Johannes Quack

Outline of a Relational Approach to ‘Nonreligion’

This article proposes a programmatic approach to study nonreligion relationally. “Nonreligion” denotes phenomena that are generally not considered religious but whose significance is more or less dependent on religion (atheists are an obvious example). This approach draws on sociological field-theory to outline how different modes of nonreligiosity result from different configurations of the religious field they relate or are related to, influenced by the cultural and socio-political backgrounds of different societies. Furthermore, modes of nonreligion can be distinguished by different ways of relating to religion. While this relationship is primarily “negative” in some cases, most examples display “positive” characteristics, such as the reference to secular morality through humanism and human rights or the stress of alternative worldviews based on science and naturalism. The article concludes that the diversity of nonreligion ought to be studied in its own right and on the basis of empirical research that focuses on religious-nonreligious entanglements.

Ignorance and utilization: mental health care outside the purview of the Indian state

The paper discusses different positions by psychiatrists and anthropologists taken towards ‘folk’ mental health care and summarizes what has been said in favour of the folk sector. Further, examples indicating a changing relationship between the Indian state and the folk sector are outlined, including the impacts of the fire tragedy at the dargah of Erwadi in 2001. On this basis it is argued that a prevailing ignorance of the folk sector has provided it with some autonomy, while at the same time, recent attempts at collaboration tend to utilize folk practitioners rather than valuing their positive elements in their own right.

Embedded Indifference and Ways to Research It

This volume comprises in total eleven chapters with different geographical and historical focuses, methodical approaches, and notions of indifference. Each chapter engages with the roles and characteristics of religion in a given society and related contestations – and, accordingly, provides insights on the scope and form of religious indifference as well as related normative evaluations. This chapter addresses different understandings and applications of indifference and focuses on two main themes. It first aims to summarize the ways in which indifference is shaped by different histories of religion and secularity. It secondly discusses various notions and ways of operationalizing indifference proposed by the different contributions as well as how they relate to different methodical approaches. This will coincide with a final discussion of the limits of research on indifference in order not to end but to further stimulate debates on the observations and arguments assembled in this volume.

“What do I know?” Scholastic fallacies and pragmatic religiosity in mental health-seeking behaviour in India

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork on psychiatrists and their patients (their care-givers and their communities) in North India. It addresses the questions as to when and why people approach psychiatrists and religious healers by arguing that approaches assessing “explanatory models” and other knowledge structures relevant to the peoples health-seeking behaviour should place more emphasis on the peoples strong desire to get well, in any way possible. Secondly, the difference between beliefs rooted in the patients’ life-worlds and explanations suggested to them by experts has to be acknowledged. These insights motivate a shift away from the concept “religion” towards the differentiation between pragmatic and scholastic religiosities. This argument relates back to the Greek meaning of “pragma” understood by Hans-Georg Gadamer as “that within which we are entangled in the praxis of living”.

Bio- and Ethnographic Approaches to Indifference, Detachment, and Disengagement in the Study of Religion

This chapter introduces the life stories of Marion and Prakash to the reader. It is based on a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and biographic interviews conducted in India and Germany. It addresses the complementarity of these methods and their appropriateness for the study of indifference to religion and religiosity, and reconsiders the relational approach to the study of nonreligion with a focus on indifference. On this basis the chapter, first, contrasts different understandings of religious indifference and highlights its conceptualisation as a situational stance opting for the path of least possible engagement. Second, the chapter analyses the conditions for the possibility of displaying such an indifferent stance in the German and Indian case. The chapter concludes by comparing the stances adopted by Marion and Prakash to thereby address the limits of the concept of religious indifference.

Conceptualising Religious Indifferences in Relation to Religion and Nonreligion

This introduction first, sketches the genesis of the notion ‘religious indifference’ from different theological debates. Second, we illustrate its use in the social scientific debate on secularisation and modernity, highlighting some of the difficulties with defining and identifying indifferent populations. On the base of a relational approach to nonreligion we further conceptualise religious indifference as lacking direct relationships with religion, but as positioned in relation to religious or more explicit nonreligious positions by relevant agents who render the lack of direct relationships to religion remarkable. This perspective underscores the concepts’ entanglement with the scientific study of non/religion. All this adds to conceptualising indifference as a symbolically powerful and contested concept. We discuss ways of distinguishing between different forms of indifference and conclude this introduction by summarising the contributions to this volume.