Karla Poewe

New Religions As Global Cultures : Making The Human Sacred

* The Great Anti-cult Crusade * From Cults to New Religions and Global Culture * New Religions as Global Cultures * New Religions and Primal Experiences * Myths and Mythological Fragments * Yogic and Abramic Religions * The Membership Process * New Religions: New Visions * How Dangerous Are New Religions?

On the Metonymic Structure of Religious Experiences: The Example of Charismatic Christianity

It is argued that the nature of religiosity is changing worldwide. Trusted distinctions are blurred and the trend is away from a symbolic-rich to a sign-rich religiosity. The shift correlates with increased emphases on metonym rather than metaphor, on experience rather than cognition, on imagination rather than emotion, and on knowing how models of knowledge rather than propositional models of knowledge. The ethnographic example is that of charismatic Christianity in Africa and America.

The Namibian Herero : a history of their psychosocial disintegration and survival

This volume draws a disturbing picture of a Herero society that is radically unbalanced but driven by an indomitable will to survive.

Writing culture and writing fieldwork: The proliferation of experimental and experiential ethnographies

In this paper it is argued that the proliferation of ethnographic genres is the result of deliberate textual inventions by postmodernists, on the one hand, and a natural consequence of the method of participant‐observation by experiential ethnographers, on the other. This implies that experimental and experiential ethnographies are distinct approaches to doing and writing fieldwork and culture. Consequently, experiential ethnographies have to be reclaimed from the textualist lock‐in to which some experimental ethnographers have led the discipline. Distinguishing between the two types of ethnographies invites us also to puzzle about the role of rhetoric, empathy, and the dangers and uses of experimental and experiential ethnographies.

Matriliny in the Throes of Change: Kinship, Descent and Marriage in Luapula, Zambia. Part One

In the past there was a tendency to seek economic cooperation among ones local matrilateral and bilateral kindred. Like the Lozi situation described by Gluckman (1941) the economic activities of Luapulans are so varied that a wide deployment of manpower is required. In any one situation there are always some local kinsmen from whom one may choose helpers and widely dispersed clansmen amongst whom one can travel and live in order to harvest or collect different resources to offset seasonal shortages at home. Permanent residence in one locality is based upon the mobility of kin who can be sent to garner varied resources in different area. For example young men may be sent to live in fish camps on islands in the swamps or river during the months of May June and July or November through March. Commercial fishing of the prized pale (Tilapia macrochir) takes place from August through November and at this time young men devote their energy to fishing in the main river. Older men on the other hand even today usually fish in nearby waters for immediate consumption only (see Figure 3). In the past and to some extent today among the less commercialized villages along the Luapula river in order to eat minimally well throughout the year to live in water-proof dwellings and so on it was vital to deploy between 10 and 20 adults to bring in diverse resources all of which require concentrated activity in different environs. People exploit the near and distant forest gardens swamps rivers or lakes. All activities though basically individualistic at some time or another need some degree of co-operation with at least one other adult or with a number of children. (excerpt)

Scientific neo‐paganism and the extreme right then and today: From Ludendorff ‘s Gotterkenntnis to Sigrid Hunke's Europas Eigene religion

Abstract During the Weimar Republic, flourishing new religions were harnessed to usher in the cultural revolution from the right that was soon dominated by the Nazis. J. William Hauers Deutsche Glaubensbewegung, an umbrella group for numerous new religions whose teachings ranged from versions of Hinduism to Nordic Neo‐Paganism, all collaborated, at some point, with Hitler and his party. This paper shows the continuity of core ideas from Mathilde Ludendorffs Gotterkenntnis to Hauers Glaubensbewegung and, importantly, Sigrid Hunkes Unitarier. It shows, further, the close connections between these forms of neo‐paganism and the present‐day European New Right. The paradoxical co‐occurrence in fascism of a religious populism and a meta‐political elitism, philosophical vitalism, and dreams of national or European rebirth has its roots in these French and German forms of neo‐paganism.

The Berlin Mission Society and its Theology: The Bapedi Mission Church and the Independent Bapedi Lutheran Church

The Berlin Missions theology was a distinct world view that informed simultaneously the research, pedagogy, and behaviour of pupils, missionaries, and African converts, especially leaders known as ‘national helpers’. The theologically based methods of understanding, on the one hand, and the behavioural manifestations or attitudinal indices looked for in those who were becoming Christian, on the other, resulted in tensions and conflicts between missionaries and national helpers. One could say that Berlin missionaries were empathetic to things African in their methods of understanding, but prussocentric to things Christian in their delegation of responsibilities. This article reviews the variable emphases of the mission director Wangemanns and his son-in-law Winters theology and shows how their theological predilections played into the church independence process in the larger context of competition from numerous little charismatic movements started by, especially, Black Wesleyans.

Links and Parallels between Black and White Charismatic Churches in South Africa and the States: Potential for Cultural Transformation

In the study of early and late twentieth century South African independent churches, a rigid differentiation is usually made between African and European charismatic movements and independent churches. This paper rejects such a simplistic view and argues, instead, that there are important historical links between recent White and older Black charismatic movements and independent churches. More importantly, the parallels between them have to do with processes of formation which are based on the use of common core symbols of transition from the Old Testament and on similar spiritual experiences which are seen to confirm Biblical texts and to be confirmed by them. Charismatic movements have arisen among Blacks and Whites, rich and poor and have tended to achieve personal and group transformations through prophecy, vision, music, and worship.

Marriage, descent and kinship: on the differential primacy of institutions in Luapula (Zambia) and Longana (New Hebrides)

In this paper we examine the differential implications of kinship practices and specifically Crow kinship terminology for two societies one African the other Oceanic. The comparison is undertaken for the following reason. Keesing (1970:765) suggested that the gulf between the way he conceptualized the Kwaio system and the way Fortes (1969) and Goody (1973) conceptualized the African systems may well be far wider than the gulf between what the Kwaio and Africans do. And if the gulf is generated more by the models than by the facts we had better look very carefully at the models. The question arises therefore whether classic African descent models are different from Oceanic kinship models because the anthropologists are following different intellectual traditions or whether these two sets of models are different because they reflect a very real difference in the institutional make-up of African and Oceanic societies? (excerpt)

Matriliny and capitalism: The development of incipient classes in Luapula, Zambia

ConclusionQuestions of the following sort have been raised throughout the 1960s and 70s: What factors contribute to the process of underdevelopment? The answer generally is surplus drain. Frank visualizes this drainage as “a whole chain of metropolites and satellites, which runs from the world metropolis down to the hacienda or rural merchant who are satellites of the local commercial metropolitan centre but who in their turn have peasants as their satellites” [34].Arrighi and Saul [35] argue that production potential and structural transformation are constrained by surplus drainage because (1) profits of overseas firms are repatriated, (2) too much surplus is consumed by a self-indulgent labor aristocracy and by bureaucratic elites, and (3) the generation of a large surplus from the peasantry is discouraged. They further declare that two problems have to be tackled if growth of productivity among agrarian laborers is to be promoted: (1) incentives must be created to exploit surplus land and labor-time more intensely; (2) the productive absorption of surplus has to be raised by creating a type of organization of production and institutions in the traditional sectors which would guarantee the desired response [36].From the perspective of researchers covertly situated in rural areas neither these statements of problems nor the solutions are incisive. The difficulty one has with Franks formulation is that “he tends to deal with the problem from the point of view of commodity exchange rather than production relations” [37].As for Arrighi and Saul, my Luapula studies indicate that: (1) Land and especially labortime is already “intensely” exploited (though the former not necessarily by men). Land and labor are used in a manner to maximize rural profits within the constraints of specific rural distributive and production relations. (2) Not being furthered, however, are institutions which would rationalize both the distribution of initial endowments and the relations of production. Certainly, institutional modifications instigated by rural dwellers themselves are not granted party or government support.There are at least two good reasons why some Luapulans are “capitalistic” and productively individualistic in their orientation:1.Land is, in fact, controlled and worked by women. Therefore, throughout most of their productive lives a large percentage of men are landless proletarians or capitalists. They are employed as contract workers to do repairs, to build, work someones land, or drive lorries; otherwise, they trade fish, flour, sugar and imported items up and down the valley or from stores which they own. Matrilineal inheritance discourages economic ties between spouses and hence investment in family enterprises.2.As fishermen, shifting cultivators, and traders the Luapula population is mobile and not tied to the land. Nor is land scarce. To create a more or less independent peasantry, or communes in this socio-environmental setting is rather unreal, for as Goody remarks [38] “unfree tenancies mean little unless land is highly valued and the peasantry has nowhere else to go.” Finally, I should note that taking all the factors I have considered into account, class contradictions which are emerging in Luapula, are quite complex and not yet, in themselves, a dynamic force. To be considered a force for social change other variables must be taken into account, for example, the availability of an alternative (to matriliny) ideology which clarifies programs for the allocation and distribution of wealth.Furthermore, the initiative to make those contradictions significant for social change may not come from the poor (or the proletariat) but from those who are gaining material well-being in new ways. The poor, provided the society is relatively open (as is matriliny by way of its kin obligations and inheritance), may well be primarily concerned to ascend to the existing priveleged class (of capitalists). They will then exchange their subordinate but adoptable ideology for the dominant one, rather than press for a revolutionary transformation of society at large.Certainly in Luapula it is the wealthier matrilinealists who are intent on changing ideology, laws, and institutions. The rural poor astraddle the fence. As noted, they cling to their old ideology to provide security, at the same time that they hope it will propel them into capitalistic ventures. Should they fail, matriliny cushions their fall, and so the social formation reproduces itself. Thus it becomes doubly significant for us to examine how the “wealthier” in a particular society cope with structural contradictions in the light of emerging socio-economic pressures.