Biophilia, spirituality and the natural environment

by Sylvie Shaw

Biophilia or the biophilia hypothesis outlines that people have a natural and innate inclination to affiliate with the natural world. The hypothesis was birthed by scientists Stephen Kellert and E. O. Wilson (1993) who observed that humans co-evolved with nature over eons. In the process people developed an adaptive response to the world around them. This evolutionary relationship continues to influence our health and wellbeing, physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally and spirituality.

The dimension of spirituality is found in the way people derive meaning from their connection with nature. It is grounded in people's relationship with the other, that is, with something special, sacred or divine that creates a sense of purpose for one's life.

Other significant dimensions derived from biophilia include the aesthetic dimension or scenic beauty, the humanistic dimension which relates to feeling good in nature or experiencing nature emotionally, or the moralistic dimension where one's connection with and experience in nature may charge us to take care of nature. But along with biophilia is its converse - biophobia - where people fear nature and natural things.

Often a fear of nature is stimulated by media representations from horror movies of giant spiders or attacking crows. Nature is also negatively represented in ads promoting insect killers (harmful chemical sprays) for supposedly killer insects, or in movies like Jaws with bloody scenes designed to make the viewer afraid to go back into the water. This manufactured or mediatised fear of sharks is real - but it comes at a time when there are fewer and fewer sharks and many species of sharks at risk, as are several places in their homespace, the marine environment.

Despite these and other media constructions of risk-filled apocalyptic nature disaster movies, benevolent and romantic nature is often portrayed though documentaries in which the beauty of the natural world might encourage us to explore the great outdoors. In stepping outside, we rekindle those evolutionary feelings of biophilia. What's important about biophilia, Kellert and Wilson (1993) assert, is that it is integral to our human health and wellbeing.

With biophilia in mind, today in class we spent time on the edge of the beautiful lake at The University of Queensland. Surrounded by university buildings and with the sound of the lawn mower not far away, the class sat quietly within an intimate and tiny forest of melaleuca trees. As a group we spent time in reflection, observing nature, listening to the birds, watching the ripples on the water, communing with the coots, ducks, ibis and other bird species, and the resident water dragons.

One adventurous water dragon, on the lookout for food, came close, so close in fact that it climbed into the bag of one of the students and sat there for a while, looking quite at home. By not going outside, we would lose the precious memory of such an experience. We spend so much of our time indoors and in a less-natured, even denatured urban environment, and as a result we undergo what Robert Michael Pyle (1993) calls 'the extinction of experience'.

So to what extent does the media influence our lack of nature connectedness in the urban realm? Certainly electronic media is enticing, even addictive, so much so that here I am writing a blog using electronic media - about being in nature. At the same time, I might be watching a beautiful documentary on the wonders of the deep, visiting a zoo, aquarium or the one of the ersatz mariney sea-worlds. Along the way I could purchase a stuffed seal, or a colourful picture painted by elephants. 

The media create dramatic renditions of natural events or environmental disputes through news reporting. It offers bite-sized chunks or frames of reinterpreted information so fast that images pass by without us often understanding what the story is really about. Framing of stories, says Matthew Nisbet (2009), is a device for paring down or dumbing down important stories about climate change or nature devastation. The way the story is framed can give more weight to one side of an argument or another. For example, when reporting on climate change, while the IPCC and leading world scientists lay out the researched facts year by year showing the situation is problematic, the media can frame the story in such a way that these facts are open to question. The result becomes community scepticism and lack of support for urgent action.

Nisbet (2009) recommends that: 'To break through the communication barriers of human nature, partisan identity, and media fragmentation, messages need to be tailored to a specific medium and audience, using carefully researched metaphors, allusions, and examples that trigger a new way of thinking about the personal relevance of climate change.'

As the media tends to be our major source of information gathering, and social media the major source of information sharing, it is important for us media receivers to be savvy about the messages being delivered, especially in view of media framing, short sound bites, and the often over-simplification and lack of backgrounding of stories. 

Approaches to raise awareness is to use celebrities such as Leonardo dicaprio, Kate Blanchett to promote issues of environmental concern. Other campaigns prefer the use of glorious nature images to appeal to people's sense of the aesthetic. Depicting the beauty of natural environments might have more advertising pull than giving people more facts - which may then be overlooked by those in the mainstream media. A different form of communication is needed suggest Nisbet et al. (2010:329) and a new vision for nature care.

'... building societal action in response to climate change will require a new communication infrastructure, in which the public is (1) empowered to learn about both the scientific and social dimensions of climate change, (2) inspired to take personal responsibility, (3) able to constructively deliberate and meaningfully participate, and (4) emotionally and creatively engaged in personal change and collective action'

The documentary series Years of Living Dangerously (2014, Showtime) is also aiming to present a new way to approach climate change. Perhaps following kind of the advice of Matthew Nisbet and colleagues, the series produced by Hollywood luminaries such as James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger uses other celebrities as interviewers and their reporting of case studies to tell personal stories about the effects of climate change.

The first episode highlights two main stories intercut throughout the show. The program covers the plight of farmers in Syria affected first by severe drought and then by war. Then the show journeys to the town of Plainview, Texas and reveals the role of faith bound up in climate change denial versus the campaigning role of climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Heyhoe, recently named as one of Time Magazine's top 100 influential people.

been named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in the world - See more at: http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/51048/20140428/christian-scientist-katherine-hayhoe-named-among-time-magazines-most-influential.htm#sthash.rgJRmsKQ.dpuf

But with issues like climate change and wider environmental destruction, is mediated nature and celebrity culture enough to change current cultural norms in places like Australia about the need for environmental concern and care? Is it enough to stir our feelings of biophilia enough for community support to be garnered?   

 In an article titled 'Phenomenologically investigating mediated “nature”', researcher Tony Adams (2005) suggests it might be. Adams explains that the nature of his study was to explore people's experiences of mediated nature compared with the real thing, what he terms 'authentic nature'.

For Adams, mediated nature is depicted 'in innovative, exciting ways ...[which] provide our bodies and senses with fresh perspectives towards nature-related phenomena. For example, when characteristics of nature become mixed with shopping mall composition, we are introduced to new ways of experiencing both shopping and the wilderness (Price, 1995). Or, by mixing nature-related characteristics with theme parks, we may acquire new attitudes about and feelings toward entertainment industries and the natural world (Davis, 1997).' Really?

Assuming that mediated nature provides positive benefits, Adams interviewed people about their experiences with media. The process was revelatory. One of the problems he discovered during his analysis was an imbalance in his research design. He had placed too much emphasis on locating mediated experiences from his interviewees, so much so that he overlooked the authentic nature experiences they were describing. For instance, he did not seem to hear his participants when they spoke about the peacefulness of being in nature, the sensorialness of the experience, and the way they felt they got more out of connecting to authentic nature than mediated nature. Adams was only looking for the way they responded to media, so did not react to the comment made by one of his interviewees who stated:

'Well, to me, it’s great to experience nature on television. You can learn a lot, and information can go into your brain. But it’s not the same thing as actually smelling a tree or actually touching a tree or having the feeling of it.' (Adams 2005:520). 

At least Adams' participant made the distinction between authentic nature and hyper-real nature, so perhaps Baudrillard's simulacra may not have as much power as he originally surmised. But back in 1991, Katz and Kirby threw out a warning of what can happen when people put nature at such a distance, that they become unaware of the extent of the exploitation of the natural world.

'The exploitation of nature is coincident with its constitution as something apart and 'other'. Within the ideology of western advanced capitalism, this metaphoric space is attractive in part because it has been constructed as so different from ourselves, as 'poles apart'' (Katz and Kirby, 1991:265). 

Despite such a damaging prospect, the gap of being 'poles apart' can be mended by frequent and meaningful experiences in nature. As we spend time in nature, observing the changes of the seasons, the movement of the tides, the rise and fall of sun and moon, and listen to the bird call at dawn, we can be changed by these encounters with nature places. Insight, personal transformation, feelings of spirituality and transcendence can emerge though spending time in the outdoors.  

Reconnecting to nature helps us rekindle the feeling of biophilia. This innate quality is part of our unconscious awareness of being human. It might, as Kellert and Wilson (1993) hoped, encourage us to take care of nature so it is not poles apart but a conscious and integral part of our lives.

References
- Adams TE. 2005. Phenomenologically investigating mediated “nature”. The Qualitative Report 10(3): September 2005 512-532, http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR10-3/adams.pdf
- Davis, SG, 1997. Spectacular nature: Corporate culture and the Sea World experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Katz C, A. Kirby. 1991. In the nature of things: the environment and everyday life. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 16(3): 259-271.
- Kellert SR, EO Wilson. Eds, 1993. The biophilia hypothesis. Washington DC: A Shearwater Book (Island Press).
- Nisbet MC. 2009. Communicating climate change: why frames matter for public engagement. Environment 51(2): 12-23.
Nisbet MC, MA Hixon, KD Moore, M Nelson. 2010. Four cultures: new synergies for engaging society on climate change. Frontiers in Ecology 8(6): 329-331.
- Price, J. 1995. Looking for nature at the mall: A field guide to the Nature Company. In W. Cronon Ed., Uncommon ground: Toward reinventing nature, 186-203. New York: Norton.
- Pyle RM. 1993. The extinction of experience. In The thunder tree: Lessons from an urban wildland. New York: The Lyons Press.

Spiritual values and nature

by Sylvie Shaw

Walking along the edge of the Brisbane River or riding on the City Cat over the weekend, I have mixed emotions. The river, the heartland of the city and outlying districts, is a contested place. Contested are human constructions related to view and highrise, development and riparian zone degradation, as well as channelling and concrete piping of inflowing creeks. This change cannot however override the river's beauty and its ecological importance. 

I've been walking the river for some time now but over the years have watched with varying degrees of sadness and anger as trees are felled, the bush is bulldozed (so not one tree remains), south bank open-space parkland is overrun with buildings, and the public has little acknowledged say in the way Brisbane's inner city-space is becoming, and has become, far less green than when I first arrived. Although I don't want this blog to be a scene of depression, sometimes the continued change along the river and urbanscape affects me deeply.

It is possible to design a city that celebrates both natural and the urban environments. But in Brisbane, that balance seems to be loaded on the side of fast-growing, ever-expanding, tightly-packed urbanisation. This view also seems out of kilter with all the research on the significance of nature and nature places for human health and wellbeing. We need nature to give us life.

Sometimes our innate connection with the natural world seems paved over with ideas, plans and polices that are detrimental to being human and certainly detrimental to terrestrial and marine environments. To counter these destructive ideas and habits are a wealth of research on the human-nature relationship and numbers of people who care for the health and wellbeing of both people and planet.

Perhaps one reason for not including the personal, health, wellbeing, social and even spiritual perspectives within planning and policy decisions is the difficulty of putting an economic value on how people feel about and engage with local environments and special places. Conflicts over environmental change and increasing development are often regarded as a disposition among the public about the effects of change per se, rather than changes to a vital ecosystem, special place, heritage site or beloved tree. The dubbing of those who are socially and environmentally active as 'nimby-ites' is an easy stone to throw. Such ad hominem arguments avoid the real issue - that people care.

Imagine if issues beyond the narrow confines of utilitarian and economic frameworks were celebrated? But enough of this. Let's shift the stance from the problem to the potential and consider the beauty and spirituality of places rather than the concretisation and degreening of suburban Brisbane. Let's look to the benefits of nature connecting for both human and nature.

All over Brisbane people are working to restore the natural environment. Through creek watch and bushcare groups, people are replanting, weeding, and cleaning up degraded environments. As they are restoring the environment, they explain they are also restoring their health and wellbeing (Shapiro 1995). Others express a spiritual connection not only through connecting with the natural environment but also the social connections they find as well (Gooch 2005).

Psychological as well as physical health and wellbeing, and evocative spiritual experiences, have been the focus of several research studies since the 1990s - from the viewpoints of wilderness studies, ecotheology, ecopsychology, nature religion, and outdoor adventuring. From the ecological and resource management side, several studies have touched on the spiritual especially the work of Herbert Schroeder from the US Forest Service over several decades.

Some more ecologically-focused studies tend to conflate religion and spirituality, or confuse spirituality with psychological or feel-good qualities. For example, under the spiritual rubric in a study by Pike et al. (2011:197) on coastal and marine areas in Britain, are the terms ‘tranquility, relaxation, the experience of nature, beaches and coastal towns as part of a recreation experience, and peacefulness, filled with sounds of nature’. Other research on environmental values locates spirituality within therapeutic values (e.g. Seymour et al. 2008, 2010) or as aesthetic value and scenic beauty (Raymond et al. 2009). The problem with these broadened perspectives is that spirituality is not adequately defined or is relegated to other feelings-related values which do not necessarily indicate a spiritual or transcendent connection to nature.

To counter this conundrum, researchers such as Herbert Schroeder, have for years expressed the need for the spiritual to be adopted into resource management policies and understanding. Schroeder (1992:25) defines the spiritual as 'the experience of being related to or in touch with an "other" that transcends one's individual sense of self and gives meaning to one's life at a deeper than 'intellectual level'. Schroeder's definition highlights two key aspects - relationality and transcendence. These perspectives extend a more nature-inspired approach to spirituality into the postsecular. 

The issue with the term spirituality within postsecular western perspectives is that it is often used broadly to refer on one hand to the growth of a personalised and privatised expression of religion or spirituality since the 1960s, while on the other, it continues to be a significant aspect of traditional religious faith. Other tensions in definitions of spirituality are hightlighted by philosopher Patrick Curry (2011: 139) who maintains that spirituality is often linked to a definition of religion which deals with the supernatural, which he deems 'prejudices nature from the start, since whatever this being or power is, it cannot be in or of nature, since it is supernatural' (Curry, 139, italics in original). It is also bound up with the concept of spirit in Western theism defined as 'that which is not matter' (italics in original). To counter these confusions, Curry points to the terms 'the sacred' and 'sanctity of nature' (Kaebnick in Curry 139), while Milton (1999:441) cites Szerszynski's use of 'sacrality' referring to the way 'environmentalism has been shaped by religious modes of action and corporateness' (Szerszynski 1997:50).

The difference between these environmental theorists and the way public talks about their nature experiences is that they may not use terms like spiritual, sacred, sanctity or sacrality or not define them clearly. People I have interviewed might say: 'It's something I can't really explain', or 'It's beyond human understanding' (Shaw 2012) or even 'I know what you mean but I don't use that word [spiritual]'. 

However, while the spiritual is positioned as a felt and acknowledged experience in the research literature and among the general public, resource managers might not logistically be able to deal with non-tangible and not quantitatively measurable terms like spirituality, sanctity or sacrality.
 ...

Walking along the Brisbane River this week stirs my spirit two ways. I am saddened by the massive new development taking place on the old site of scientific research of Queensland's Dept of Primary Industry. The local community lobbied the government for the area to become parkland or an environmental park but there seemed (and seems) limited understanding or acceptance about the need to acknowledge the intangible, non-material and relational component of values research. People honoured this space as special. They, like me, desired the retention of one small wild place in the heart of the city for peace, tranquility and spiritual connection and for the ecosystem to continue to flourish. Seeing the river flowing out to the sea, noticing the way the tide shapes the banks, listening to the birds' evocative calls, all this keeps me afloat in the knowledge that the river has been and will be flowing for some long time to come.

References

- Gooch M. 2005. Voices of the volunteers: an exploration of the experiences of catchment volunteers in coastal Queensland, Australia. Local Environment 10(1):  5-19.

- Kaebnick G.E. 2000. On the sanctity of nature. Hastings Centre Report 30(5): 16-23.

- Milton K. 1999. Nature is already sacred. Environmental Values 8: 437-449.

- Pike K., D. Johnson, S. Fletcher, P. Wright. 2011. Seeking spirituality: respecting the social value of coastal recreational
resources in England and Wales. Journal of Coastal Research 10061: 194-204.
- Raymond C.M., B.A. Bryan, D. Hatton MacDonald, A. Cast
S. Stathearn, A. Grandgirard, T. Kalivas. 2009. Mapping community values for natural capital and ecosystem services. Ecological Economics 68: 1301-1315.

- Schroeder H. 1992. The spiritual aspect of nature: A perspective from depth psychology. In Vander Stoep, Gail A., ed. 1992. Proceedings of the 1991 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium; 1991 April 7-9; Saratoga Springs, NY. Gen. Tech. Rep. NE-160. Radnor, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station: 25-30, http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/35254.

- Seymour E., A. Curtis, D. Pannell, A. Roberts, C. Allan. 2008. Exploring community values assigned to natural assets on the Moolort Plains, Victoria. ILWS Report No. 47, Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, NSW.
- Seymour E., A. Curtis, D. Pannell, C. Allan, A. Roberts. 2010. Understanding the role of assigned values in natural resource management. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 17: 142-153.

- Shaipro E. 1995. Restoring habitats, communities, and souls. In T. Rozak, M. Gomes and A. Kanner, eds., Ecopsychology. Restoring the earth, healing the mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. 
- Shaw S. 2012. 'My God, it's our river, shouldn't we preserve it? Without the river, what else have we got?', Concilium 5: 24-34.

- Szerszynski B. 1997. The varieties of ecological piety. Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 1: 37-55.

Marketing, branding, consuming - the spirit of capitalism?

by Sylvie Shaw

Max Weber was one of the most significant religion and social theorists of the 20th century. His writings on society were prolific and his theories on status, bureaucracy and 'The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism' (1995) are foundational texts within Sociology and Studies in Religion programs.

Weber's theories have been utilised more recently by George Ritzer (2004), who illustrated Weber's theory through an emphasis on the 'McDonaldsization of society' globally, and by John Drane (2000) who adopted Weber's theory for the Christian Church, in his book 'The McDonaldization of the Church: Consumer culture and the Church's future'. But does consumer culture of the Christian Church apply to other denominations and religions? And what happens in a most modern world where observers of religious change see the blending of the sacred and profane both within religious institutions themselves as they become more responsive to and more expressive of popular culture, and from popular culture, as religious themes are impregnated consciously and unconsciously into movies, pop songs and TV series?

These questions are analysed by a solid range of religion theorists, particularly Gordon Lynch (2012), whose book 'The sacred in the modern world' unravels the essential Durkheimian split between the sacred and the profane. Lynch explains that religion, and its vital element, the sacred, was explicated without the understanding of contingent political, historical and cultural positionings.

At the same time, Lynch's standpoint, while incorporating valid post-structuralist criticisms, overlooks the notion of the sacred as emergent - that sense of the sacred outlined by Eliade. Eliade's view is that the sacred shows or manifests itself as something entirely or 'wholly' different from the profane as hierophany - where the sacred reveals itself. While Lynch might argue that this perspective is also situated within culture and liquid spatiality, things are sacred because they are. Eliade explains:

'For many human beings, the sacred can be manifested in stones or trees, for example... what is involved is not a veneration of the stone in itself, a cult of the tree in itself. The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshiped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere.' (Eliade 1957:10).

In Eliade's frame, stones, trees and other profane objects become sacred and 'saturated with power'. His view differs from Durkheim's over the fundamental issue of human and social functionality. For Durkheim, things are made sacred through human intervention and relationship, e.g. through rituals honouring the sacred and the special or precious, or through consecrating everyday things as sacred (See Durkheim's The elementary forms of the religious life 1995[1912]). 

According to Durham (2001): 'In Durkheim's view the sacred is far from being synonymous with the divine. Not only may gods and spirits be sacred, but also things like rocks, trees, pieces of wood, in fact anything. For what makes something sacred is not that it is somehow connected to the divine but that it is the subject of a prohibition that sets it radically apart from something else, which is itself thereby made profane.'

Lynch unravels these theorists' various understandings in more depth commenting:

'While Eliade saw the sacred mode of being as more common in pre-modern times, he was also sceptical of the ability of the modern person fully to free him or herself from this religious past. Rather than embracing fully a post-religious existence, contemporary life is run through with ‘camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals’, both at the level of the attempts to inject meaning into personal life and of wider social and political movements organized around collective ritual and myth.'

This brings us back to the concept of religion, media, consumption and the sacred. Again Lynch's work serves as a link between these themes through the concept of mediatization. He points out that in the modern world, the sacred, through connection with, and perhaps influence from, various media, has become 'mediatized'. This view contrasts to Eliade's notion of 'degenerated rituals' and 'camouflaged myths'. For Lynch, the media has become the prime source of the community's engagement with the sacred. Specifically he maintains that while the media produces sacred forms, the audience reproduces those same forms through thought (thinking), emotion (feelings) and action (acting). 

The interplay between media and audience is global and for audiences, increasingly time consuming as both groups - public media and media consumers - 'present a continually updated flow of images and stories from across the world' (Lynch 2012). The same process is going on with religion and religious organisations as they too use mediated practices to disseminate stories, images and actions - and in the process blur the boundaries between sacred and profane. Marketing, branding, consumption of sacred objects, sacred music (from the classics to hiphop and rock) and media depicting sacred stories and images are now grist to the mill for religious organisations. 

Commodification can benefit both religion and congregation but in the process, what may be occurring through Eliade's desacralisation in the modern world, might be a dilution of meaning and dissolution of the traditional religious values of altruism, care and compassion. Whether you think religion may be diluted in a world of capitalistic commodified spirit  or the reverse, a re-enchantment of religion but now in multiple forms, may depend on one's socialisation in and experience of faith and, as Lynch (2012) reminds us, on the political, historical and cultural positioning.

Different expressions of religion, rituals and worship services, Ward (2007) remarks, become performances which utilise popular marketing techniques and pop culture memes to engage congregations (audiences?) in thinking, feeling and acting (Lynch 2012). For example, in an earlier text edited by Lynch (2007), Between sacred and profane, Pete Ward portrays the intersection between the Eucharist and the congregation. Examining the Eucharist ritual of the Baptist Church, Ward observes that:

'...Baptist identity may be shaped by the way the ritual is performed and the way the ritual has developed through theological debate. Baptist congregations also produce and represent. They produce as they participate in the performance of the Eucharist. Production therefore relates to the way they identify themselves with the Eucharistic act in performance. Participation in performance however can be read as a form of representation. Congregations mediate Baptist Eucharistic identity.' (Ward 2007:90; my italics).

Ward argues that the dynamic interplay between religion, ritual, production and reproduction is a product of socialisation within the religious tradition and doctrine, the performance of the congregation and 'the lived culture of faith' (Ward, 93). To this he adds a third vital element, that of consumption. These shifts in religion into the intersection of religion, media and consumption, as well as the resacralisation of the profane, are summed by the enigmatic rapper, the late Tupac Shakur who stated: 'It's all about emotion; it's all about life' (cited in Pinn 2007:146).

The views on the distinction between the sacred and profane from Durkheim and Eliade are interlinked within Ward's, Lynch's and Shakur's perceptions. Rituals and myths are not, as Eliade suggested, being degenerated, camouflaged or desacralised in the modern world, but are continually sacralised and resacralised, enchanted and re-enchanted through ritual performance, everyday expressions of religious faith within a world of pop culture and mediatization.

References
Drane J. 2000. The McDonaldization of the Church. London: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd.
Durham J.C. 2001. Durkheim on the sacred. http://www.bytrentsacred.co.uk/index.php/durkheim-on-religion/durkheim-on-the-sacred
Durkheim E. 1995[1912]. The elementary forms of religious life. Trans. K.E. Fields. New York: Free Press.
Lynch G. Ed. 2007. Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Lynch G. 2012. The sacred in the modern world: a cultural sociological approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pinn A.P. 2007. On a mission from God. In G Lynch, Ed., Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture, 143-196. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Ritzer G. 2004. The McDonaldization of society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Ward P. 2007. The Eucharist and the turn to culture. In G Lynch, Ed., Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture, 82-93. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Weber M. 1995. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Trans. T. Parsons. London, New York: Routledge. 

Image:
Pixabay: gyeong ju south korea lanterns pagoda temple faith
http://pixabay.com/en/gyeong-ju-south-korea-lanterns-200069/ 

The Sound of Peace

by Sylvie Shaw

Sometimes you come across something online and want to follow the lead. Sometimes google delivers what you least expect and are looking for. I found The Sound of Peace when searching for news about religion and music. Not religious music, but how performers and artists are building bridges across cultural and religious troughs. One of those artists is violin peacester Miri Ben Ari.

Growing up in Israel, Ben Ari heard deeply traumatic family accounts of the Holocaust. Determined to raise awareness amongst non-Jews about the tragedy of the Holcaust, she founded the organisation The Gedenk Movement meaning to remember. Concerned that more than 50% of American students these days have not heard of the Holocaust, she decided to teach them. She says:

'My family story of struggle was all about racism. In my opinion, racism is ignorance; people are people, and we have all been given fantastic potential to fulfill in our lifetime. Yet, this monster has been running loose, annihilating cultures, killing people and even creating a "final solution" for my people. I sometimes wonder where people get this illusion that they were born "superior"?' (Ben-Ari 2013).

She uses her music for healing the hurt she feels for victims of the Holocaust, for promoting peace across borders, and for encouraging young performers to use their creativity and 'break their silence' about racism. Her music floats across stages with hip hop artists like Kanye West, Jay Z and Alicia Keys (amongst others). These collaborations bring different music genres together in common endeavour.

But while she is exploring the hiphop and DJ soul of popular music, her music aims to spread healing across cultures, and within oneself. One of her evocative projects involved creating a soundtrack to Martin Luther King Jnr's memorable 'I have a dream' speech - 'Symphony of Brotherhood’. She is also a 'Good Will Ambassador of Music' for the UN and has spoken at the UN about the nexus between culture and sustainable development.

Of course, Ben-Ari's is not the only peacebuilding program that uses music to cross bridges. Music has continuously been harnessed in actions against repressive governments and unjust laws, to fight fascism and celebrate peace. Music can transcend barriers and national borders as O'Connell (2010:2) in the text Music and Conflict suggests: 'Music rather than language may provide a better medium for interrogating the character of conflict and for evaluating the character of conflict resolution'.

Musical peacebuilders agree but question the extent of thinking that music can be a visceral one-fits-all universal channel towards understanding as Cross (2003, cited in Cohen 2008:28) maintains:

'Musics only makes sense as musics if we can resonate with the histories, values, conventions, institutions, and technologies that enfold them; musics can only be approached through culturally situated acts of interpretation. Such interpreted acts... unveil a multiplicity of musical ontologies, some or most of which may be musically irreconcilable...'

Both critics and supporters of cross-cultural and peacebuilding artistic, musical and theatre projects warn that the art which transmits the message of interconnection needs an inclusion of empathy and nonviolence. Peace advocate and theorist Johan Galtung (2008:60) treads softly. Noting the importance of art for peace, he dances with the idea of people being uplifted, and united. But says 'the step towards peace does not come by itself. It has to be thought, felt and worked out. And that will always be tremendously helpful in our struggle for peace'.

References
Ben-Ari M. 2013. Music and The Third Metric: The Silence of the Violin. Huff Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miri-benari/music-and-the-third-metric_b_4173197.html
Cohen C. 2008. Music: A universal language? In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 26-39. London: I.B. Taurus.
Galtung J. 2008. Peace, music and the arts. In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 53-61. London: I.B. Taurus.
O/Connell J. 2010. An ethnomusicological approach to music and conflict. In JM O'Connell and S El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Eds, Music and conflict. University of Illinois Press.

Image source 
Pixabay, power light candle meditation tranquility peace, http://pixabay.com/en/power-light-candle-meditation-18536/

Religion and the sacred - transitioning to what's popular

by Sylvie Shaw

One of the fascinating themes within the study of religion, media and popular culture is the way that these three themes blur, merge and split apart depending on one's worldview, religious disposition, and scholarly observation. Questions of the role of religion in pop culture and pop culture in religion emerged as scholars began to explore divergent forms of ritual, prayer and worship no longer contained within institutional boundaries. Comics, movies, TV shows, pop songs and fashion iconography extolled and appropriated the virtues of religiosity in its various forms. Did these forms dilute the fundamental tenets of creeds, dogmas and teachings? Or did these shifting genres spread an understanding of religious ideals such as being altruistic, spreading compassion and doing good works? 

Much of this change can be viewed by what social theorist, Ulrich Beck (2010) calls the rise of the 'sovereign self'. It relates to a growing individualistic approach to self-styled beliefs, understandings and engagements. Pop culture icons such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, Kayne West, and the enigmatic Tupac interspersed religion-inspired lyrics into their songs and performances. Adherents to these musical 'heroes' followed the artists as if they were gods and goddesses, while the artists themselves, especially Lady Gaga, treated her fans almost as religious devotees, as Little Monsters. 

Hero worship and promoting humans as gods have become part and parcel of contemporary pop culture regimes. Recent movies such as Thor, Noah, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings all attest to a changing focus on the enhancement of the male hero who, through religious and supernatural means, is challenged, fights back, and in the end achieves victory, whether for themselves or for the good of all humanity (or the universe as in the case of Dr Who). 

But where have the female heroes gone? Just over a decade ago Buffy was expunging vampires and falling in love with them too. The sisters from Charmed sought out demons and again fell in love with the demonic and the angelic. Halle Berry played the sexy Catwoman and hero warrior princess Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle patrolled the ancient world trouncing the opposition but in the process mixing myths, gods and histories, upturning sexual, erotic and mythical stories as they travelled. Does this matter? Perhaps not if you agree with the works of Joseph Campbell on the power of myth and the similarities in myth, story, heroes and heroines across cultures and religions.

But does being a mythical hero or heroine make them religious or spiritual and if so, in what ways? Perhaps it is the 'superhuman' powers of characters like Superman. Perhaps it is the ritualistic style of Wolverine. Perhaps it is the magic of Merlin whose eyes light up when supernatural enchantment is at play. All these characters use their powers to wield victory but all are challenged in their journey. 

Stig Hjarvard (2008) proposes that the relationship between religion, media and the mythical, supernatural elements show the process of mediatisation where popular media has taken over the role of religion as purveyors of ethics and moral behaviours. He argues that the mediatization of religion occurs in two directions - through a process of secularisation and re-sacralisation. To demonstrate this shift, he turns to the methods that mediatisation employs to blur the sacred and profane into what he terms (following Billig 1995), a banalisation of sacred elements into aspects 'associated with folk religion, like trolls, vampires and black cats crossing the street; and items taken from institutionalized religion, like crosses, prayers and cowls; and representations that have no necessary religious connotations, like upturned faces, thunder and lightning; and highly emotional music' (2008:15). 

But being banal or promoting popular expressions of the vernacular and spiritual does not make these images and 'elements' insignificant. They form the very building blocks of this shift towards the re-enchatment of the world (albeit the western world with its mediated storylines). Hjarvard argues that the media changes religion, however I would ague that religion changes the media as well. 

This two way shift can be seen in the way religious themes are slotted seemlessly into banal expositions and portrayals on screen and in popular music. The interesting factor to acknowledging or recognising this change towards religious and spiritual inclusion is the silo or vantage point of the theorists and scholarly observers. Some may not see the encroachment of religious ideas into pop culture if they don't have an understanding about the fluidity of religious dynamics and see only the traditional form of religion. 

The interconnection within the popular media of religion, supernatural and spirituality become, within a secular western approach, a ploy to deliver religious ideas and ideals about the best way to live for oneself and others. These lifeways were once enshrined in myth and fairytale and still are. But the Disneyification of stories and the popular appropriation of myth, creation stories and gods and goddesses steer away from Campbell's homogenous theory of the power of myth and the hero's journey, and become a display of postmodern mashups which, in Disney's demonclature, are transfigured as a romantic happy end and a victory for the heroes ... and heroines. 

As I asked above - does this matter? Stories, like religion and history are fluid. They rise and fall between teller and listener and over generations. They connect past, present and future in a whirlwind of imagination and awe. In music, on screen and within texts, the world changes as we the reader, viewer and listener engage with our own imaginative and imaginary theatres. We choose forms which speak to us, which heroes to emulate, which stories to follow, which passions to uphold. Through the merging of religion, media and popular culture, the world, or what we often thought of the world in solid state, is continually being teased apart, being rethought and reconstructed.

When critics claim that religion is diluted or that religious dogma is destabilised, Jones (2000:414) sets us on a path of re-evaluation:

'Rejecting the processes of discovery in favor of processes of interpretation and invention as praxes of reclamation and resistance, postmodern mythopoetic texts mimic and challenge history’s hegemonic claims to tell “the truth” about the past and, by extension, the present and the future.'

Mythical heroes transformed by Hollywood, pop stars worshipped by devoted fans, and religious themes and understandings of the sacred are all stirred into the mix of a pop culture extravaganza. If religion is about meaning making, then the production of mythic narratives will continue to manifest within formal and informal religious practices - in places of worship, on screen, in the football arena, through acts of memorialisation, community rituals, festivals and celebrations. Durkheim's collective effervescence is never too far away.

Within this interconnected process, the concept of liquid religion arises. Taira (2006), like Hjarvard (2008), observes changes in expressions of religion in the postmodern west. He notes that 'the solid borders of institutional religion have broken down or ‘liquified’ as it slips into the nooks and crannies of society, in the process becoming almost unrecognisable as ‘religion’ according to the traditional model' (Taira 2006, cited in Mäkelä and Petsche 2013). Religion is infilrating the nooks and crannies of society, in mediated formats, fashionista religious regalia, and within myths and fairytales as it makes and remakes the same story, with the same ending - that good prevails. 

References  
Beck U. 2010. God of one's own. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Billig M. 1995. Banal nationalism, London: Sage.
Hjarvard S. 2008. The mediatization of religion: A theory of the media as agents of religious change. Northern Lights 6: 9-26.
Jones S.G. 2000. Histories, fictions, and Xena: Warrior Princess. Television New Media 1: 403-418.
Mäkelä E. and J.J.M Petch. 2013. Serious parody: Discordianism as liquid religion. Culture and Religion 14(4):411-423.
Taira T. 2006. Notkea Uskonto [Liquid Religion]. Tampere: Eetos. 

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