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Boundaries of Christianity, boundaries of academic authority: Gil Anidjar’s Blood and responses by Pamela Klassen, Jonathan Sheehan

3/9/2015

When we look at the stockmarket, institutionalized racism, Western secularism – are we seeing Christianity in action? Discuss. Please clarify which criteria you are using to make your answer seem authoritative to your colleagues.

Gil Anidjar’s recent book Blood: A Critique of Christianity was the central focus for a great forum in Marginalia Review of Books last week, organized by Nina Caputo. Caputo chose four respondents from different disciplines – theology/Christian studies (Amy Hollywood), anthropology/religious studies (Pamela Klassen), literary studies (Ana Schwartz), and history (Jonathan Sheehan). The forum concludes with a final response from Anidjar (which begins: “I am becoming the blood guy”). I enjoyed the forum very much. It made me think about boundaries – the boundaries of Christianity, boundaries of academic authority, working across the boundaries.

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Hidden determinants of Christians’ behavior? Reading Annelin Eriksen and Joel Robbins on values in Christianity

11/9/2014

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I wonder, if someone were to describe my life, what they would say about my values. Would they list the same values as I would? Would they graciously point out that it is obviously complicated to try to put values into practice? Would they suggest that they can discern values driving my life that are hidden to me?

The anthropology of values / of morality / of ethics / of the good has received much attention recently (e.g. Hau, Anthropological Theory, the upcoming SAR meeting, James Laidlaw, Joel Robbins, etc). The anthropology of values / of morality / of ethics / of the good are not necessarily the same, and there are no agreed-upon definitions (shocking, I know). Ton Otto and Rane Willerslev helpfully point out that questions of value are elusive, both in the sense of what we are referring to as well as how we know about them. I wanted to sort through this some more. I’m interested in what it means to say that a particular group of Christians “value” something, and how anthropologists know what that “value” is.

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When Christian anthropologists study other Christians: Pros and cons (Reading Brian Howell)

10/10/2013

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After reading Brian Howell’s “The repugnant cultural other speaks back: Christian identity as ethnographic standpoint” (Anthropological Theory 2007), I am more convinced than before that there are some advantages when Christian anthropologists make conscious use of their own Christianity when studying other Christians. (Or, for that matter, when atheist/Buddhist/uncertain/etc anthropologists who are studying Christianity make conscious use of their own atheism/Buddhism/uncertainty/what have you.) Howell argues, in short, that if an anthropologist of Christianity identifies as a Christian, this should not be regarded as problematic, but rather as a potentially fruitful “ethnographic standpoint.”

First: What a Christian ethnographic standpoint is, and is not

These are the points that crystallized for me on the idea of a Christian ethnographic standpoint:

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Boundaries of Christianity, boundaries of academic authority: Gil Anidjar’s Blood and responses by Pamela Klassen, Jonathan Sheehan

Hidden determinants of Christians’ behavior? Reading Annelin Eriksen and Joel Robbins on values in Christianity

When Christian anthropologists study other Christians: Pros and cons (Reading Brian Howell)

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