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CHAPTER 6 The Economics ofSpiritual Luxury: The Glittering Lobby and the World's Parliament of Religions INTRODUCTION Richard H. Roberts's recent article on the theoretical setting of the 1993 Parliament of Religions (1995) provides some examples of the thorny problems scholars of religion encounter when they presume from the outset that their datum is distinct, autonomous, or, simply put, sui generis. By conceiving of religion, or, more accurately, so-called religious experiences and spiritual consciousness as independent variables that have sociopolitical implications, but not causes, such scholarship romanticizes and thereby depoliticizes historical, human interactions and institutions. Despite what may be the best intentions of such authors, this romanticization promotes the efficient incorporation of certain human behaviors within totalized, hegemonic discourses. Simply put, in his efforts to identify "religion as global resource," Roberts has, perhaps unknowingly, entrenched one of the most powerful hegemonic discourses of the postindustrial revolution era-the liberal commodification of human beings as sociopolitically autonomous individuals. It is precisely because his article argues that "global religion," as exemplified in the World's Parliament, resists such hegemonies that the contradictions of Roberts' article-indeed, the contradictions of research that posits the sociopolitical autonomy of religion-deserves to be brought to light. FROM DESCRIPTION TO REDESCRIPTION As should by now be clear, the critique that I have been developing throughout these opening chapters is based on three related presuppositions , the first two of which develop directly from the previous chapter: (i) there is no part of social life that can be protected from cultural and 85 86 DISPATCHES FROM THE THEORY WARS historical pressures; (ii) all so-called facts are already part of elaborate frameworks that often remain unacknowledged; and therefore (iii) we as scholars of religion can do more than just describe and then interpret the essentially free-floating meaning of the various claims made by the people we study. In stating these three presuppositions-and as the book's opening epigraph from Joe Queenan makes evident-I fully realize that much of the current scholarship on religion deviates dramatically from my position , for it presumes that religious experiences, myths, rituals, spirituality , and so on, are somehow privileged and either originate from, or gain meaning by reference to, something that lies outside historical change (whether it is called the "sacred," the "mysterium," "ultimacy," "Meaning ," or so on). Accordingly, so-called religious facts are treated as if they were self-evidently meaningful realities that exist outside the scholar, much as ripe fruit sits on the tree waiting to be picked.! Because they are thought to originate from, or refer to, some external referent, these religious realities are said to share deep and abiding value-hence the overused categories of essence and manifestation in the history of comparative religion and phenomenology of religion. The reasoning? Though the fruits and branches may differ, they all share the same unseen (i.e., nonempirical) roots. The dominant position in the field argues that the inductivist historian of religion arrives on the scene free of predetermined theories and definitions, assesses the factual data (e.g., religions in the plural), and describes it faithfully, picks out the appropriate methods to ascertain their shared, deep essence, and only then draws conclusions about religion in the singular. It is precisely this position that I am contesting in these chapters. Instead, others have suggested that we as scholars are, from the outset , involved in the act of redescription based on assorted frameworks and theories of human minds, behaviors, and social institutions-theories and definitions of our own makings. Accordingly, the act of scholarship is deductive and involves the redescription of emic claims in terms of inevitably and unapologetically reductive, etic categories and theories that we as scholars devise and bring with us to the scene. If our work is understood in this manner, it is the act of scholarship itself that concocts and applies such categories as religion, myth, ritual, sacrifice, pilgrimage , and so on, uses the human data they help to organize to test theoretical models of how minds or institutions work-such categories allow us to map these models onto what might otherwise simply be termed "diverse, observable" human behaviors. It is important to note that such a position is not antirealist; it does not argue that the world is all in our heads and that there is no such thing as a historical event. Instead, it argues that the meanings of the world and the emplotment of just this [18.221.165.246] Project MUSE...

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