The Critical Study of Non-Religion by Christopher R. Cotter

Author:Christopher R. Cotter [Cotter, Christopher R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology of Religion, Religion, Atheism, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781350095250
Google: kH7vDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-07-09T04:35:08+00:00

5

Religion and non-religion as acts of identification

[T]here is no such thing as identity, only operational acts of identification. The identities we talk about so pompously, as if they existed independently of those who express them, are made (and unmade) only through the mediation of such identificatory acts, in short, by their enunciation. (Bayart 2005: 92)

This chapter argues for setting aside the particularities of the religion-related ‘identities’ of individuals and communities, viewing them rather as ‘operational acts of identification’ (Bayart 2005). Through these relational acts of identification, social actors make use of discursive resources to contextually position themselves and others in relation to religion. Providing further support for the argument advanced in the preceding chapter, some of these contextual acts result in the positioning of phenomena as ‘non-religious’, in Lois Lee’s sense of being ‘primarily understood in relation to religion’ but not being ‘considered to be religious’ (2015: 32). In other cases, the non-religious is implicit in the subject position of particular actors. In all cases, religion-related terms have the potential to be constructed as ‘power categories’, acting in dialectical interplay with other power categories such as ‘politics’, ‘science’ or ‘nature’ (Fitzgerald 2015b).

From identities to identifications

In Chapter 2 I argued that a major problem with substantive approaches to non-religion is the ease with which identity talk becomes ideal-typical. This is problematic because although the ‘ideal type’ was conceptualized by Weber such that it ‘is only rarely encountered in historical reality’ (cited in Bayart 2005: 34), it is almost invariably the case that its artificial and constructed nature becomes lost in translation, giving the false impression that individuals can be easily boxed off into one of a discrete number of types. Whilst such work is very valuable for macro-level analysis, it fundamentally breaks down at the level of the individual where heterogeneity, contextuality, ‘indeterminism, incompletion, multiplicity and polyvalence’ abound (Bayart 2005: 109): there is ‘no such thing as a perfect or ideal-typical form’ of difference to ‘religion’ (Lee 2015: 44).

Much has been written in recent years on how the logics of survey methodologies such as censuses can encourage individuals to claim certain identities which might not be claimed in other circumstances, or which do not simplistically map on to other aspects of individual belief, practice or values – particularly when the identities at focus are religion-related (Day 2011; Day and Lee 2014; Wallis 2014; Lee 2015). Indeed, Gervais and Najle (2018) have recently conducted some ground-breaking work utilizing the ‘unmatched count technique’ (cf. Dalton, Wimbush and Daily 1994; Raghavarao and Federer 1979) to propose that ‘roughly one in four (26%) American adults may be atheists – 2.4–8.7 times as many as telephone polls’ suggest (Gervais and Najle 2018: 8). They go on to argue that the ‘disparity between self-report and indirectly measured atheism rates underscores the potent stigma faced by atheists (Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann 2006; Gervais 2013), as even in an anonymous online survey, about a third of American atheists may be effectively “closeted”’ (2018: 8). In short, self-reports are unreliable

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