6 Replies to “Green- James/Kleinman Post”

  1. Thank you Chava. I found your post insightful and helpful, especially in its critique of James’ work. In particular, you have written, regarding James’ comments on the value of religious activity, “I think this speaks to the need to evaluate people’s experience in part from within their own tradition and using their own logic.” I agree with your statement and also with the implication that James does not do so and is, perhaps, not even interested in doing so. It seems that James desires to create a universal definition of religious experience (p. 435), however, I wonder to what extent he does justice to any of the testimonies he analyzes by removing them entirely from the particular contexts (religious institutions, as you have helpfully noted). I think this would be a valuable area for further discussion in class, namely, to what extent does ethnographic research seek universal conclusions? Or, are universal conclusions even desirable? And, how might a researcher of religious experience understand the experience of the other within the context of that person’s/group’s logic and values?

  2. Thank you, Chava, both for volunteering to go in the first week and for putting these two authors in conversation very nicely!

    Your precis, and Greg’s, highlight a lot of the important and admirable features of James’ work. I’ll admit, I’ve only read snippets of it through the years, and usually taught to me by people in a not-very-positive light. I’ve enjoyed taking the time to fish out much that is good from the work!

    These positives, for me, involve his skepticism (if not outright disdain) for a kind of uncritical “medical materialism,” and his emphasis, as you put it, on evaluating “people’s experience in part from within their own tradition.”

    I share your skepticism over the way in which he parcels out particular experience from institutional (or can we just say communal–the boundary is unclear) contexts. This is a danger of thinking he can evaluate from “within” people’s traditions–a position that attempts to be within all traditions often really attempts to be above all of them.

    This is why I have another issue with the work even for all its admirable qualities. The project is, in a lot of ways, one of literary classification. James is working to classify experience, but experience as mediated through various literature–fiction and non-fiction, journals and narrative, most of which seem to be published texts. James then seeks to classify these literary testimonies from within.

    In some ways, then, he has more in common with the 19th-20th century projects to classify folklore than he does with ethnography. He collects literature, sorts it according to some classificatory principles (which he at least attempts to derive from inside the work), and then extrapolates from the results. What he has produced is maybe not so much a testament to the varieties of religious experience as it is a testament to the ways in which late 19th-early 20th century people described religious experiences in textual narratives. Valuable, but probably a bit more narrow than the goals it hopes to achieve.

    But it’s fair to ask how we can get at “experience” other than through text. Is interpersonal encounter or language somehow a less limited mediation?

    I think your wondering about the delicate balance between “privileging experience and yet employing scientific methods” relates to this question. And I think for Kleinman, the answer may be yes–his idea of being-in-the-worldness that exists in and outside the body requires, well, bodies, not just texts.

  3. Thank you for your insightful Precis. You draw great points from James and Kleinman. I specifically appreciated your discussion of James’ argument with regard to the individual vs institution, as well as your comments on his “fruits of religion”. As you point out, he emphasizes the need to evaluate a religious experience by its fruits in an individualistic sense, and yet his examples stem out of and point to an institutional definition of religion. As I read James, I found myself trying to make sense of the connection between the individual experience and the experience of the institution and whole society. I wonder if the move from the individualistic fruits to the collective and institutional practices is James’ way of bridging personal religious experiences to the rest of society outside of a particular institution, thus creating a universal definition of religion. He stresses this point in his lecture on mysticism. James points to the relevance of mystical experiences (pointing to a union with God, and meaning of life) not only to the individual experiencing them but to others as well. And yet even within mysticism, James finds that those experiences are sometimes too privatized to claim universal authority. This makes me pose the question: What is James’ argument missing with regard to the connection between the individual, the institution, and society as a whole? And Can religious experiences be fruitful only to the individual? or must they always have a universal claim in one way or another, in order to be considered valid?

  4. Thank you Chava for you insightful reflection on James’ work. I liked how precisely you summerise his major arguments and then raise imortant questions on his observation and suggested method to study religion. It would be really interesting to discuss the role of his audience is class becuase, you are right, he often assumes a lot about their positionality. While I think he makes an iteresting argument while talking about individual experince v/s institution, it might not be a framework relevant to many South Asian religious traditions and I look forward to discussing that in class.

  5. Thank you Chava for your précis on James’s work. You have stated that “James is not interested in so far as it is comprised of rituals, worship and organization,” and I do agree with you that he is trying to put emphasis on experience rather than institution. The question that I have is that is personal experience separable from institutional and communal setting/experience? As you pointed out, the examples that James provides are within institutional context. I believe these examples are good enough for us to question the influence of and relationship between the institutional context and personal religious experience. Can people’s religious experience be evaluated without considering the context that they have long been exposed to or/and affiliated with? For example, tribal religions in Africa often require communal religious practices. Religious practices have to be communal for them and therefore religious practices must be performed with/within their community. In this context, it is difficult to draw a line between personal and communal religious practice and I am not sure if their personal religious experience can be examined a part from their community and context.

  6. Thanks Chava for getting us off to a good start. I thought your précis was interesting and raised some important issues that others have also noted about the relationship between experience and social life. These are in fact the main questions that interest us in this course as a whole. There was one sentence I really did not understand: “James assuages his audience that his use of existential judgement, which will involve biological and psychological recourse, does not immediately retract from religion’s spiritual significance.” There may have been a typo in here somewhere but at any rate this needs unpacking and explanation. I also wonder whether you see any worthwhile comparisons between James’s conversion experiences and the kind of mysticism you study?

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