementing each other (in a fairer reading of Marx this is more what he could agree with) ○ The way Marx is stereotype is that the economic base is what affects the superstructure Weber as showing us the ways in which multiple spheres of life in fact intersect. James work comes from his work with the Jains - the best Jain is the one which starves himself to death. In cook the telos is the recognition of the non self Does religion need asceticism? Anth of ethics as trying to look at how people strive to things in society - does this isolate the individual? Methodologically individualistic which bl,ocks forms of obligations? Attempt to look at people striving to follow certain creeds and actively cultivate them. But Anth of ethics doesn’t answer question of obligations by focusing on self....