Representing each other

by Sylvie Shaw

 
The issue of representation can't be ignored. It fills TV screens, news reports and is fashioned from narrow and negative stereotypes which acts to diminish and marginalise people who are deemed other. As a stereotyped group, people representing certain religions, ethnicities, sexualities are labelled, stigmatised and belittled.

Labelling has two main functions - one is to demean the individual, the second is to reinforce the narrow and prejudiced views of the labeller. The person being labelled as a deviant, criminal or threat can begin to take on that label as a fait accompli. For some it may be a mark of resitance. For others, a sign of resilience. The label sticks for both groups - those who are negatively stereotyped, and those who label.  

The result is a loss of agency and voice among the marginalised. It can affect people's health, wellbeing and quality of life. Adams et al. (2007) point to the issue of prejudice and oppression as an outcome of social pressures and social norms or habitus. They argue that dominant ideological beliefs about 'the other' are internalised - by those targeted as well as the perpetrators. To highlight this issue, the authors state: 

'The ideas that poor people somehow deserve and are responsible for poverty, rather than the economic system that structures and requires it, is learned by poor and affluent alike. Homophobia, the deep fear and hatred of homosexuality, is internalised by both straight and gay people. Jews as well as Gentiles absorb antisemitic stereotypes' (Adams et al. 2007:4). 

The result has both social and political consequences. Jackson et al (2011:114), for instance, focuses on the political meanings and consequences of such judgemental processing saying that negatively stereotyping a social group also has the effect of stifling the exploration of 'alternative understandings' of that group or issue.

Stereotypes then are short shots, often promulgated by the media, reinforced through gossip and interpersonal communication whether online or off. Having only a superficial rendering of a person or social group can lead to discimination, persecution and worse. The view of David Schoem (1991) is straightforward and clear. He writes: 

'The effort it takes for us to know so little about one another across racial and ethnic groups is truly remarkable. That we can live so closely together, that our lives can be so intertwined socially, economically, and politically ... is clear testimony to the deep-seated roots of this human and national tragedy.' (1991:98) 

When the labelling is about religion, to use Schoem's framing, that too is a human and national tragedy. Getting along, getting to know the other, is a process that can also be 'truly remarkable'. Interfaith gatherings create understanding and relationship as people share their inner heart-workings and learn the beauty of each other's essence and their profound religious identity. 

 Questions

- What is the effect of marginalising people according to superfical gossip, social media or news headlines? 

- What is the effect of the stance of a dominant group who labels the other in terms of negative stereotyping. How is the dominator group affected? How is the marginalised group affected?

- How can marginalised groups become resilient? Or is the only direction for action to resist the ideological framing? 

 References

Adams M, LA Bell and P Griffin. 2007. Teaching for diversity and social justice. A sourcebook, 117-285. New York: Routledge.

Jackson RA, L Jarvis, J Gunning and MB Smyth. 2011. Terrorism: A critical introduction. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Schoem D. 1991. Inside separate worlds: life stories of Blacks, Jews and Latinos.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

 Image source
http://pixabay.com/en/church-inside-interior-ceiling-89409/

Herding ducks in the morning: Reflection on nature and religion

Sunday morning. Earlyish. Headed for the gym. Walked the long way round. On the way to and from the workout, I passed what could be described as six ritual places (that is in addition to the body worshipping centre of the 24/7 gymnasium). Not far from home I picked up an Owl's feather and thought I would look up the symbolism of the Owl when I got home.

From the Catholic Church comes the muffled sound of liturgy. Hearty singing wafts through the doors of the Anglican and Uniting Churches. In both places, young men stand at the door cradling their babies in their arms, catching the service while calming their children. Outside the Evangelical service, a group of youths play basketball amidst gales of laughter and vigourous shouting. Then I pass a group of Habitat Brisbane workers engaged in the eco-social worship of planting trees and pulling up weeds. But at the last place of worship something unusual is happening. Outside what appears to be a Chinese cultural or spiritual meeting place, an elderly gentleman is herding ducks. It seemed the pet ducks have been out for a walk to graze on the nature strip, and the duck wrangler is guiding them back home.

This brief excusion around the neighbourhood shows me that religion and spirituality come in all disguises. Some formal, some informal, but all sacred - from the secular to the spiritual, from the everyday and vernacular, to the traditional. It gives testament to the view that in contemporary religious practices, the sacred-profrane-mundane lie on a continuum in which the past distinctions of Durkheim and Eliade have blurred.

While religious ritual retains its liminal and communitas structure and function, rituals are enacted in different ways in different places among different groups of people (and animals). Online or offline, in the built environment in places of worship, or in natural places deemed sacred or special, religion is brimming with activity and vibrancy. But within the shifting status of religious practice, is the sacred diluted or expanded? What's your reaction to what's going on?

What is sacred?

The sacred is not something set apart (as it was defined by Durkheim), but is something inclusive of and interactive with the everyday. Sacred places, just as sacred buildings, are revered, respected, treasured and protected. The sacred reveals itself (as Eliade proposes) as an hierophany. It can move us, shape us, transform our attitudes and actions. 

In the past I have questioned whether there are two sources of sacredness. One is intrinsic in nature experienced as an animating lifeforce connecting the ‘mysterious’ and ‘infinite complexities of the natural word’ (Metzner, 1995:61). This view is similarly defined by nature writer Barry Lopez (1986:228) who gives agency to the earth and nature saying, 'the land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can ever know'. In this visioning, nature is nuanced, profound, actived and perhaps, enspirited.

The other is more human-directed and suggests that a human connection to special places instils a sense of the sacred through the process of place-encounters that are meaningful, profound, and provide a source of purpose, knowledge and insight.

With this construction in mind, Barry Lopez offers an evocative image of the sacred. It was in the Arctic region of Alaska. He was so touched by the region's 'intense and concentrated beauty' that he would bow in homage to the resident birds and animals, while honouring 'the serene Arctic light that came over the land like breath, like breathing' (1986:xx). Here is something other - something beautiful, which demanded his reverence, respect and I would imagine, his care.

How we experience nature and the sacred is outlined by Lopez and other nature writers such as Terry Tempest Williams and Native American author and poet Linda Hogan as a kind of story telling process where nature imbeds its story into our psyche. The story signifies the inherent 'biophilic' relationship between humans and nature, including, says Lopez (1988:62-63), the elements or qualities of the land. He writes of two personal landscapes through which we experience the vital connection between people and nature:

'I think of two landscapes – one outside the self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see – not only the line and colour of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology, the record of its climate and evolution. … These are all elements of the land, and what makes the landscape comprehensible are the relationships between them. … The second landscape I think of is a kind of projection within a person of part of the exterior landscape. … [It is] deeply influenced by where on earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature – the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf are known. … The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by gene.'  

Within this description, Lopez shows the qualitative and transformative process that takes place when we engage with the sacred in nature. According to forest researcher Herbert Schroeder (1992), nature has a spiritual value which is celebrated in art, literature and music, but rarely conveyed or acknowledged in resource management policy or development. Writing two decades ago about barriers to effective forest management, Schroeder maintained that the 'crisis in forest management may in part be due to a failure by the forestry profession to understand and respect the strong spiritual values that many people find associated with natural environments' (25).

But twenty years after this important observation, have natural and marine resource managers become any more aware of the need to comprehend the community's desires to protect and retain special places on land and water because of a spiritual connection to place? My view is not. Perhaps there is a limited awareness that certain natural places are considered sacred and special by large numers of people, so much so they do not want these places fracked, logged, mined, or tampered with. But no action in stakeholder engagement, community consultation or environmental reports, that the issues of sacredness and spirituality are important considerations for resource management.

This gap in understanding about the values of place - as spiritual or places of development, economic benefit, is often at the heart of environmental disputation. Whose values are deemed more important and by whom? On one hand values are associated with control and management of nature for economic profit, while on the other, values are focused on the richness of nature's beauty and its intrinsic worth which combines a mix of aesthetic, symbolic and sacred values. 

Schroeder (1992:28) reveals that resource managers may view a community's opposition to resource management decision making is related to 'ignorance on the part of the public'. In contrast, he suggests that it is not people's lack of knowledge but their experiences of nature and sacred encounters in nature that uphold their anti-development stance. He says: 'From a spiritual viewpoint, nature represents an "other" to be loved and respected, rather than a physical and biological process to be controlled and manipulated for human benefit.'

Perhaps an understanding on the part of managers and developers of the significance of spirituality in nature as well as the importance of nature connecting in enhancing people's health and wellbeing, might go part way in the government and industry decision making to incorporate social and spiritual impact assessments when any earth-devastating changes are mooted. 

Meanwhile, on my rounds in the neighbourhood, I'll keep a lookout for the beauty and the sacred in the many types of religious and spiritual experiences and rituals - those enshrined in sacred places of worship both indoors and out, and especially the elderly gentleman herding his ducks in the morning. 

Almost home and I noticed a mist of dark grey wispy feathers floating in the air. Then some smaller Owl feathers collecting in the gutter. Owls sometimes symbolise death and the myriad feathers meant there was a problem, so I started looking for the body. I had been excited earlier as Owls had visited the area. But sad when I found the mangled and crow-picked carcass. I took the body home and burried it with a prayer under some fallen leaves. 
 
Questions:

- What is your favourite place in nature?

- What do you experience there?

- Do you have a special place or environmental campaign that you are involved in?

- If you are religious, does your religion or place of worship have an environmental policy or action program? 

- How do you envisage that nature is spiritual?

References: 

Lopez B. 1986. Artic dreams. Imagination and desire in a northern landscape. New York: Bantam Books. 

Lopez B. 1988. Crossing open ground. London: Picador. 

Metzner R. 1995. 'The psychopathology of human-nature relationship', in T. Roszak, ME Gomes and AD Kanner, Eds. Ecopsychology. Restoring the earth. Healing the mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Schroeder HW. 1992. The spiritual aspect of nature: a perpective from depth psychology. Proceedings of Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium (p. 25-30), April 7-9, 1991, Saratoga Springs, NY. 

'i'm a M.....'. Can social media promote religion literacy?

by Sylvie Shaw

When I went shopping a few days ago, the assistant asked me if I'd had a good day. 'Yes', I replied. 'I was working'. 'What do you do?', he asked. When I told him, he wanted to chat some more. He acknowledged how interesting it must be to teach about so many religions and asked how I found it. Then he almost whispered. 'I'm a, you know, Muslim'.

He told me how often he gets criticised and his religion vilified - but mentioned this did not happen where he worked, only outside.

So I thought, what's the difference between this shop assistant and his appearance and someone like Charlie Pickering on The Project? Not very much. How could people tell?

When the British religion theorist Grace Davie was at UQ in 2012, she mentioned that one of the most palpable social problems in the UK and Europe, i.e. religious vilification and misunderstanding, is related to the lack of the community's religion literacy or religious knowledge. At a time when knowing about someone else's religion is important, especially to break down barriers and build bridges and interfaith relations, there seems less and less relevant information about the religion of the other, and an increasingly narrow media construction of religion and religious practitioners.

With this in mind, I wondered if social media could help break down the dysfunctional stereotyping and promote religious understanding and even religion literacy. Already, religion sites, especially Christian sites, are the most popular on Fb (Ward 2011). 

An article on ReligionLink (2013) titled 'God and Facebook: Is social networking changing religion?' states that social media has a role to play in continuing 'to influence the way people communicate and practice religion'.

Practising religion has become an online phenomenon. An American Rabbi, Laura Baum (2010) describes her experience in running an online congregation:

'Using computers and mobile devices, people connect to us (their rabbis), each other, and Judaism year-round....They may listen to our podcasts or read a blog and then engage in conversation with others around the world on Facebook. They may participate in our Passover seder, which is set up as a webinar so that people can read sections of the Passover story aloud.

Last Passover, someone from Paris read one page, someone from New York the next, and people from 32 states and 10 other countries sang Passover songs together across continents.

There’s a persistent myth that community is something that only happens in person, that relationships and memberships must be defined in geographic terms. The reality is that relationships built and maintained online, using tools like Facebook, Twitter and Skype, are increasingly common and can even be stronger than physical connections'.

Building social and spiritual communities online has become a significant feature of religious websites as Baum relates. But there is also a parallel growth of hate sites and online hate communities, especially those espousing bigotry and xenophobia towards religion and religious adherents. The intention of hate sites is to aim 'bias-motivated, hostile, [and] malicious speech' to others, with the intention of injuring, dehumanizing, harassing intimidating and victimizing people constructed as other (Cohen-Almagor 2012:1).

Rachel Cohen-Almagor has conducted an extensive search of online hate sites and carried out interviews with internet practitioners. She frames her paper in terms of the norms of social responsibility held in society, where each person acts in a way that does not disturb social equanimity or 'harm the community' (2). 

She singles out a range of hate speech against non-white immigrants, African-Americans, homosexuals and lesbians, Jews, and Muslims, showing that the hate speech protagonists see the internet as a cheap and effective way of getting their grisly message out, including about religion. Cohen-Almagor states:

'Many of the hate sites on the web are very religious in nature. Religion is depicted as the rock around which life should be organized, providing the answer (indeed, the only answer) for all people’s questions; suggesting that we have little choice in making decisions, as everything has already been decided for us by God. They encourage people to be absolutely committed to their faith and trust in the Almighty to guide their way' (6).

Her advice in countering the hate, based on her research study, is to first - rejoinder with speech of a positive kind, but also, to surround the countering communication with education. For example, she cites the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission in Australia which launched a 'Click Against Hate' campaign for Jewish schools to identify and respond to online anti-Semitism. She also mentions a number of community groups who use online solidarity to rally against the purveyors of hate, including discriminatory online social media sites. Another solution she poses is to filter and block nasty sites, and to seek help from ISPs to name and shame these sites.

Cohen-Almagor's recommendation on the role of education is important. She says:

'Education is vital in enshrining the values of liberty, tolerance, pluralism, and diversity in the minds of people. Education should alert and raise awareness to Internet hate and its harms and perils, accentuating that hate speech has led to hate crimes; indeed, to some of the most ghastly, dark days of humanity. The fight against hate is hard and complex. Law alone will not suffice.'

From hate sites, to anti-hate social mediated communities, from online congregations to online religion chat and even religion-specific dating sites, the internet is playing a role in shaping the way religion is discussed, debated, promulgated and practised.

Questions:

How much influence do you think that social media has in relation to religious organisations?
Do you think that participating in online services is as relevant as being there in person? 

What role do you see social media having in promoting religious diversity and religion literacy? 

What suggestions do you have to counter hate sites and religious vilification?

 References
- Baum L. 2010. My faith: why I lead an online synagogue. CNN Belief Blog, Oct 4, 2010. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/04/my-faith-why-i-lead-an-online-synagogue 
- Cohen-Almagor R. 2012. Fighting hate and bigotry on the internet. Policy & Internet 3(3): 1-26. 
- ReligionLink. 2013. God and Facebook: Is social networking changing religion? http://www.religionlink.com/tip_110125.php

- Ward B. 2011. Religious pages keep engaging Facebook users, http://allfacebook.com/religious-pages-keep-engaging-facebook-users_b57975

Image source

http://pixabay.com/en/black-burn-burning-candle-19276/

The miracle that is Mrs Tutu

by Sylvie Shaw

When I moved to Brisbane  afew years ago I was befriended by a small black and white butcherbird. She wasn't known as Mrs Tutu in the beginning.

One day she came and sat on the balcony and sang the sweetest tune, lyrical, whispery, gentle. Listen here to the delightful song. Mrs Tutu would come alone and ask for small morsels. The different voices she used depended on the time of day and her needs. Sometimes it's shrieky like 'Where's my food now! Please.' Sometimes is soft and chatty, especially when she brings some of her friends over. Then there is a quiet rumbling conversation going on as each bird acknowledges their meal - unless or until someone else wants to steal their cache.

Mrs Tutu has visited for several years now. And her family has grown. Each year she has two fledglings and this is how she got her name.

About two years ago, she came a bit too often. She was obviously feeding. She'd catch moths on the fly and search the garden for luscious worms and other special treats. One day she came and all her tummy feathers had worn away from sitting on the eggs. Then a couple of weeks later, small feathery tufts started to appear. In no time her regrowth resembled a tutu. And from then on, that become her name.

When she was hungry, and just like a baby bird, she would flap her wings and look up at the door expectantly. Each year she brought her babies. For about two years the babies are brown, and then they turn black and white and look resplendent in their new garb.

But at Christmas last year something went awry. Mrs Tutu could not fly. She had only one working wing. She spent her days on the neighbour's verandah and found shelter there in stormy weather. But she could hop and was off to her tree-bed outside the house across the road. She would hop up the treetrunk from branch to branch. And when she was hungry she'd hop back across the way for a feed.

But her recovery was not to be easy. New owners arrived in Mrs Tutu's territory. All the trees, everyone, were gone in a day. Mrs Tutu lost her shelter but lucklly she found refuge in a tallish Callistemon out on the nature strip. What had happened to her? How had she damaged her wing? The new owners did not care. They cut the bottom branches of the tree that Mrs Tutu used as a tree climbing launching pad.

Then came an amazing discovery. Mrs Tutu had two babies she had to look after. She could not feed herself but she could hop across the road for a feed and then hop back and up the tree where you could hear the babies sqwalking.

I didn't know what to do. So I rang one of the wildlife care organisations and told them the story. 'Don't ask for the bird to be looked after', I was told. 'She won't live so let nature take its course. If you have the bird rescued, it will be euthanised'. So I did nothing and continued to support her needs.

When the babies were big enough she brought them across to the front door to be fed. After a week or so, there was only one. The smaller baby had broken its beak and could not feed.

We all lived together like that for several weeks. Then an amazing thing happened. One afternoon, while we were sitting in the living room I heard a familar cry - but from the back door not the front. All the butcher birds have a distinctive voice, and hers was definately recognizable. We were amazed and excited. We watched as she hopped up on the back fence and gingerly made her way round to the front of the house and back across the road.

A few weeks after that Mrs Tutu's wing got stronger. And her long wing feathers grew back. It had been three months and now she could fly. She is indeed a miracle bird.

Question:
Do you have a miracle or transformative experience in or about nature? Why not blog about it? 

Image source:
Pied Butcherbird singing at dawn, Darwin, NT
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