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Theorizing Secular Sensibilities Through Ethnography

Submitted to Program Units
1: Anthropology of Religion Unit
2: Secularism and Secularity Unit

Rebekka King, Middle Tennessee State University, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

This panel extends current theoretical discussions in the anthropology of secularism regarding the subtle ways that secularism(s) shape social life, including bodies, to consider “secular sensibilities.” Put differently, as ethnographers, how can we capture the sensorial, bodily and affective dimensions of secularism?

The first paper by Oliphant situates secular sensibilities in two carnivals in France, pointing to local and contextual theorization. The second paper by Selby and Barras takes up ethnography with French nonreligious immigrants to Montreal and Toronto, Canada and compares their emotional engagements with the secular sensibilities they encounter in public schools.The third paper by Mossière draws on fieldwork with energy-based movements in Montréal, Canada to consider her participants' cultivation of secular-sensing scientific bodies. The panel concludes with a paper by Amir-Moazami, who examines secular sensibilities in contemporary Europe through her fieldwork and anthropologically informed discourse analysis of securitization. 

Papers

  • Elayne Oliphant, New York University

    A Carnival of Possibilities: Cultivating the Secular by Opposing Christian Hegemony

    Abstract

    In this paper, I reflect on the tradition of Carnival in France as a means of cultivating secular sensibilities. Secular sensibilities are often formed in conversation—at times antagonistic—with religious sensibilities. I compare two Carnivals that took place over the fall and winter of 2023-24 in France. Both were used to expand the sensibilities and actors recognized in French landscapes and histories. While Carnivals are not necessarily spaces in which gods and spirits are absent, I understand these Carnivals to be secular due to the context of their occurrence, as both pushed back against articulations of Catholic dominance. Rather than viewing the religious and secular as two pre-existing and always-distinctive set of sensibilities, I argue for understanding both as local and contextual. It was precisely by opposing hegemonic Catholic claims over space and memory that these Carnivals may be understood as aimed at the cultivation of secular sensibilities.

  • Jennifer A. Selby, Memorial University of Newfoundland
    Amélie Barras, York University

    Québécois and Ontarian Secular Sensibilities: The Case of French Immigrants’ and Canadian Public and Private Schools

    Abstract

    Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with first-generation French immigrants to Montréal and Toronto, as well as anthropological literature on secularism and secular sensibilities (Fadil 2009; Barras 2017; Amir-Moazami 2022; Selby 2022), this paper examines how longstanding provincial, linguistic and cultural distinctions between Québec and Ontario are articulated by our interlocutors by paying particular attention to the emotions they express around the education of their children in daycares and schools: whether disgust, joy, unease. We include audio excerpts from our interviews (for which we received permission in our ethics application) and conclude by drawing on theoretical work on whiteness in France and Canada (Ahmed 2007; Bilge 2013; Beaman 2019; Lépinard 2020) to theorize its centrality as a secular sensibility.

  • Geraldine Mossiere,

    “Energy”: How Spiritualities’ Use of Psychological Language Frame Secular Sensing Bodies

    Abstract

    Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among spiritual energy-based movements, Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness and 5 rhythms, this paper examines psychological and psychosomatic approaches that have recently blossomed in the wellness industry by integrating spiritual teachings and practices oriented towards self-transformation. As part of the “psychologization of society”, these self-development movements display a shared reliance on scientifically informed language and on the concept of “energy”. My observations show that the ritualized motion of the body as well as the guided awareness of sensations are conducive to heightened emotional releases that are meant to restore the circulation of energy in the morphic spaces where they occur. In this setting, emotions are understood as embodied thoughts. Given that these deeply cathartic experiences are framed as an expansion of consciousness, I argue that the combination of energy and consciousness concur to shape the secular sensing body. 

  • Schirin Amir-Moazami, Freie Universität Berlin

    Islamism Prevention as a Secular Practice

    Abstract

    Throughout the last two decades preventive measures against “Islamism” have gradually expanded across Europe and in conjunction with the US-lead global war on terror. Critical scholarship on prevention politics have mainly focused on the mechanisms of securitization and its intrusive characteristics (cf. Fadil, De Koening, Ragazzi 2019; Marquardt und Qasem 2022; Said and Fouad 2018). In my paper I build up on these critiques while arguing that the underlying security dispositive is animated by what Luca Mavelli has called the “secular episteme” (Mavelli 2012). Dwelling both on discourse analysis and fieldwork, I show that politics of prevention are above all based on hegemonic, mostly unspoken and unproblematized understandings of Islam as proper “religion”, and Islamism as its improper politicized deviation. The classificatory system of knowledge production undergirding such distinctions are predicated on secular assumptions of successfully accomplished separations between “religion” and “politics” and on secular sensibilities which guide the predictive lines between “pure Islam” and “dangerous Islamism”.

Responding
Paul Bramadat, University of Victoria

Business Meeting
Eric Hoenes Del Pinal, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Presiding
Jennifer A. Selby, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Presiding
Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer

Comments

Selby has a separate workshop commitment in Norway on November 27th, so is unable to present on Tuesday, November 26th.

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

2 Hours
Schedule Info

Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Tags

Anthropology of Secularism; Anthropology of Religion; Ethnography

Session Identifier

A24-104