Presence, practice and relational anthropology: synchronized swimming and a book launch

by Lieve Orye

Le Grand Bain

Utrecht. The night before. I went to see the movie ‘Le Grand Bain’. There I was, enjoying the movie on my own, plenty of room, surrounded by about 80 empty seats. No other soul around. A screenshot of a cinema room filled with people told me to put my phone on silence. The humour of it brought me in a good mood for the film that was announced as a feel good movie. It tells the story of an odd group of men, each with their own life story and struggles, brought and held together as a team by synchronized swimming. They are not taken seriously by anybody. Nevertheless, they find out about the European championship in male synchronized swimming and decide to participate. After undergoing a hilarious training program, and after a failed attempt to steal sets of bathing suits and bath robes, they manage to get to Sweden and, after a nerve wrecking competition, they win the championship.

Several times though, episodes are shown of the men talking, after training, in the changing room. There, they manage to be present to each other, and give each other space to open up and tell a bit more about their story, their recent troubles. One of them tells of his depression, another of his financial troubles, another of being bullied. Not all of them are able to open up, and sometimes they have to call each other to order. Nevertheless, the synchronized swimming practices and the challenges they meet along the way allow them to develop relationships in which trust and mutual support as well as the shapes and figures of their championship act become possible.

Book launch: a practice book of presence

The next day, a new book Praktijkboek Presentie by Elly Beurskens, Marije Van Der Linde and Andries Baart was presented to a room filled to the brim with people and enthusiasm. Baart is well known for his work in care ethics and for his opus magnum Een Theorie van Presentie (2001). The theory of presence found its roots, inductively, in the work of street pastors in Utrecht. Baart is keen to emphasize that he did not invent the practice of presence. It was done and is done constantly by numerous professionals and volunteers who again and again make an effort to be there for and with the people they care for.

The presence approach which describes and theorizes these practices is nevertheless radical, with far-reaching consequences. It breaks away from care as primarily a provision of solutions to problems. Away from care that focuses on the reformulation of what is going on in someone’s life into a rather orderly, well-defined problem, a theory-driven diagnosis and a solution in the shape of interventions that consist of the application of efficient, effective and competent procedures according to a previously determined plan. The street pastors in Utrecht worked in a very different way: they were there for others without directly focusing on problem solving. The focus was on the cultivation of caring relationships and it was only within these that content and form was given to care. Baart’s study of their practices resulted in a theoretical book, some 900 pages. Now, Praktijkboek Presentie is launched to make the theory more accessible, understandable and inviting to practitioners who wish to practice presence more reflectively.

The ‘latende modus’

As part of this book launch a mini-lecture was given on a key element in the practice and theory of presence: in Dutch, the ‘latende modus’. It refers to an non-interventionist mode of care characterised by patience, unconditional attentiveness and receptivity. It was contrasted with the dutch words ‘maken’ (or the ‘makende modus’) and ‘bemoeien’, characterised by an activism, by knowing what needs to be done on the basis of an intake, a diagnosis and a treatment plan and following that through. Not surprisingly, ‘laten’ and non-interventionism are words that easily trigger misunderstandings, especially when the far-reaching implications of the presence approach are not seen. One of Baart’s strategies to counter these misunderstandings is to explore the word’s field of meaning by drawing attention to other closely related words that indicate a much richer reality of non-interventionist being with the other. Words such as watching over someone, being witness to someone, making space for someone, accompanying someone and undergoing their situation already shatter the first impression of ‘doing nothing’.

Baart’s reflections on the practices of presence signal much more than just an alternative to an interventionist approach. As he notes in his inaugural lecture at the NWU South-Africa in 2016, care and caring are to be seen as the most fundamental category of good, sustainable life together. Taking seriously the experiences and practices of presence by so many professionals and volunteers in their care for those who find themselves ill, marginalised and in trouble pushes one towards a fundamentally different understanding of what makes the world tick, of what it means to be human and of what it takes to live well together. It pushes away from an understanding that emphasizes intentionality, rationality and autonomy, towards a relational anthropology that emphasizes ‘being with’ and ‘knowing one another from inside the relationship’. I would say it pushes towards Tim Ingold’s relational anthropology that makes similar connections between care, presence and sustainable life together and that likewise emphasizes the primacy of attention over intention, the importance of ‘letting be’ and of knowing from within.

To care for others, we must allow them into our presence so that we, in turn, can be present to them. In an important sense, we must let them be, so that they can speak to us. However, letting be, in this sense is not easily reconciled with understanding, let alone with explanation. Understanding and explanation belong to that other mode of attention, as check-up. In this mode, we attend to things and persons so that we can account for them. Once accounted for, they can be ticked off, removed from our list, and dispatched to that repository of the ‘already known’ or ‘well understood’ the contents of which no longer demand anything of us… (Ingold 2016:20-21)

If Baart is interested in further enriching his vocabulary to speak about being human and to strenghten his diagnosis of what is wrong with approaches that emphasize objective expert knowledge, intention and intervention, Ingold’s relational anthropological work is a gold mine. (1)

Synchronized swimming

Life is not lived intentionally but first and foremost attentionally with others, writes Ingold. Though this odd group of men shared an interest in synchronized swimming and took up the plan to participate at the European championship, the movie shows them much more as a relational ‘community of attention’, - of people trying to feel their way forward in the company of one another -, than a ‘community of interest’, - a sum of individuals who purposefully, efficiently and competently work towards a goal agreed upon at the beginning. It is the growing and ongoing relationships between the men that make it possible for certain plans to arise, for a journey to be undertaken, for dreams to become accomplished.

In synchronized swimming marks are given for the intricateness and sharpness of the shapes made by the moving bodies of the team. The movie shows how these shapes, made by this odd group of men to the thrilling surprise of everyone, arise through much practice involving the training of a synchronised attention to each other in the water. But the story is much more than this. Learning to align their bodies in the water they find new space to live attentionally with and care relationally for each other and others, and flourish. As Baart notes, “attentiveness makes people flourish, it makes them do well.” And so they did!

(1) On the relevance of Tim Ingold’s relational anthropology for theological anthropology, see the conclusion of our Louvain Studies special issue on ‘Relation, Vulnerability, Love’

Baart, A. (2001), Een Theorie van Presentie. Boom Lemma Uitgevers.

Beurskens, E.; Van Der Linde, M; Baart, A. (2019) Praktijkboek Presentie, Coutinho.

Ingold, T. (2016), ‘On Human Correspondence,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23, 9-27.

Louvain Studies special issue on ‘relation, vulnerability, love’

by Lieve Orye

Several treads of thought woven at the Anthropos conference in 2016 have been rewoven into paper and digital format. A Louvain Studies issue (41(3), 2018) has been published recently with contributions of several keynote speakers and respondents. You can find a table of contents and links to further information at the ‘Special Issue Louvain Studies 2018’ page on the conference archives website.

As editors, Yves de Maeseneer and I feel that this special issue has become a well-woven cloth, a colorful tapistry of thought and reflection on the what and how of theological anthropology in the 21st century. We particularly would like to draw attention to the last article in this issue, ‘Weaving Theological Anthropology into Life. Editorial Conclusions in Correspondence with Tim Ingold’. In this last contribution, we weave together five key themes that have been raised in the different contributions of this issue, and we do so in conversation with the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold. This weaving together confirms the terms ‘relation’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘love’ as key for theological anthropology in the twenty-first century.

A first theme is theological anthropology’s conversation with the discipline of anthropology. The first section addresses Michael Banner’s call for a more thorough anthropological turn for theological anthropology. Following a line of connection starting from anthropologist Joel Robbins, who has inspired Banner in taking this turn, towards Ingold, we argue that the latter’s understanding of anthropology as ‘philosophy with the people in’ turns him into a much more interesting conversation partner for a theological anthropology that wishes to pay attention to the work of being human and being moral ‘on the ground’.

The second section finds a similar opening for conversations between theology and anthropology in relation to evolutionary perspectives. Here we make the connection with anthropologist Agustín Fuentes’ work in order to open up such a space. Fuentes does important work, as both Jan-Olav Henriksen and Markus Mühling appreciate. But, we argue here again – in line with Mühling’s contribution – that Ingold’s reflections in conversations with evolutionary theorizing take us onto a fundamentally different path towards a fully relational theological anthropology.

A second theme is woven through these first two sections. Being human is a practice, notes Banner. Or, as Brian Brock indicates with the help of Barth, we exist in our acting. In Ingold’s relational anthropology ‘to human’ is a verb; being human is a never-ending task. In these understandings, a perspective that sees knowing-in-being as primary is indicated. We argue with Ingold that Henriksen’s emphasis on what is specifically human is important to keep, though within a framework that goes beyond a human-animal and a culture-biology divide by prioritizing movement and life in a forward-going approach.

The third and fourth themes, addressed in the third and fourth sections, must be seen, with Ingold, as two sides of the same coin. The third theme involves a weaving together of Ingold’s primacy of knowing-in-being with Banner’s and Brock’s existing-in-believing. This further opens up a discussion of enskilment, of tradition and way-formation, and of imagination and vision in a relational, participative perspective.

The fourth theme, however, clarifies with the help of Elizabeth Gandolfo and Paul Fiddes that such knowing-in-being fundamentally involves exposure and existential risk in a ‘wild’ world. Vulnerability surfaces as a key notion here. We follow Ingold in taking a step beyond James Gibson’s ecological psychology which was key in Mühling’s contribution, towards an understanding of the world, not as a given, but always on its way to being given.

The fifth theme brings us to theology’s areas of concern in the conversation with anthropology. Theology ‘from a wound’ points to the dark side of wildness and vulnerability, and to the need to discern when and how to embrace or to resist vulnerability. Importantly, such discernment and resistance happen through existing-in-believing: precisely a believing and acting that discovers through participation that love is the deepest reality.

As organizers of the Anthropos conference 2016 and as editors of this Louvain Studies issue, we hope that several of the threads of thought and reflection developed and woven together at the conference, in the conference blog and in the journal issue will find further life, growing into further thoughts, comingling with other lines, taking up other forms and shapes. But even more, we hope that these threads of thought might find ways to correspond and comingle with lines of life, nurturing these towards a more sustainable world. Our hope is that theological anthropology in the 21st century will be a discipline with a critical agenda, in line with Joel Robbins’ characterization of theology and anthropology as critical disciplines nourished by O/otherness, and that, in line with Tim Ingold’s characterization of anthropology, it becomes shaped by a method of hope.

Laudato Si': Hearing the cry of the world in the Anthropocene

By Lieve Orye

Last Thursday we had the pleasure at the faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KULeuven to welcome and listen to a public lecture by theologian and biologist Celia Deane-Drummond: 'Laudato Si’ and Pope Francis as prophet and priest in the Anthropocene'. Her lecture was part of a two day interdisciplinary expert seminar on ‘Laudato Si' and progress’, organized by the Centre for Catholic Social Thought in collaboration with CAFOD, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.

Channeling a cry, Speaking into the heart of the Anthropocene

Photo by Christus Rex.

Laudato Si’ is receiving much attention. Its audacity, philosopher Bruno Latour writes, “is equaled only by the multiple efforts to deaden as much as possible its message and effects”(251). He sees two major innovations behind this audacity, the link between the ecological and injustice and the recognition that the earth itself can act and suffer. Both these innovations, he notes, are associated with the strange word cry: to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, writes Pope Francis, a true ecological approach must always be a social one, integrating questions of justice in debates about the environment (§49). A cry, Latour notes, is not a message, a doctrine, a slogan, a piece of advice or a fact but rather something like a signal, a rumor, a stirring or an alarm. Something that makes you sit up, turn your head and listen. 

Deane-Drummond recognizes this deep cry of the earth in Laudato Si’  as a cry in the epoch of the Anthropocene, our current geological age, characterized as a period in which human activity emerges as the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Unlike scientists who see the human impact on climate and environment as a problem that can be fixed by means of a technological solution, Pope Francis speaks from a different imaginary that gives science its proper place but invites a cultural revolution, a shift in lifestyle. He has, Deane-Drummond noted, given us a sketch of a different and open social imaginary, one that resists an imaginary in terms of human dominance through a call to inner transformation and the nurturing of ecological virtues.

Listening to birds in the Anthropocene

Though Pope Francis does not use the term, hearing the deep cry of the heart in Laudato Si’ as a cry in the Anthropocene is illuminating. Though scientists still discuss the particulars of the Anthropocene, it is already more than just scientific fact. As anthropologists have started showing, it is what people hear and sense and worry about, for instance in their listening to the birds.

Creative Commons by Deanne Fortnam.

Saint Francis of Assisi spoke, preached to the birds. It is said that he preached to a flock of almost a hundred sparrows, which only left when he said they could. They were as much a part of his brotherhood as the pope. But if, as Andrew Whitehouse suggests, the Anthropocene started with the industrial revolution, ushering in the epoch of anthrophony in which human sounds and human-made sounds of industry, machinery, electronic amplification and so on started drowning out the biophony and geophony in many parts of the world, Francis’ speaking to the birds was clearly still an anthrophony of the pre-Anthropocene kind. We can understand his speaking, in other words, as characterized by an attentiveness that made resonance possible. It integrated more closely with the sounds and attentiveness of other beings rather than disrupting or dominating these (57).

In his article ‘Listening to Birds in the Anthropocene: The Anxious Semiotics of Sound in a Human-Dominated World’ Whitehouse’s informants do not so much speak, nor preach to the birds. They do listen attentively and respond in resonance. But unlike Saint Francis they listen in the Anthropocene and, in the silence they hear more and more, the cry of the earth resounds. Whitehouse points out that the concept of the Anthropocene simultaneously draws humans and non-humans together and separates them out:

According to Lorimer, “The recent diagnosis of the Anthropocene represents the public death of the modern understanding of Nature removed from society.” Human and non-human worlds can no longer be conceived as existing in separate realms, and nature, at least in the sense of that which is separate from society, struggles to be convincing as a concept. And yet, as Crist has argued, the Anthropocene also appears to place humans on a pedestal as the only species in the history of the planet powerful enough to be deemed the primary Earth-shaping force (54).

The notion furthermore emphasizes anxieties that we humans have caused the ‘end of nature’, the disappearance of birds, butterflies and bees. That we are responsible for silent springs, for springs no longer announced by birds singing. The notion indicates both the interconnectedness of human and non-human lives as well as the potential for their destruction and silencing by humans.

Anxious semiotics and ethical relating

house-sparrows-on-branch-by-martha-de-jong-lantink-ccl

Though there is nothing inherently new about the experience of anxiety in relation to environmental conditions, the Anthropocene, Whitehouse notes, brings with it particular configurations. It “relates to real and observable changes in the local worlds people perceive around them and to semiotic elaborations on those perceptions that draw together local and global, human and non-human, present and future, into anxiety-laden narratives” (55). Though there is growing desire to attend to and to care for birds and their ecology, these seem continually outstripped by our capacity to disrupt and endanger.

To hear the cry of the earth in the Anthropocene, attentiveness is key. Whitehouse’s point is that it is to those least alienated from other forms of life that the wounds caused in the Anthropocene become more apparent. It is in them that these wounds provoke a moral disquiet (63). The anxious semiotics, Whitehouse notes, only emerges through active listening.

“The more we care about our world and the more we pay attention to it, the worse things seem to get… the more we listen to birds the more we notice the loss of birds from pesticides, the destruction of habitat, the encroaching dominance of Anthrophonic sounds, the sounds that are out of place and ecosystems that are dissonant”(69).

photo by James Brush

“All ethical relating, within or between species, is knit from the silk-strong thread of ongoing alertness to otherness-in-relation” wrote Donna Haraway (50). This is an ethical relating that, as Whitehouse points out, is importantly grounded in the same kinds of semiotic processes through which birds listen to their own world. Through listening, through paying attention, we can no longer think, indifferently, of birds as part of a separate mindless Nature. Rather, Whitehouse notes, such listening should ground the development of relations of companionship. “It elicits not simply a narrative of encroaching loss and the ever present threat that humans pose to non-humans, but one of enskilment, of how we learn to listen to birds and to the rest of our world…”(70). Precisely in our worrying, in our hearing the cry of the earth, lies hope. In those little daily actions, as little as listening to the birds and worrying about them occurs the nurturing of a different relation.

The song of birds, the song of fellow humans

 As Latour notes,

Laudato Si’ is a funny kind of text – wordy, busy, contradictory, repetitive – but this is because it is itself channelling this immense cry, which is impossible to decode rapidly, which makes one prick up one’s ears, turn one’s head toward those other actors, so different from nature and from humanity: a Sister Mother Earth whom we had almost forgotten was herself capable of suffering, like the poor who are tangled up with her. It is up to the readers now to channel, in turn, this immense cry (255).

Dark-eyed Junco (Photo: William Majoros/Creative Commons)

Laudato Si’  is speaking into the heart of the Anthropocene, urging those indifferent to live attentively. It emphasizes moreover that we should not pay attention to the wounds of the earth as if these could be separated out from the wounds of fellow human beings. Just as we care about the singing of the birds and worry about their disappearance, we must care at least as much about the singing of fellow human beings, being attentive, listening to what their sounds are telling us. Do we hear the sounds and silences of dominance and suffering or the lively chatter of everyday attentiveness, care and hospitality, the songs of human flourishing? Do anxious semiotics also arise from our listening in and do we allow this anxiety to encourage our enskilment in ethically relating to them?

Haraway, D. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 50.

Latour, B. (2016) 'The Immense Cry Channeled by Pope Francis', Environmental Humanities, 8(2), 251-255.

Whitehouse, A. (2015) 'Listening to Birds in the Anthropocene: The Anxious Semiotics of Sound in a Human-Dominated World', Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 53-71.

Ethnography and theology: a special issue, a Call for Papers

by Lieve Orye.    

See CfP, special issue of 'Religions' on 'theology and ethnography' below.

'Ethnography and theology': an issue of hospitality and correspondence

Within theology a lot of reflection is happening right now on how to make it relevant to 'the people in the pews', to ongoing concrete realities, especially those of woundedness and suffering. The 'how' of theology is under discussion and its speculative and abstract nature is being questioned. Ethnography is a keyword in these discussions that often, though not always, draws the attention to the discipline of anthropology. But ethnography is not simply a method to be borrowed or to be imported as a black box, a finished product from a neighboring discipline. It is one of the most discussed issues within anthropology and signs are getting stronger and stronger that theologians take up these debates, giving their own particular input and wielding their own particular tools.

One's relation to the other, or the more particular case of one's relation as researcher to the other as the subject of research appears in these discussions as a prime site where theologians and anthropologists can discuss being human in relationship in a self-engaged manner. Theologically, 'hospitality' is one concept put forward to reflect upon this relationship. Chris Scharen has emphasized the importance of the researcher's deep hospitality towards the other, the importance of attentiveness and of hearing the other into presence. More recently, at the annual Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference in Durham, Todd Whitmore asked his audience to start paying attention to the hospitality given by the research subjects, for research isn't possible without their willingness to open up. We as researchers are the stranger. We come from another place to figure them out in their place but easily forget or remain blind for the fact that they are trying to figure us out as well. As Whitmore said, 'their practice of hospitality places us in their debt'.

Of course, it is not an either/or matter. If a relationship succeeds work has been done on both sides and hospitality is a good concept to think with both about oneself as researcher and about the other as the one one learns from. To consider oneself as the stranger on another's turf and to recognize the work done by them in the relationship allows one, as Whitmore emphasized, to participate humbly, with patience, sitting with people, going beyond relations of control, learning to see, in theological terms, what God is doing, what the other is doing, and join in. Maybe being hospitable is, to put it in anthropologist Tim Ingold's terms, being squishy rather than hard.

Let us compare a hard object - say a ball - with a squishy one. The first, when it comes up against other things in the world, can have an impact. It can hit them, or even break them. In the hard sciences, every hit is a datum; if you accumulate enough data, you may achieve a breakthrough. The surface of the world has yielded under the impact of your incessant blows, and having done so, yields up some of its secrets. The squishy ball, by contrast, bends and deforms when it encounters other things, taking into itself some of their characteristics while they, in turn, bend to its pressure in accordance with their own inclinations and dispositions. The ball responds to things as they respond to it. Or in a word, it enters with things into a relation of correspondence. In their practices of participant observation - of joining with the people among whom they work and learning from them - anthropologists become correspondents. They take into themselves something of their hosts' way of moving, feeling and thinking, their practical skills and modes of attention. So too, my father corresponded with the fungi as he drew their forms under the microscope. His hand, along with the pen it held, was drawn into their formative processes, and as he drew the forms re-emerged on the surface of the board. Correspondence, whether with people or with other things, is a labour of love, of giving back what we owe to the human and non-human beings with which and with whom we share our world, for our own existence and formation.[1]

'Ethnography and theology': a special issue and a call for papers

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) will be dedicated to this topic of ethnography and theology. Its deadline for manuscript submissions is 31 March 2017. Its Guest editor is Dr. Todd D. Whitmore, theologian at the University of Notre Dame.

Dear Colleagues,

The disciplines of anthropology and theology have long been at loggerheads. The clash between anthropologists and Christian missionaries in the field, long-held assumptions in the discipline of anthropology in investigating the cultures of religious others, theology’s reactive stance towards perceived encroachment in its domain of the human, and institutionally-structured disciplinary defensiveness have all played a role in this impasse. In the past decade or so, there have been openings on both sides of the divide. To date, most of the conversations have been between specifically Christian theology and anthropology. The aim of the present Special Issue of Religions is to build on those conversations and to extend them to the Abrahamic religions of Islam and Judaism as well with these and other questions: What can ethnography—a grounded method of investigation—contribute to theology, which, in the academic setting, is primarily speculative and abstract? Can, in turn, theological interpretations and understandings of particular events and cosmology broaden the hermeneutical repertoire of the discipline of anthropology? Should there be experiments in moving even further than disciplinary rapprochement and interdisciplinary borrowing (as difficult as these are) to genres that mix the disciplines? If so, what might an anthropological theology or a theological ethnography look like? And what are the liabilities of such mixed genres?

Dr. Todd D. Whitmore
Guest Editor

More information about this call for papers can be found at the 'Religions' webpage.

[1] Ingold, Tim (2016), 'From Science to Art and Back Again: The Pendulum of an Anthropologist', Anuac. 5(1), 5-23.

... to Ecclesiology and Ethnography: Durham, 2015

Lieve Orye

Under Saint Martha's gentle gaze

St. Martha by Gianbettino Cignaroli (1706-1770)

My hope, expressed in the previous blog, to experience that what draws theologians to ethnography is precisely the same drive of reconnecting with the people in the pews and with the world in an ‘off the grid’ kind of way proved justified. The Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference was a vibrant gathering of about 55 scholars, all with an interest in exploring the possibility to enrich ecclesiology and theology through ethnography. As with the ‘Beyond Perception’ conference, this one as well was in many ways ‘off the grid’, giving participants the experience that the quality of a conference does not depend on the availability of name tags and paper versions of the program but on those who participate both within the official time slots as in the times between.

The venue this time was St. John’s College, in the vicinity of Durham Cathedral. It is itself a building that tells of different times and ‘on the spot’ adaptations to new times, not a building erected on an empty surface with conference purposes in mind. Rather, one could feel that the place had grown over time into what it is now. The non-linear lines and odd shapes of corridors, as well as the pictures of people on the wall made the hallway wanderer wonder about times gone by, yet still somehow present in the place. The experience in each of the session rooms was different as well. One room was rather big, full of light coming in, with a youthful modern feel; clearly a recent addition for which some of the garden must have been sacrificed. Another room, long and dark, teased those in it to suspect the disappearance of a wall and moved them to ‘make the space work somehow’ and to attempt through a reconfiguration of two long lines of tables and chairs to reweave the space into a texture more suitable for conversation and discussion. The third one had a yet totally different feel, as if one was being transported in time into the living room of a wealthy family of a century or so ago, with luxurious long curtains and a chandelier whose central sphere silently reflected all that was going on. A picture on the wall behind the speaker intrigued me, sometimes to the extent of taking my attention away of what was being said. A label underneath informed me that it was Saint Martha painted by Giambettino Cignaroli in the 18th century and a brief internet search afterwards clarified that it was Saint Martha of Antioch, a virgin martyr of the fourth century who miraculously tamed a dragon with an aspergillum or holy water sprinkler. According to the Golden Legend, it was “half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than a horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent, that dwelt in a certain wood between Arles and Avignon. Holding a cross in her hand, Martha sprinkled the beast with holy water. Placing her sash around its neck, she led the tamed dragon through the village” (Wiki). In light of Ingold’s text ‘Dreaming of Dragons: On the Imagination of Real Life’ that was discussed at the ‘Sensibilities Beyond Science’ session at the previous conference, Saint Martha’s gentle overseeing of Ecclesiology and Ethnography sessions might be considered rather appropriate. As Ingold argues in that article, the rupture between imagination and reality must be healed, and my feeling is that such an aspiration informed many of the discussions within both the session rooms and hallways.  

Taking Theology & church ‘off grid’ through ethnography or rather the other way around?

Maybe Ecclesiology/Theology and Ethnography projects can be understood as an attempt to take theology ‘off the grid’, away from the cocooning spaces where the world is kept safely outside and is only let back in in shapes and forms that are domesticated; away from spaces where the body can be kept quiet as if in hibernation, protecting it from interfering noise and concerns that 'distract' so that the mind, apparently capable of existing on its own, can reflect on what it thinks to be the really real behind the real that everyone else experiences; away from places where imagination and reality have been ruptured, where theories and understandings easily remain idealist, at an hygienic distance from everyday life. Ecclesiology, the complaint is, has remained too much at a distance from concrete life in the churches and in the world outside and this distance must be bridged - theology must be ex-posed, pushed out into the world. Discussions revealed, however, that a key difficulty might be to avoid simply jumping off one grid onto another, selling theology short in the process. Luckily, qualitative research, action research, data and statistics, empirical observations and fieldwork descriptions did not silence the discussion of how ethnography can be theological.

Moreover, concerns about the future - about the future of churches but also, maybe even more about the future of our common world - lie behind these pleas and discussions. The mix of these concerns for the future, for the theological and for the world brings forth interesting reflections. The refusal to sell theology short seemed to work against taking up a distancing, objectifying relationship to the people one works with. Concern for the future, for this world furthermore directs the attention towards both signs of and possibilities for change and transformation. One argument that I think should receive further attention is being developed by Derrick Watson. He sees practical theology entangled in a distortion, even an elision of poiesis through a specific understanding of and emphasis on praxis. To me, Watson’s understanding of poiesis seems to imply a rather ‘off the grid’ being in the world that seeks a ‘changing of the world’ through tactile attentiveness to what is locally ‘to hand’, collaborating with the materials and beings of the world. Change here occurs within life as an ongoing, forward going process in which imagination and reality are continuously interwoven and the future is grown rather than made. The understanding of praxis he critiques, on the other hand, seems rather more an ‘on the grid’ understanding where the future seems a matter of shaping people through the repetition of practices with some internal telos, while reality, in Watson's example the garden, is cleaned out to leave only the residue of ‘spiritual life’, as it is found in the statements of people about their gardening. The concrete ongoing processes of mutual responsiveness within an ongoing world have fallen through the cracks again, imagination and reality torn apart again.

At the conference concerns about both the immunization against change as well as the too quick ‘catering kind of change’ in churches could be heard. Maybe, though, we should start to think about how to get churches, the people in the pews, more ‘off the grid’ as well, or as William Greenwood noted in his talk, about ‘how to open them and us up through companionship to opportunities’. This might involve a rethinking of praxis such that poeisis can flourish again. It might mean to help churches and Christians develop a non-negligent relation to ‘what is to hand’, learning through the Gospel and liturgy, to see, to wait and to respond to the call that can be heard in the ‘here and now ’ gathering of people, other beings and materials. My feeling is that this might first of all necessitate thinking through theology’s own being too much ‘on the grid’ participating in the rupture of imagination and reality. Maybe this might be our beast to tame. Under the gentle gaze of Saint Martha participants in the Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference were clearly wrestling with it.

Living together with difference through keeping the future open

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By Lieve Orye

As the previous post indicated, the Anthropos research group had the pleasure of having Prof. Schnitter from the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria and Prof. Adam Seligman from Boston University with us for a few days. Both are involved in CEDAR, Communities Engaging With Difference And Religion. Within CEDAR people from very different backgrounds and communities are brought together during two intensive weeks to learn to ‘live together with difference’. Two elements are crucial in its philosophy and pedagogy: first, differences are important and not to be denied, privatized or aestheticized. Second, to open up a future wherein living with difference becomes not only possible but mutually enriching, the importance of ritual and of creating concrete shared experiences is emphasized. Ritual is seen as a place where people commit to each other, to the world, and to the future in ways that circumvent the need for consensus. The demand for sincerity and sharing a set of meanings and beliefs is seen to be counter-productive. In other words, to live together with difference does not consist in finding ‘common ground’ on an abstract level, in some shared fundamental theory or worldview, but ‘on the ground’, in our daily bodily going on with each other.

Here, paying attention again to Rachel Muers’ Living for the Future (2008), I first want to suggest that more is needed than de-emphasizing beliefs and emphasizing ritual. The question rather is whether beliefs and practices hinder or nurture ‘living together with difference’. Muers shows how this depends on how we bring ‘the future’, and especially the question of how we ‘live for the future’ into the picture of daily bodily going on. Second, I nevertheless support wholeheartedly the shift in attention from shared worldview to our daily bodily going on with each other that Seligman advocates. But here as well, ‘living for the future’ demands a particular way of tending to our social fabric, to the radically ordinary.

Community, difference and future

How are communities, difference and the future interrelated?

“Responsibility to future generations involves forms of self-definition that do not rely on setting one’s own group over against those ‘outside’… If the future of the community itself is treated as a gift, rather than as a product or as threatening ‘fate’, we would expect this to be reflected in the capacity to deal with difference in the present, neither by bringing it under control nor by externalizing it as a threat” (Muers 2008:79-80, 88).

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I think a crucial point is made here: our thinking about and living with difference is strongly related to how we think about and live for the future and how the past is allowed to give life to our present and future – or to suffocate the life of that present and future. Both Seligman and Muers, each in their distinctive way, make clear that both to live ‘for the future’ and ‘with difference’ have to do with our daily tending to the social fabric in which we live. Furthermore, it involves a tending to the radically ordinary precisely not in the shape of securing in advance one’s relations to the other while simultaneously trying to control the future. For Christians this means, as Muers points out, that as a community we are to live a kind of life whose future does not depend on its capacity to secure its own duration. To ‘treat our own continued existence, at the expense of others or of the wider environment, as a paramount good’ is misdirected Molech worship that nourishes unsustainable forms of sociality and deathly patterns of existence. Any attempt to frantically construct a road map for the future to be followed by all in order to gain control over it, involves precisely a way of tending to the present that gives rise to suffocating ways of being and suffocating environments. 

Tending the radically ordinary

“Choose life… so that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30.19). The quality of the present is important for the future, but in a non-instrumental way. One way to concretize this is by emphasizing intransitive verbs: In commenting on Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians Muers writes

[W]hat brings people together appears to be their participation in a non-instrumental work – a work that takes time, an ongoing labour and toil. …[T]his work has no obviously specifiable purpose external to itself; although it points towards a future (hope in our Lord Jesus Christ) it does not bring that future about. It is simply love’s labour, both labour on the basis of love and labour that makes love real… the relationship to future generations is worked out through time, rather than being given in advance... it is to exist ethically in a way that allows the future to happen” (Muers 2008:40-41).

To greet the other, to share meals, to labour and toil together is “to live out of a future that is given rather than seized” (Muers 2008:76). Anthropologist Tim Ingold seems to confirm this when he emphasizes the importance of intransitive verbs in ‘life embracing’ relational anthropology. Intransitive verbs, such as ‘to hope,’ ‘to grow,’ ‘to dwell,’ are all verbs that express a carrying on, that express the immersion and participation of beings in the currents of the lifeworld. Key here is that such carrying on immersed in the currents of the lifeworld no longer allows for an easy opposition of world and other. Really knowing the other cannot take the shape of othering, a holding at arm’s length to get a good look to see in which category someone fits, but takes the shape of togethering, of an aligning and an attuning to them. For Christians, this involves an opening up of one’s own future to the gift of the other and allowing oneself to be God’s gift in their life.

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That such opening up is not simply a mental or spiritual exercise but also wholly a bodily one becomes clear when Ingold with his colleague Jo Vergunst point out a major difference between being face-to-face with someone, which can take the shape of an interview, a doctor’s appointment or a poker game, and going on a walk together. In the first situation, you can see the other in the eye, but you can also see what happens behind the other’s back and use that to your own advantage. It is more confrontational, less companionable. A shared point of view is not so easy to come by. In the second situation, you share a common movement and horizon, you go on together. As they note,

Crucially, walking side by side means that participants share virtually the same visual field. We could say that I see what you see as we go along together. In that sense I am with you in my movements, and probably in my thoughts as well. We can talk within and around our shared vista and the other things we are doing along the line of the walk. Participants take it in turns to carry the conversation on, and when not actually speaking one is nevertheless listening, participating silently in the ongoing flow (Ingold & Lee 2006:80).

‘To walk’ is mostly used as an intransitive verb. ‘To walk together’, it seems to me, might be a good movement and a good metaphor with which to think and live ‘together with difference’. This is clearly demonstrated by Sebastien de Fooz who was present at the workshop on CEDAR and who started the Jorsala project that organizes walks-in-diversity.

Muers, Rachel (2008) Living for the Future. Theological Ethics for Coming Generations, London: T&T Clark.

Ingold, Tim; Lee, J. (2006) 'Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socializing.' in Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology. Coleman, Simon & Collins, Peter (eds.), Oxford: Berg.

To those interested in this line of thought, I recommend listening to Tim Ingold's 2014 Huxley Memorial Lecture 'On Human Corresponding'.

Pictures are taken from a soda can thrown into Den burn.

Love-making in public: Another look at Paris

by Adanna James

“… Oh listen Lord if you want to know…what the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of …” Jackie DeShannon, US, 1965
“ Please give a helping hand oh Jah, …what we need is love, vice versa love …” Barrington Levy, Jamaica, 1993. 
  “…People killing, people dying, children hurt and you hear them crying …Father, Father Father help us, send some guidance from above, cause people got me questioning where is the love,” The Black Eyed Peas, US, 2003

Popular culture has a way of reminding us theologians and other academics that we’re always a step behind when it comes to discerning what society needs. Long before the anthropological shift in justice discourse advocating love as central to justice, artists were making connections between injustices in the world, the need for love as a way of countering them, and an appeal to a Divine Reality to make it all possible. 

ANTHROPOLOGICAL SHIFT: PAYING ATTENTION TO OUR DARKER SIDE
While the connections made in academic theology prove more complex, there is a similar concern about the prevalence of injustices in societies today. This prompted philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in her 2013 Political Emotions, to question the taken-for-granted assumptions about the human condition undergirding dominant justice discourse. No longer should we assume that we, rational human beings, would simply act in accordance with the demands of justice once it could be seen that an ideal situation of fairness was being maintained for the benefit of everyone’s individual pursuits, as was broadly assumed in the dominant justice discourse.  Nussbaum sees another side to us human beings, a side we rather refuse to see: those aspects of our animal nature which remind us of our helplessness, vulnerability and mortality. It is precisely this refusal – or ‘anthropodenial’ as Nussbaum calls it – that is often responsible for tendencies such as narcissism, anxiety and disgust for and stigmatisation of others. This same emphasis on the denial of our vulnerability and fear of difference is shared by theologian Thomas Reynolds in his 2008 Vulnerable Communion as he writes on the topic of disability. But whereas Nussbaum focuses more on individual human beings and our emotions, Reynolds highlights networks of relationships. He speaks of the ‘cult of normalcy’ that works to establish standards of what is normal, at the same time denying vulnerability. 

LOVE AS ANTIDOTE
Both authors however, make the case for love. “Love is what gives respect for humanity its life,” writes Nussbaum (2013:15). Reynolds, in a similar vein, comments: "Love is the relational power that animates belonging together, It gives and receives life, and the process radiates joy" (Reynolds 2008:119). He further states that to counter the effects of marginalisation and exclusion of difference, love must be measured by an empowering justice that makes way for more love. Reynolds, however, pays more attention to our relationships and the necessity of being in vulnerable connection to each other. “Love involves welcoming another into a space of mutual vulnerability” (Reynolds 2008:119). Such an encounter is one of immediacy, a concept he takes from existentialist philosophers like Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber and uses to emphasise the mutual exclusiveness of ‘becoming involved’ as opposed to  ‘objectifying another’.   

I think both Nussbaum and Reynolds bring interesting thoughts to the table on making love public. Perhaps if we were to reflect on a specific example, for instance, the recent tragic happenings in Paris, we could better see what both authors contribute to the debate on love's public significance.

NUSSBAUM’S PUBLIC EMOTIONS
Looking at the recent terror attacks in Paris, we could say that it was possible that Parisians as well as non-Parisians worldwide, seeing these media images, could identify with the vulnerability of the victims. These images captured the shooting and killing of a police officer and terrorist, frightened hostages running and screaming, flowing tears of loved ones. The responses to these images and reality were profound. Among them, mass demonstrations congregating persons of different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds under the banner (even if just for a day) of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Nussbaum’s theory of love being a powerful motivator in upholding the tenets of justice could find resonances here. 

REYNOLDS’ CULT OF NORMALCY
At the same time, the response borne out of fear of vulnerability, visible in Reynolds’ ‘cult of normalcy,’ could be seen in numerous events and discussions surfacing after the event, including PEGIDA marches against the Islamisation of Germany. It seems in that instance that an objectification of the other stood in the way of immediacy of encounter. There was no recognition of mutual vulnerability that could result in openness to others, compassion and fidelity.

REYNOLDS’ LOVE AS WELCOMING THE OTHER INTO A SPACE OF MUTUAL VULNERABILITY
But I’d like to highlight one example that shows the power of immediate encounter in mutual vulnerability.  A BBC report looked into how the terrorist attacks were being interpreted within the French school context, particularly in predominantly Arab immigrant communities. Some teachers spoke of the difficulties in generating empathy among the students for the victims of the attacks. "Twelve people were killed…it didn't mean much to them," one teacher remarked. But an interesting dynamic was noted when the minute of silence was observed. Unlike the previous time when the minute of silence was not respected by students in various schools, (after the 2012 killings in Toulouse and Montauban by a radical Islamist) the called-for silence was instructed to be observed in schools only after prior discussion was held (on the instruction of the Education Ministry). One teacher confessed that she was unable to hold back her tears during these discussions. The result: silence. It appears that the teacher’s display of vulnerability brought students into a space of mutual vulnerability, opening them up to her as well as the people she spoke about and cried for. It is precisely through such encounters that a compassionate feel for the injustices that lie beneath the objectifying gaze that separates us from each other can be nourished. 

My suggestion finally is this. Before moving too quickly to discussions of press freedom, migration, religion and the Enlightenment, perhaps a deeper, public engagement of our vulnerability as it presented itself to us during the days of the attacks will help steer discussions, decisions and actions in more just ways. Our artists, after all, do seem to know what they’re singing about… “what the world needs now, is love, sweet love….. “

Henri Astier, “Charlie Hebdo Attack: French Values Challenged in Schools.” BBC News Paris, January 30, 2015 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31027152 [accessed February 3 2015].
Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2013
Thomas Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press , 2008.

Christian ethics/design of everyday life?

By Lieve Orye

Theology and anthropology ‘by means of design’

What happens when in between theological books, one of which is Rachel Muers’ Living for the Future (2008), a chapter on design anthropology is read, especially a chapter in which anthropology of design is exchanged for an anthropology ‘by means of design’?

Anthropologists Tim Ingold and Caroline Gatt rethink the relation between design and anthropology and in the process rethink both. Interestingly, they attempt to clarify the move they make from ‘of’ to ‘by means of’, by drawing a parallel with anthropology's relation to theology. They see the closest equivalent of what they are trying to do in a 2006 article by Joel Robbins in which he sees three kinds of anthropological engagement with theology: (1) anthropology exposing and critiquing theological roots of anthropological concepts; (2) anthropology using theologies and theologians as data and informants for ethnographic analysis and (3), the promising one, the closest equivalent for Ingold and Gatt, an approach in which anthropology opens itself up to theology as a potent source of inspiration for its own projects, “acknowledging that we have much to learn from the faith, commitment, and wisdom that give hope and commitment to others’ lives” (Robbins 2006:285 in Ingold & Gatt 2013:141). Ingold and Gatt’s ‘anthropology by means of design’ is then not aiming for (1) a critical design anthropology that looks for cultural imaginaries and micropolitics behind the science and practice of design, nor (2) for an anthropology that places activities of designers in their social and cultural context but is (3) an anthropology opening up to design as a potent source of inspiration for its own projects. Cross-pollination, though, would mean that those interested in doing theology in conversation with anthropology, as Michael Banner is recently suggesting for moral theology in his book The Ethics of Everyday Life (2014), could engage in drawing parallels the other way around: is there relevance in Ingold’s and Gatt’s reflections on ‘anthropology by means of design’ for how or what we do in theology, especially when it is a theology that wants to reconnect to everyday life? A full discussion would take at least an article, could easily fill a book, but let me give just a few hints of what might be possible.

Design conundrums: keeping life going

Design, Ingold and Gatt write, "is about shaping the future of the world we live in" (Ingold & Gatt 2013:144). But they point out that curiously design seems predicated upon the failure of our predecessors and upon an understanding of our successors as mere users who simply implement the designs already made. Our predecessors did not succeed in shaping a future for us whereas if we succeed to do so, the next generations can only implement. "Designs, it seems, must fail, if every generation is to be afforded the opportunity to look forward to a future that it can call its own" (Idem). Ingold and Gatt suggest, rather than to think design in terms of ends and final answers, to think it in terms of what keeps life going. That is, to stop thinking in terms of forms as specific results while paying attention to 'form-giving'. In other words, they plead for a shift from predictability and foreclosure to a life process that is open-ended and improvisatory.

We want to argue that design, far from being the exclusive preserve of a class of professional experts tasked with the production of futures for the rest of us to consume, is an aspect of everything we do, insofar as our actions are guided by hopes, dreams, and promises. That is to say, rather than setting the parameters for our habitation of the earth, design is part and parcel of the very process of dwelling (Ingold 2000). And it is, by the same token, about the ongoing creation of the kinds of environments in which dwelling can occur (Ingold and Gatt 2013: 144-145).

Key is that whereas an anthropology 'of' design, or 'of' any other human activity, turns the activity into an object of analysis and looks back over times past, Ingold and Gatt instead set out "to restore design to the heart of anthropology's disciplinary practice" and to move forward with people in tandem with their dreams and desires (Ingold & Gatt 2013:140). Such a shift also results in a very different understanding of what it means to be human. But even more, could a shift towards an open-ended forward-looking concept of design that refocuses attention on ongoing everyday life not be of interest in the search for an open-ended concept of ethics?

Christian dreams and hopes as open-ended Design?

Rachel Muers’ Living for the Future (2008) is currently lying on my desk. Hers, I reckon, is a search for a theological ethics that saves itself (and us) from the design/future conundrum to allow again room to think ‘care for future generations’ without tying the future completely to the present and past nor, cutting it lose completely. Furthermore, she writes, “[i]t is not a question of applying existing ethical principles to future generations, but of existing ethically in a way that allows the future to happen” (Muers 2014:41). With Ingold and Gatt, I dare to suggest that to live Christianly is to design Christianly, is “to design things in a world that is perpetually under construction by way of the activities of its inhabitants, who are tasked above all with keeping life going rather than with bringing to completion projects already specified at the outset”(Ingold and Gatt 2013:145). Such Christian design might then be understood as improvisation in which Christian dreams and hopes and Christian imagination of the human give specific direction, specific sign-posts involving a seeing into the future, seeing a new world in becoming. We have a song in Flanders in which Christians ask God to teach them his future. This is not a request for a plan or a project to be implemented. Rather it seems to me to be a plea to redirect our attention from plans and designs that promise security, predictability and control to the signs in our ongoing participation in the world and the lives of others that point to the coming into being of the New Kingdom.

Let’s wrap this up in a more general way: I would say, fruitful conversation between theology and anthropology requires for both a focus on concrete ongoing life and attention to ‘keeping life open’ both in thought and practice.

Banner, Michael (2014) The Ethics of Everyday Life. Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ingold, Tim and Caroline Gatt (2013) ‘From description to correspondence: Anthropology in Real Time’ in Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice, Wendy Dunn, Ton Otto, Rachel Smith.(eds.), London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 139-158.

Muers, Rachel (2008) Living for the Future. Theological Ethics for Coming Generations, London: T&T Clark.