Emotion

This week’s readings on emotion tie in two previous themes, that of the question of the reducibility or irreducibility of religion, and the question of performance/emotion. Religious Studies has been under pressure to define their discipline in such a way as to make it unique, thereby protecting it from the encroachment of other disciplines. If religion can be reduced to social-scientific, psychological, or neurological factors, then there is a risk that religious studies will become obsolete as a faculty as neurologists, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists step will step in, in our places. I think this tension is at the root of the many disagreements about the definition of religion. At its base, this conflict is generally between non-reductionist and reductionist definitions of religion. Corrigan sees the category of emotion as one that is a component in the study of religion as non-reductionist. This category is useful for protecting the non-reductionist discourse of the study of religion because it fulfills the role of the ineffable essence of religion which sets it apart from other disciplines.

Thus “emotion” takes the place of “religion” when it comes to debates about the viability of reduction or non-reduction. Corrigan defines two major ways of looking at emotion, as either universalistic, or as culturally constructed. The study of emotion as a universal phenomenon involves comparing and contrasting among different cultures things like: emotional lexicons, emotion as performance, emotion as a product of philosophical/theological background. If one performs this sort of analysis, one is looking for a common thread that shows that emotion is a universal phenomenon, common to all cultures. On the other hand, one could look at emotion as something that is culturally constructed. This would entail looking at emotion as a way of adhering to social codes. or Emotions as “socially dictated performances, social scripts” (11). This latter view ties in with the idea that physical performance and emotion are related and affect one another, discussed in a previous blog entry.

Emotion is a component of my area of research on religion and immigrant integration in Canada. For the purposes of my analysis I would like to look at emotion as a phenomenon that is articulated differently in different religious groups. Emotion, eg. the feeling of compassion for one’s fellow group members, and even members outside one’s group, is encouraged in many religious traditions. These religious traditions than encourage or prescribe certain behaviours based on these emotions. I am interested in religion as a provider of social capital for immigrant groups in Canada, thus, I would like to look at the emotions that fuel the activities that provide the social capital. I’m afraid this is all a bit general, but basically, I believe that the formation of social capital though activities like community outreach programs in religious institutions is driven by practices which capitalize on emotions like compassion, which in turn are sanctioned by religious discourse. An example of this in the Christian worldview might be the encouragement of compassion as exemplified in the Good Samaritan parable. This is often drawn upon by members of Christian churches to explain their involvement in food and clothing drives, or the provision of language services for new immigrants who are a part of their religious community.

I am interested in the emotions behind the provision of social capital, and the interaction between emotion and religious values. Are certain emotions encouraged more in certain religious traditions than in others? Would this encouragement lead to the proliferation of social welfare programs? Are religious values the main driver of these kinds of activities, or are secular values? If one speaks of emotion as something that is culturally constructed, is emotion constructed differently in a secular world view as opposed to a religious worldview? Would these different emotional constructs mean that secular community outreach programs function differently than religiously motivated programs?

Thus, despite the fact that I have more questions than answers I do believe that a study of emotion would be beneficial to my understanding of the field of religion and immigration.