The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions

An integrated approach

Ugo Dessi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472480798
• eBook ISBN: 9781317030126
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions: An Integrated Approach explores how Japanese religions respond to the relativizing effects of globalization, thereby repositioning themselves as global players. Organized around concrete case studies focusing on the engagement of Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, and several new religious movements in areas such as ecology, inter-religious dialogue, and politics, this book shows that the globalization of Japanese religions cannot be explained simply in terms of worldwide institutional expansion. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon conditioned by a set of pervasive factors: changes in consciousness, the perception of affinities and resonances at the systemic and cultural levels, processes of decontextualization, and a wide range of power issues including the re-enactment of cultural chauvinism.

The author investigates these dynamics systematically with attention to broader theoretical questions, cross-cultural similarities, the definition of religion and the perils of ethnocentrism, in order to develop his Global Repositioning model, which constitutes an integrated approach to the study of Japanese religions under globalization.

An empirically-grounded and theoretically-informed study of the effects of global trends on local religions, this book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in globalization, religious studies, Japanese studies, Hawaii, sociology, anthropology, and ecology.

1 Approaching religion under globalization

A quarter century after its massive intrusion into the public discourse, the term globalization continues to be mainly applied to changes in the world economy. While it must be admitted that such popular usage reflects the pervasive impact of international trade in most contemporary societies, it nonetheless shows itself to be partial and ideologically driven. As Doreen Massey aptly observes, such application of economism to globalization is ultimately based on the neo-liberal expectation that in time all societies will be inevitably drawn into a global community whose core unifying principle is economic growth. As such, this way of imagining the global is no other than an updated version of the linear Eurocentric story of capitalist modernity (Massey 1999) – quite in contrast, one may add, to the claim that our allegedly postmodern age has been characterized by the demise of all grand narratives.

Such a narrow idea of globalization as simply economic transformation does not seriously take into account a vast array of other interrelated phenomena and dynamics in human experience. In the last two decades, an increasing amount of scholarship has been insisting that dramatic changes in the communications media and transnational mobility have ushered in a new period of global exchanges involving not only goods but also ideas and culture. The relationships of these additional processes to a deeper understanding of globalization have been elucidated in various ways. While the cultural turn in globalization studies has approached the new socioeconomic situation as a “system of flexible capitalism” expressed in cultural life, the globalization turn in cultural studies has come to appreciate economic globalization’s being “the product of inexorable and accelerated migratory cultural flows and electronic mediations beyond the space-time envelopes of the nation-state system” (Archer et al. 2007: 4). Such conceptual recognitions became apparent, for example, in even the initial approaches to globalization such as John Tomlinson’s (1996). In current sociology, it is widely acknowledged that the major contribution to this debate has been provided by the grand theory developed by Roland Robertson, in which globalization is understood in several terms: as a distinct “human-global condition”; as an identifiable historical process originating in Europe in the fifteenth century; and lastly, as accelerated processes of glocalization or local adaptation of global cultural resources (e.g., Robertson 1992, 1995). Certain ideas prefigured in early postcolonial theory were also quickly applied productively to issues of globalization and glocalization and opened the way to the already classical literature on hybridization, creolization, and global flows and -scapes (e.g., Appadurai 1996; García Canclini 1995; Hannerz 1996; Nederveen Pieterse 2003). The whole time these issues have resonated with scholars in the field of cultural studies who have been concerned about the resistance of local cultures to homogenization.

Religious studies have not played any central role in the aforementioned theoretical developments, although religion as part of culture at large can be considered as an absent guest at the table. Religion made an early appearance in the debate on globalization and culture through the work of Robertson, who addressed the role of religious factors in his analysis of Japanese globality (Robertson 1987, 1992). However, it was not until the publication of Peter Beyer’s Religion and Globalization in 1994 that a book-length study was devoted to this topic (Beyer 1994). In this work, which approaches religious change under globalization within the framework of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, Beyer postulates the conservative and the liberal option as the two main modalities of religion’s interaction with global society. The conservative option basically consists in the rejection of pluralism and religion’s subordination to the rationalities of other social systems, and in the emphasis on socio-cultural particularism (Beyer 1994: 90–93). Such “reassertion of the tradition in spite of modernity” is contrasted by Beyer to the liberal option, which implies a positive attitude toward pluralism and functional differentiation, and, most importantly, toward what he considers the core values of globalization, that is, “egalitarian and inclusive progress on the basis of an adaptive, cognitive style” (Beyer 1994: 86–89, 144).

Building on Luhmann’s observations on religious “performance” (Luhmann 1977: 54–58), Beyer also clarifies another important aspect of religion’s interplay with global dynamics. That is, whereas under conditions of globalization religion’s holism runs counter to the specialized functions of other systems such as science, politics, and education, globalization also offers new potential for religion. This is because, he argues, religion has the opportunity to address various residual problems left unsolved or unaddressed by the dominant systems, in a way that can either imply or not a reaction to functional differentiation (Beyer 1994: 81, 105, 107). Among the case studies reviewed by Beyer, the liberation theological movement, with its “commitment to the liberation of the millions of the oppressed of our world,” and Christian religious environmentalism, with its claim that “social justice for all people and eco-justice for all creation must go together,” well illustrate the dynamics of such religious performance coming from within the liberal camp (Beyer 1994: 142, 215). In more recent contributions, Beyer has focused on the worldwide local appropriation of functional differentiation and the way in which it has prompted the reconstruction of local religious traditions after the Western model. Through these processes, which he terms glocalization, “religions do not just respond to a globalizing context” but rather “emerge as a part of that process” (Beyer 2013: 59).

Beyer’s typology has inspired several scholars. Among these, Margit Warburg (1999) has applied it to the Baha’i religion. Warburg has noted that Baha’i conforms to Beyer’s liberal option through its positive attitude toward pluralism and its belief that the spiritual essence of all religions is the same. Moreover, she observes, Baha’i is also engaged in environmentalism similar to the trend in Protestant Christianity illustrated by Beyer as an example of religious performance (Warburg 1999: 50). However, she writes, there are also indications that Baha’i may conform, from another perspective, to Beyer’s conservative option, and that this is evident in its attitude toward the political system. In fact, the ultimate goal of Baha’i’s political program for a global civilization is nothing less than “to go beyond the democratic system of election,” and to create a system in which the “elected government is responsible first to God rather than to the electorate.” Since this is aimed at the dedifferentiation of religion and politics, Warburg concludes that Baha’i conforms to the liberal option “in its day-to-day business” and to the conservative option “in the long run.”¹

The impact of Beyer’s model may also be seen in the work of scholars such as Martin Geoffroy and Thomas Reuter. Geoffroy distinguishes between intransigent, conservative, pluralist, and relativist religious responses to globalization, and acknowledges that these positions may overlap (along the lines of intransigent/conservative, conservative/pluralist, and pluralist/relativist), since religious groups can be placed in different positions depending on the topic and geographical area (Geoffroy 2004: 38). Reuter’s classification presents some similarities to Geoffroy’s, but he conflates intransigent fundamentalism and conservative denominationalism into a single category (Reuter 2012: 15).

On another level, analogies with Beyer’s reflections on pluralized religion in the global context (Beyer 2006, 2013) can be found in Victor Roudometof’s discussion of nationalization as one of the four typologies of glocalization. His notion of “multiple glocalizations” distinguishes between four forms of glocalization (vernacularization, indigenization, nationalization, and transnationalization) and is aimed to weaken “the conventional narrative of Western modernization” (Roudometof 2013: 227). Roudometof pursues such scholarly agenda by providing “a historical interpretation of the intertwining between world religions and local cultures,” in which universalism and particularism are identified with Christianity and the role played by local cultures, respectively (Roudometof 2013: 238).

The echo of themes previously discussed by Beyer and Robertson may also be found in George Campbell’s model based on his research on Evangelical Christianity in North America. Campbell distinguishes between four possible responses offered by tradition to the relativization promoted by globalization: closed, open, reinvention, and exit responses (Campbell 2005: 83–91). Closed responses are characterized by Campbell in terms of rejection of other traditions (Campbell 2005: 84). As for the open responses, he distinguishes three different subtypes. The first two are the openness to rethinking the original tradition and the restoring of tradition. The third open response postulated by Campbell is characterized as the realization that “one cannot be secure in any tradition because any tradition can be relativized.” However, he specifies that this response may take the shape of a tolerant attitude that “views one’s tradition as a ‘preference’ and views other traditions as ‘true’ for others” (Campbell 2005: 85–86). Campbell’s three kinds of reinvention responses are by selection, deletion, and addition, respectively. The first one, he argues, can often be “unconscious and unintentional” and implies the defense of a portion of the tradition. In the second case, parts of the tradition are intentionally rejected to meet the expectations of a particular audience or “to keep in step with the contemporary world.” The third type of reinvention involves the addition of new elements in order to improve the tradition (Campbell 2005: 88–89). Finally, Campbell postulates two types of exit responses, namely, defection to other traditions and abandonment of one’s own (Campbell 2005: 90).

Another influential stream within the field of study on religion and globalization has focused on the issue of transnationalism. Among the scholars engaged in this topic, it is worth mentioning Thomas Csordas and his reflections on “transnational transcendence” (Csordas 2009). Within this context, Csordas has discussed two aspects of religion that can facilitate its diffusion in a global setting, namely, “portable practice” and “transposable message.” Portable practice refers to rites “that can be easily learned, require relatively little esoteric knowledge or paraphernalia, are not held as proprietary or necessarily linked to a specific cultural context, and can be performed without commitment to an elaborate ideological or institutional apparatus.” One can speak of transposable messages, Csordas explains, when “the basis of appeal contained in religious tenets, premises, or promises can find footing across a diversity of linguistic and cultural settings” (Csordas 2009: 4–5). That globalization is not just about the diffusion of cultural elements worldwide but includes the creative processes of accommodation that they set in motion in new cultures is also illustrated by Lionel Obadia’s research on Tibetan Buddhism in France. In particular, Obadia has emphasized the role played by processes of “reterritorialisation” (e.g., the establishment of temples and centers) within globalization. For him, “globalisation can also be regarded as a product of the obsession for territories, boundaries, and places” and is as much a world of flows as a world of areas (Obadia 2012: 193).

The dynamics of transnationalism as deterritorialization and reterritorialization have also been explored in the work of Tulasi Srinivas (2010) on the Sathya Sai movement. Here, Srinivas focuses on the process of cultural translation, and distinguishes four stages underlying it: cultural awareness and disembedding; codification and universalization; latching and matching; and contextualization and re-embedding. The first two stages refer to the way cultural forms are made portable and exportable. As observed by Srinivas, the Sathya Sai movement develops “a sense of itself within the larger world” by disembedding Sai Baba’s sacred figure from his religious culture and connecting it to divinities from other religions worldwide (Srinivas 2010: 331–335). The last two stages refer to the overseas transmission of Sathya Sai and the potentiality by the exported cultural forms “to match certain desires or needs in the host society” and to create new hybrid forms (Srinivas 2010: 335–338). Srinivas’s study illustrates the value of ethnographic fieldwork for the understanding of religion and globalization in practice, which is also seen, for example, in Manuel Vásquez’s and Marie Marquardt’s work on the Rainbow Madonna in Florida (Vásquez and Marquardt 2000). Their research shows how this specific Marian apparition dating to 1996 has been interpreted by pilgrims after a ritual and devotional pattern globally circulating in the mass media; how the Rainbow Madonna appeals to a transnational audience, thus distinguishing itself from earlier apparitions in the twentieth century that were generally related to a “nationalist imaginaire”; the working of Appaduraian mediascapes in the creation of a global community of sentiment; and the activism promoted by the Vatican’s New Evangelization project for a return to such devotional traditions for proselytizing purposes (Vásquez and Marquardt 2000: 126–129, 132–133). Elsewhere, the two sociologists have explored similar dynamics in their study of the hybrid practices at the Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle on the border between the United States and Mexico, and in other Latino churches in Atlanta (Vásquez and Marquardt 2003: 65–91, 145–170).

Another valuable example of the operationalization of globalization theories by means of ethnographic research is Michael Hill’s work on the New Age Andean religion in the Cusco region of Peru (Hill 2010). Hill has effectively illustrated how various brotherhoods of urban mestizos operating at the intersection of identity search and the mystical tourist industry have incorporated elements from Catholicism and New Age spirituality, including the myth of the continent of Mu and extraterrestrial-based cosmologies. Through this process they have pursued the reconstruction of a congruent national narrative that bypasses the colonial period and links them directly to the Andes as a repository of ancient wisdom. This idealization of things Inca, a theme which is often found in New Age discourses, is instrumental to the attempt of these urban mestizos to “rewrite the script of globalization so that it is grounded in Andean locality and place” (Hill 2010: 282). By producing such Andean-centric multicultural nationalism, however, they have also essentialized a specific culture and language (Quechua) and excluded other populations (e.g., Amazonian Indians and Afro-Peruvians) who have no part in the myth of the origins.²

The global spread of Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity are generally listed among the important factors that have contributed to the growing interest in religion under globalization since at least the early 1990s. In relation to Charismatic Christianity, an important early contribution to the field has been provided by Simon Coleman with his study on the Word of Life group in Sweden (Coleman 2000). Here, Coleman approaches the interplay of Charismatic Christianity and globalization in terms of the interconnectedness between three main dimensions, that is, “organization,” “media,” and “orientation” (Coleman 2000: 66). As he demonstrates, this charismatic group is close to a transnational corporation in organizational terms, skillfully takes advantage of the new communication technologies, and relates to the world as the arena for its missionary activities (Coleman 2000: 232). The significance of Coleman’s work also lies in his application of Robertson’s idea of global consciousness to the “embodied” level (with reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus) (Coleman 2000: 61–2).

The globalization of Pentecostalism seems, however, to have attracted even more attention among the academia. Several scholars have observed that one of the prominent features of Pentecostalism is the strong awareness of being members of a global community, a “worldwide artificial kinship of God’s family,” which is also reinforced by the international contacts available to sectors of the membership (Droogers 2012: 299; Marshall-Fratani 2001: 85, 90). In this respect, Pentecostalism certainly provides an excellent example of how the awareness of being part of a transnational community can be a very important ingredient in religion’s repositioning under globalizing conditions. Among the scholars who have engaged with this topic, Ruth Marshall-Fratani is worth mentioning here. Marshall-Fratani observes that there is a sort of elective affinity between Nigerian culture and the global message of Pentecostalism as a battle against the devil and his forces, because of the local anxiety about “dangerous strangers” and “evil doers” caused by ongoing urbanization (Marshall-Fratani 2001: 85). She also observes that the mediatization of the Pentecostal message is particularly appealing among Nigerian communities, because “the media still represent ‘islands of modernity’ in a sea of local ‘artisanal’ culture” (Marshall-Fratani 2001: 93). This indicates that the choice for the Pentecostal strand of Christianity can be significantly influenced by the quest for social status (Marshall-Fratani 2001: 92). At another level, Marshall-Fratani has discussed the “demonization of Islam” by Nigerian Pentecostals, which she characterizes as “the localization of a transnational conflict between what are global religious identities” (Marshall-Fratani 2001: 102–103).

Issues of cultural translation in Pentecostalism have also been explored by Joel Robbins (2004), who has pointed to the “preservation of indigenous spiritual ontologies” as one of the crucial elements behind the worldwide dissemination of Pentecostal Christianity. Along this process, Robbins notes, peoples’ beliefs about the spirit world are preserved but their moral value is reversed (Robbins 2004: 128–129). In this sense, Pentecostal Christianity’s divine/demonic dualism seems to work as a “transposable message” allowing a minimum of accommodation without altering the core religious message. Moreover, Robbins’s observations suggest that the successful local adaptation of Pentecostal Christianity is also about the affinity with indigenous religious elements (i.e., the common belief in the spirit world). For him, although the divine/demonic dualism is “antisyncretic,” these dynamics lead to the formation of a “particular kind of hybrid in which the parts of the mixture are kept distinct despite the relations that exist between them” (Robbins 2004: 130).

Similar concerns for the dynamics underlying the local articulations of Pentecostalism are found in the work of Asonzeh Ukah on the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) (Ukah 2008). Ukah has highlighted the transnational dimension of RCCG and the relevance of the idea and practice of globality within this Pentecostal church. Moreover, he has addressed some relevant forms of local adaptation, including changes in dress codes for women overseas and the adoption ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s note
• Introduction
• 1 Approaching religion under globalization
• 2 Religious others at the door: inclusivism and pluralism as forms of global repositioning
• 3 Glocal environmentalism: unpacking the greening of religion in Japan
• 4 Meditation à la carte: glocal change in Hawaiian Jōdo Shinshū
• 5 Global repositionings: Risshō Kōseikai, Japan, and the world at large
• 6 Toward an integrated approach: the Global Repositioning model
• Conclusion
• List of Japanese terms
• Bibliography
• Index