My name is Ada Chidichimo Jeffrey and I am enrolled in a 2 year Master’s program at the University of Toronto in order to have sufficient time to complete my research project which includes large numbers of interviews as well as data analysis. I would like to research the role that religious institutions play in the integration of immigrants into Canada. Specifically the questions I would to address are as follows: Do religious institutions in Canada provide resources for integration that immigrants might not otherwise have access to as readily? Or, do religious institutions in Canada actually work against the process of integration by encouraging immigrants to identify themselves first as members of a particular community, and secondly, as Canadians?
Traditionally, scholarship on religion and immigration has maintained that religious institutions play a positive role in the integration of immigrants. They serve as community centres which put recent immigrants in touch with resources for housing, employment and social services while offering a support network of people with similar language and culture. Nancy Foner and Richard Alba in their article “Immigrant Religion: Bridge or Barrier to Integration?” (2008) state that this is primarily the case for immigrants integrating into the United States. Alternatively, some of the literature on the subject takes the opposite view, that religion and religious institutions are a barrier to integration. These scholars are mostly writing with regards to the Western European case wherein the government is typically more secular, and primary religion of immigrants is Islam. These authors, such as Buijs and Rath (2002) suggest that religious institutions (specifically Islamic religious Institutions) encourage “cultural isolationism”, and can lead to acts of violence and terrorism.
While much literature has been written about the role of religion on immigration in the United States and Western Europe, there has not been much work on the topic in Canada. The research being undertaken by Prof. Jeffrey Reitz at the University of Toronto is unique in this regard because it examines the Canadian experience of immigration with recourse to role of religion (Reitz 2008). I believe I am well situated to benefit from and hopefully contribute to his research due to my experience in the field of comparative religion and my involvement in his
collaborative program Ethnicity and Pluralism Studies. This program, when combined with my courses in the Study of Religion will enable me to address issues of race, gender and ethnicity in collaboration with my previous background in religious studies. Additionally, my fluency in both French and Spanish will allow me to access materials in other languages, including research done on the Quebec situation.
In order to answer the aforementioned questions I will use both quantitative and qualitative sources in my methodology, while also referring to some background literature in order to contextualize my findings. Quantitatively, I shall use data from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey in order to provide background on the number of immigrants who declare a strong religious affiliation, and of whom, the percentage who feel accepted by Canadian society. Also Canadian census data will provide information on the degree to which these immigrants are structurally integrated into Canadian society vis-à-vis employment, education and housing levels. To obtain qualitative field data, I shall conduct interviews with several prominent religious institutions in the GTA whose congregation is primarily new Canadians. Some of these institutions include: The New Life Church on Queen St. E, and the Jafari Mosque. Finally, authors such as Jeffrey Reitz, Nancy Foner and Richard Alba, and Charles Hirschman provide relevant, contemporary articles that I can use to situate my own findings.
I am confident that my previous training, and skill-set, when combined with the resources of the University of Toronto, will allow me to undertake original research on the role of religious institutions on the integration of immigrants which will ultimately benefit Canada in the area of immigration policy and social service improvements. I hope to provide an answer to the question: Should Canada be supporting religious institutions as an intermediary way of providing access to services to new immigrants, or should Canada attempt to provide these services itself?
Works Cited
Jeffrey G. Reitz, Rupa Banerjee, Mai Phan, and Jordan Thompson. "Race, Religion, and the Social Integration of New Immigrant Minorities in Canada," September 2008;
Foner, Nancy and Richard Alba. “Immigrant Religion: Bridge or Barrier to Inclusion?” International Migration Review. 42.2 (Summer 2008): 360-392.
Hirschman, Charles. “The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptations of Immigrant Groups in the United States.” International Migration Review. 38.3 (Fall 2004): 1206-1233.
Buijs, F. J., and J. Rath. “Muslims in Europe: The State of Research.” IMISCOE Working Paper. (2006).
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
On Smith, Van Voorst and Masuzawa
In general, this week’s readings all addressed the idea of the relation between the concept and the object of study. In the field of religious studies especially, the concept of an object changes the object, or in fact constructs the object altogether. We have examples like Edward Said’s discussion of Orientalism, wherein he points out that the “Orient” is a discursive tradition created by the West in order to justify their imperialism, and to serve as a backdrop against which the West looks better in comparison. This idea is very much carried on in the Invention of World Religions, and I will return to it later.
Smith opens with the idea of the problematic construction of the category of religion. As many of us may have experienced, most classes begin with a discussion of this category (or they ought to!). In fact, much of the Western tradition of the study of religion can be understood as the effort to come to an understanding of the proper object of our study, namely, what is religion in and of itself? If we cannot agree on the province of the word itself, scholars will not be able to engage in debate. Instead the field degenerates into taking pot-shots at each other’s inadequate definitions. On page 3, Smith draws attention to how, even within Christian circles, agreement on the nature of religion does not come easily.
On pg. 273 Hume correctly points out that religion as an anthropological category must reflect all the contradictions and particularities that exist among people. I find it interesting how Hume does not mention the experience of the supernatural or the sacred, yet this aspect becomes part of the definitions in the 20th century. He also shows how the study of religion gradually changes its perspective, from being a critique of religions from without, to an attempt to understand the religion from within, beginning notably with Geertz.
In the Van Voorst article on page 3, Van Voorst mentions how Cantwell Smith wanted to study scripture as it was actually used in religious practices. But what if the study of scripture itself, and the literature published about it, affects the way is scripture is seen and used? Can scholars really study a phenomenon without affecting it? Their “objects of study” can read what is written about them and are often moved to write apologetics. Indeed many religions are defined by their reactions to perceived misunderstandings about them. Protestantism did not come to a clear doctrine until Calvin defended Protestantism against the claims and criticisms of the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists.
On page 4 the comment about ‘scipturalness’ being a category that is subjective, and often constructed in retrospect, is bang on. English Literature deals with the same question: whom do we canonize? The same questions arise in most aesthetic disciplines.
Van Voorst makes clear that the value/authority/sacredness of the scripture does not reside solely in its words. The object of the text, including its outward form and binding becomes an object of worship that can bring good fortune and ward off evil. In English literature, there is a strain of criticism called “book history” wherein the outward form of the book is studied as having a critical impact upon the way a book is absorbed and understood.
I take issue with Masuzawa’s introduction on page 2 in The Invention of World Religions: I don’t think that the term ‘religion’ is still a category that is resistant, essentialized, or unhistoricized. That happens when you postulate essences, and the idea of an essence of religion does not have the same currency as it once had in Eliade’s time. This is not to say that the desire to continue to do so is not still pervasive in Religious Studies dept. but there have been critiques, and there are ways of historizing religion.
On page 11, it is an interesting point that ‘world religions’ is a term without a history. It begins to appear and is taken for granted from the get-go. Later on in the book, Masuzawa points out that at the attitude of being a ‘sympathetic insider’ is de rigeur for any religion scholar, and yet, to date, this attitude has not been properly critiqued. Simply because the word sounds like a good idea should not exempt it from being examined and quantified. On this point, on page 13 also, there is the critique that ‘pluralism’ has become a dominant idea and yet remains only vaguely defined. Again, just because the notion sounds like a good idea is no reason to analytically ignore it.
The idea of speaking about other religions and later on, the field of comparative religion, arose in a period of insecurity and upheaval for the West. Masuzawa remarks that this has marked western scholars with a tendency towards protectionism and towards an aggressive outlook towards the Other (pg.20). In a sense, much of the early discourse about other religions arose not as a way to better understand them, but as a way to better understand how we were NOT them. The vast catalogues of the Other’s ceremonies, religion and culture are there for ridicule, or for disparaging comparison with the West’s innate superiority. As Said said in his book Orientalism: “Orientalism is- and does not simply represent- a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world” (12). Substitute the Other, for Orientalism, and we have the gist of the argument in Masuzawa’s book. The comparative study of religions arose not from a desire to objectively understand the Other, but to enshrine the Other as Other, and thereby justify our high estimation of our own cultural and religious practices.
Smith opens with the idea of the problematic construction of the category of religion. As many of us may have experienced, most classes begin with a discussion of this category (or they ought to!). In fact, much of the Western tradition of the study of religion can be understood as the effort to come to an understanding of the proper object of our study, namely, what is religion in and of itself? If we cannot agree on the province of the word itself, scholars will not be able to engage in debate. Instead the field degenerates into taking pot-shots at each other’s inadequate definitions. On page 3, Smith draws attention to how, even within Christian circles, agreement on the nature of religion does not come easily.
On pg. 273 Hume correctly points out that religion as an anthropological category must reflect all the contradictions and particularities that exist among people. I find it interesting how Hume does not mention the experience of the supernatural or the sacred, yet this aspect becomes part of the definitions in the 20th century. He also shows how the study of religion gradually changes its perspective, from being a critique of religions from without, to an attempt to understand the religion from within, beginning notably with Geertz.
In the Van Voorst article on page 3, Van Voorst mentions how Cantwell Smith wanted to study scripture as it was actually used in religious practices. But what if the study of scripture itself, and the literature published about it, affects the way is scripture is seen and used? Can scholars really study a phenomenon without affecting it? Their “objects of study” can read what is written about them and are often moved to write apologetics. Indeed many religions are defined by their reactions to perceived misunderstandings about them. Protestantism did not come to a clear doctrine until Calvin defended Protestantism against the claims and criticisms of the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists.
On page 4 the comment about ‘scipturalness’ being a category that is subjective, and often constructed in retrospect, is bang on. English Literature deals with the same question: whom do we canonize? The same questions arise in most aesthetic disciplines.
Van Voorst makes clear that the value/authority/sacredness of the scripture does not reside solely in its words. The object of the text, including its outward form and binding becomes an object of worship that can bring good fortune and ward off evil. In English literature, there is a strain of criticism called “book history” wherein the outward form of the book is studied as having a critical impact upon the way a book is absorbed and understood.
I take issue with Masuzawa’s introduction on page 2 in The Invention of World Religions: I don’t think that the term ‘religion’ is still a category that is resistant, essentialized, or unhistoricized. That happens when you postulate essences, and the idea of an essence of religion does not have the same currency as it once had in Eliade’s time. This is not to say that the desire to continue to do so is not still pervasive in Religious Studies dept. but there have been critiques, and there are ways of historizing religion.
On page 11, it is an interesting point that ‘world religions’ is a term without a history. It begins to appear and is taken for granted from the get-go. Later on in the book, Masuzawa points out that at the attitude of being a ‘sympathetic insider’ is de rigeur for any religion scholar, and yet, to date, this attitude has not been properly critiqued. Simply because the word sounds like a good idea should not exempt it from being examined and quantified. On this point, on page 13 also, there is the critique that ‘pluralism’ has become a dominant idea and yet remains only vaguely defined. Again, just because the notion sounds like a good idea is no reason to analytically ignore it.
The idea of speaking about other religions and later on, the field of comparative religion, arose in a period of insecurity and upheaval for the West. Masuzawa remarks that this has marked western scholars with a tendency towards protectionism and towards an aggressive outlook towards the Other (pg.20). In a sense, much of the early discourse about other religions arose not as a way to better understand them, but as a way to better understand how we were NOT them. The vast catalogues of the Other’s ceremonies, religion and culture are there for ridicule, or for disparaging comparison with the West’s innate superiority. As Said said in his book Orientalism: “Orientalism is- and does not simply represent- a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world” (12). Substitute the Other, for Orientalism, and we have the gist of the argument in Masuzawa’s book. The comparative study of religions arose not from a desire to objectively understand the Other, but to enshrine the Other as Other, and thereby justify our high estimation of our own cultural and religious practices.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Bynum and Huntington: In Praise of Fragments, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Methodological Considerations
Bynum: In Praise Of Fragments
Pg. 16: “All assume, with social scientists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau, that marginal and disadvantaged groups in a society appropriate that society’s dominant symbols and ideas in ways that revise and undercut them.”
I like the use of de Certeau, who claimed that the act of reading was an act of poaching on the territory of the dominant group who created the text. It also reminded me of another idea which perhaps is also implied in Bynum’s use of de Certeau: that, in order to have the repressed we must have the dominant. The master is constructed in the same breath as the slave. In a sense, the slave then has power over the master because they are relied upon to create the identity of the master. I’m paraphrasing here, but especially in her phrase that ‘the study of gender is a study of 100% of the human race, not 51% (pg.17), I think this idea applies. One comes to understand the female in its response to the male, and the male’s response to the female. However, I can’t remember who said that thing about the master/slave duality, was it Foucault? Maybe someone else can help me out on that one…
Pg. 23: One of Bynum’s methodological assumptions is the slightly, but by no means complete, post-modern leanings. Bynum rejects the idea of author’s intentionality yet regards as valid the information that context, historical period and concurrently written texts can give to the meaning of the text. Bynum picks and chooses from certain idea in literary criticism: a little bit of historicism, a little bit of deconstruction yet she herself has acknowledged this: “…I have not aligned myself with any current dispensation…my formulation of their significance has resonances with (although also differences from) such theoretical positions such as postmodern feminism, deconstruction, or post-structural symbolic anthropology” (22).
Pg. 25: The comic was an idea that gave me a little bit of trouble, but I think I have some understanding of what she means. The comic then is her stance by virtue of its self-awareness of its own contrivance, its self-conscious understanding that it is but one possible story. Texts can tell different stories (perhaps also depending on the role played by the reader in appropriating that text to their own use). The author believes that true history is inaccessible, it is a meta-history lying outside the realm of understanding. It is only poorly and partially attested to by texts. Thus, not taking oneself seriously is imperative to not ascribing intentionality to texts and events and authors whose “truth” does not exist in any objective way.
From what I gathered from Bynum’s first article, if one understands that there are multiple ways to tell the truth, and multiple voices that will tell a different truth, one is encouraged to listen to the marginalized voices, and hold them as equally valuable and in this way, come to a more complete (pluralistic) understanding of… history? Text? Everything?
Bynum: Holy Feast and Holy Fast
Pg. 3: Because Jesus had served apostles as both waiter and server (multiplier of food) and as the food itself, the verb eat came to mean assimilation, and to become God” This sort of intense sensual experience also reminds me of the mystics who used the imagery of a lover when it came to describing their assimilation into God. In particular, I remember reading one text of a female mystic (Kempe? I can’t remember) that portrayed Christ as a woman, and talked about His/Her breast milk as symbolic of saving grace. In the text’s following two examples on pages 3 and 4, these two modes of imagery, food and lover seem interchangeable, or conflated. Bynum’s thesis is interesting, that food deprivation was not a flight from the body, but the realizing of the body as possible tool, to be changed, both in physical appearance, and needs-composition to reflect the faith, religious persuasion etc. The body provided choices, instead of restricted them.
I do find interesting her siding with phenomenology in her study of history, as the Religious studies departments around Canada grapple with the proper way to study Religion. Eliade is often discredited, his ‘bracketing of biases’ is sometimes thought to be impossible, and even inadvisable for scholars to do, for it is presumptuous to imagine that one can think outside of one’s own presuppositions, time, and environment. She also seems to cite Clifford Geertz, which is perhaps problematic in the sense that if religion is seen as a collection of symbol systems, one risks not looking at the things themselves, or the texts, but looking beyond these tangibles for “the truth”. Furthermore, any overarching idea that one would arrive at, would be based not so much on observation of what material you have available to you, but to a secondary theory, that of what those materials ‘mean’. You run the risk of sacrificing what the texts say, for what the texts mean.
Huntington: Methodological Considerations
Pg. 6: Is it just me, or is he hating on the proselytic model? He has a lot in common with book historians of English literature who try to make book history into science, to the extent where they claim that words are just “symbols on a page” and you can find out the meaning and significance of a text without any recourse to them at all. However, this text-critical model, both in English Lit, and religious studies if accused of as, Huntington says ‘of being too abstract, and sterile in its refusal to give attention to the problem of meaning’ (pg. 7).
The Gadamer quote on page 7 is great, it echoes what I mentioned earlier in regards to Bynum, that phenomenology does not take sufficient account of the activity of the interpreter. The interpreter changes the phenomenon studied, just as post-modern literary criticism holds that the reader changes the text and makes it their own (Wolfgang Iser might be an example of this). On this point he differs from the previous author by better pointing out the flaws of this “objectivism” bias in phenomenology. (7)
(Top of) Pg.8: Bynum and Huntington both don’t like the modernist idea of authorial intentionality. Huntington seems to be rejecting the phenomenological preoccupation with essences as being illusory. He does seem more in line with Roland Barthes, that the meaning of the text does not really exist independent of the reader.
Pg. 9: ‘What we learn in these texts is in every way a function of the tools we bring to our study’. In this phrase, he appears much more ‘officially’ a post-modern deconstructioist type theorizer, in comparison to Bynum’s half-postmodern, half new historicism method. Incidentally, Huntington’s methodology seems appropriate for studying things like Nagarjuna’s writing who was constantly breaking down the meaning of language and questioning duality.
Pg. 13: I’m not sure that I agree with the idea that the historicizing of an object of study necessarily implies that one suspends its truth claim nor that the acknowledgement of the Other as other means that one cannot access their truths. It seem one would have to acknowledge any historical subject as other simply because in doing so one acknowledges one’s own position and the distance of time.
At the end of pg. 14 he more explicitly states how important it is to carry with one during research, an acknowledgement of one’s own presuppositions, I think this is less emphasized in Bynum’s two articles.
Pg. 16: “All assume, with social scientists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau, that marginal and disadvantaged groups in a society appropriate that society’s dominant symbols and ideas in ways that revise and undercut them.”
I like the use of de Certeau, who claimed that the act of reading was an act of poaching on the territory of the dominant group who created the text. It also reminded me of another idea which perhaps is also implied in Bynum’s use of de Certeau: that, in order to have the repressed we must have the dominant. The master is constructed in the same breath as the slave. In a sense, the slave then has power over the master because they are relied upon to create the identity of the master. I’m paraphrasing here, but especially in her phrase that ‘the study of gender is a study of 100% of the human race, not 51% (pg.17), I think this idea applies. One comes to understand the female in its response to the male, and the male’s response to the female. However, I can’t remember who said that thing about the master/slave duality, was it Foucault? Maybe someone else can help me out on that one…
Pg. 23: One of Bynum’s methodological assumptions is the slightly, but by no means complete, post-modern leanings. Bynum rejects the idea of author’s intentionality yet regards as valid the information that context, historical period and concurrently written texts can give to the meaning of the text. Bynum picks and chooses from certain idea in literary criticism: a little bit of historicism, a little bit of deconstruction yet she herself has acknowledged this: “…I have not aligned myself with any current dispensation…my formulation of their significance has resonances with (although also differences from) such theoretical positions such as postmodern feminism, deconstruction, or post-structural symbolic anthropology” (22).
Pg. 25: The comic was an idea that gave me a little bit of trouble, but I think I have some understanding of what she means. The comic then is her stance by virtue of its self-awareness of its own contrivance, its self-conscious understanding that it is but one possible story. Texts can tell different stories (perhaps also depending on the role played by the reader in appropriating that text to their own use). The author believes that true history is inaccessible, it is a meta-history lying outside the realm of understanding. It is only poorly and partially attested to by texts. Thus, not taking oneself seriously is imperative to not ascribing intentionality to texts and events and authors whose “truth” does not exist in any objective way.
From what I gathered from Bynum’s first article, if one understands that there are multiple ways to tell the truth, and multiple voices that will tell a different truth, one is encouraged to listen to the marginalized voices, and hold them as equally valuable and in this way, come to a more complete (pluralistic) understanding of… history? Text? Everything?
Bynum: Holy Feast and Holy Fast
Pg. 3: Because Jesus had served apostles as both waiter and server (multiplier of food) and as the food itself, the verb eat came to mean assimilation, and to become God” This sort of intense sensual experience also reminds me of the mystics who used the imagery of a lover when it came to describing their assimilation into God. In particular, I remember reading one text of a female mystic (Kempe? I can’t remember) that portrayed Christ as a woman, and talked about His/Her breast milk as symbolic of saving grace. In the text’s following two examples on pages 3 and 4, these two modes of imagery, food and lover seem interchangeable, or conflated. Bynum’s thesis is interesting, that food deprivation was not a flight from the body, but the realizing of the body as possible tool, to be changed, both in physical appearance, and needs-composition to reflect the faith, religious persuasion etc. The body provided choices, instead of restricted them.
I do find interesting her siding with phenomenology in her study of history, as the Religious studies departments around Canada grapple with the proper way to study Religion. Eliade is often discredited, his ‘bracketing of biases’ is sometimes thought to be impossible, and even inadvisable for scholars to do, for it is presumptuous to imagine that one can think outside of one’s own presuppositions, time, and environment. She also seems to cite Clifford Geertz, which is perhaps problematic in the sense that if religion is seen as a collection of symbol systems, one risks not looking at the things themselves, or the texts, but looking beyond these tangibles for “the truth”. Furthermore, any overarching idea that one would arrive at, would be based not so much on observation of what material you have available to you, but to a secondary theory, that of what those materials ‘mean’. You run the risk of sacrificing what the texts say, for what the texts mean.
Huntington: Methodological Considerations
Pg. 6: Is it just me, or is he hating on the proselytic model? He has a lot in common with book historians of English literature who try to make book history into science, to the extent where they claim that words are just “symbols on a page” and you can find out the meaning and significance of a text without any recourse to them at all. However, this text-critical model, both in English Lit, and religious studies if accused of as, Huntington says ‘of being too abstract, and sterile in its refusal to give attention to the problem of meaning’ (pg. 7).
The Gadamer quote on page 7 is great, it echoes what I mentioned earlier in regards to Bynum, that phenomenology does not take sufficient account of the activity of the interpreter. The interpreter changes the phenomenon studied, just as post-modern literary criticism holds that the reader changes the text and makes it their own (Wolfgang Iser might be an example of this). On this point he differs from the previous author by better pointing out the flaws of this “objectivism” bias in phenomenology. (7)
(Top of) Pg.8: Bynum and Huntington both don’t like the modernist idea of authorial intentionality. Huntington seems to be rejecting the phenomenological preoccupation with essences as being illusory. He does seem more in line with Roland Barthes, that the meaning of the text does not really exist independent of the reader.
Pg. 9: ‘What we learn in these texts is in every way a function of the tools we bring to our study’. In this phrase, he appears much more ‘officially’ a post-modern deconstructioist type theorizer, in comparison to Bynum’s half-postmodern, half new historicism method. Incidentally, Huntington’s methodology seems appropriate for studying things like Nagarjuna’s writing who was constantly breaking down the meaning of language and questioning duality.
Pg. 13: I’m not sure that I agree with the idea that the historicizing of an object of study necessarily implies that one suspends its truth claim nor that the acknowledgement of the Other as other means that one cannot access their truths. It seem one would have to acknowledge any historical subject as other simply because in doing so one acknowledges one’s own position and the distance of time.
At the end of pg. 14 he more explicitly states how important it is to carry with one during research, an acknowledgement of one’s own presuppositions, I think this is less emphasized in Bynum’s two articles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
