In “Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street,” Caren & Gaby (2011) propose that “Facebook is potentially less relevant to the Occupy movement than to other movements, and is likely to become less relevant as the movement develops.” Although Caren & Gaby call members of Facebook groups online “occupiers” and refer to their activity as “Occupying Facebook” they frame the activity in terms of how Occupy Wall Street is “using Facebook” rather than how the movement exists on Facebook. Arguing that the movement priveleges face-to-face contact, Caren & Gaby list the following ways that OWS uses Facebook:

• a recruiting tool for bringing in new supporters and getting people to events
• a medium for compiling and sharing relevant news stories
• requests for resources
• a space for telling narratives or retelling the experiences of other movement participants
• a medium for instant communication between geographically separated groups within the movement
• a wide range of additional activity

Although this list encompasses most of the activities that occupiers engage in while occupying physical space, the paper frames the activities as dependent on the physical occupation and ignores the creative potential of the occupation in cyberspace. The paper frames the movement as existing in physical space and using online media to spread a message that is primarily produced on the ground in physical occupations. Arguing that the movement is made unique by its “sustained visibility” the paper frames the occupation as “primarily an off-line activity.”

Guest blogging about their paper, the authors write that participation on Facebook serves to “facilitate the creation of local encampments.” This analysis acts to erase the roles of the wide and deep online movement that was responsible for the initial call to occupy Wall Street and that continues to function as an integral part of the core movement. In some cases the online movement is more substantial than the physical occupation. In other cases, online activity is integrated into the occupations day-to-day business in a way that is seamless for participants and invisible to observers who are not participants. An obvious and simple example are the constant exchange of decision-making email discussions that occur between members of the working groups at Occupy Wall Street. Although the physical occupation appears as a non-hierarchical, leaderless movement in the physical performance of the General Assembly and the discourse used by participants – activity online often betrays this notion and reveals a smaller core group of individuals who are engaged in administrative activity behind the scenes. This is true of the working groups that I have been engaged with and the conversations among working group “administrators” that I am regularly witness to.

In the Occupy movement more broadly, many communities that do not have a physical occupation do have an online occupation, and they are “occupying” their nation or city within their occupation of cyberspace. The question remains, how are the online and off-line movements engaging with one another – is there a division? Does the fact that in some locations the occupation is entirely online suggest that the occupation of cyberspace might matter as much as the occupation of physical space?

On October 17th, 2011 Anita Rachman of the Jakarta Globe published an article with the headline “Occupy Jakarta? We Might if We Knew We Were Being Invited.” In the article, Rachman suggests that the lack of events organized by a Facebook group called “Occupy Jakarta” demonstrates there is no “real” Occupy movement in Jakarta. Writing about #OccupyWallStreet (OWS) one week later, David Harvey referred to the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt as proof that “it is bodies on the street and in the squares not the babble of sentiments on Twitter or Facebook that really matter.” What “really matters” for Rachman and Harvey is which space the occupiers occupy. For them physical space matters, cyberspace does not. But what “matters” to participants in the Occupy movement? And what constitutes an occupation for them?

2,000 families are estimated to live at Bantar Gebang, Indonesia’s largest trash dump. In this photo, women who live in this community are praying at the end of Ramadan.

Photograph: Javaz Tizmaghz, the Guardian

In an interesting example of a court ruling against the statute of limitations argument for a colonial era compensation case, The Hague civil court has ruled that the Dutch government should compensate the widows of villagers who were killed in the 1947 Rawagede massacre.

via the Guardian

As the attempted eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm seemed more likely, claims surfaced in the media that the Travellers themselves had left and that only “activists” were remaining at Dale Farm. Reporting for the Guardian from inside Dale Farm, John Bingham wrote “The girls are angered at suggestions in the media that there are no travellers inside, only activists. ‘We’re more than grateful, says one.’We’re all activists,’ adds another.”

This call for support was posted on the Dale Farm Travellers blog: “Today, we are witnessing the beginning of a new solidarity movement, with settled people standing up with Gypsies, Travellers and Roma to help fight for their rights.” The Travellers blog lists SMS alert system, a legal hotline, a twitter account, a link for donations and a “welcome pack” for activists available as a Microsoft Word Document, a PDF and the free and open source OpenDocument format. The welcome pack is a 16 page document covering the political and legal context, cultural sensitivity and other topics. The following background information is excerpted from the welcome pack:

“Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers have been held to be ‘ethnic’ groups for the purpose of the Race Relations Act (RRA) 1976. In CRE v Dutton,1 the Court of Appeal found that Romani Gypsies were a minority with a long, shared history, a common geographical origin and a cultural tradition of their own. In O’Leary v Allied Domecq,2 HHJ Goldstein reached a similar decision in respect of Irish Travellers. Although a county court judgment, it should be noted that, in Northern Ireland, Irish Travellers are explicitly protected from discrimination under Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 article 5…” (9)

“In 2004, Trevor Phillips, former Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and now Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), compared the situation of Gypsies and Travellers living in Great Britain to that of black people living in the American Deep South in the 1950s.” (9)

“Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers have been held to be ‘ethnic’ groups for the purpose of the Race Relations Act (RRA) 1976. In CRE v Dutton,1 the Court of Appeal found that Romani Gypsies were a minority with a long, shared history, a common geographical origin and a cultural tradition of their own. In O’Leary v Allied Domecq,2 HHJ Goldstein reached a similar decision in respect of Irish Travellers. Although a county court judgment, it should be noted that, in Northern Ireland, Irish Travellers are explicitly protected from discrimination under Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 article 5…” (9)

Comments on The Guardian’s Live Blog posted during coverage of the Eviction event on September 19, 2011 reveal a range of reactions to both the legal question of whether the Travellers have a right to live on or build on the land, but more importantly uncover the range of racial/ethnic and cultural prejudice against them.

A reader using the name “today12” wrote:

“I grew up in Crays Hill and attended the local school, which now has the 2nd worst attendance record in the UK and the worst sats results. Out of the 110 pupils, 107 of them are ‘travellers’. Many of them too are also abusive, antisocial, messy and once set a car on fire and pelted the firemen when they arrived. There has been a shooting murder on the site because of traveller rivalry. I do wish their supporters would consider the lives of the local residents. Many Crays Hill residents are afraid to speak out because of retribution; not because they support the travellers. Also there are many more sites they can live on in the Basildon area, it’s on the council’s website, but they are just ungrateful and what to cause trouble.”

A reader using the name “Essexfella” wrote:

“As a local I can tell you all that the opinion of the majority in the area is that they should not be there. Local people have been fighting for this for 10 years. Yes they own the land but it has no permission to build.

If you want land in Essex that can be built on, you pay more for it. Why should any part of our community buy cheap land and then flout the planning laws?”

On the Dale Farm Traveller’s blog, racist comments include:

Posted by “Craig Compton”:

“by by pikies, by by scum.

by by pikies, your time has finally come.”

Posted by “Jennifer Cooper”:

“it will be a good day tomorrow when the whole lot of you scrounging pikeys are evicted.”

“i would be very happy to call any of these filthy low life pikeys and a few others things to their faces. enjoy your last evening, the bailiffs are coming to move you the gypos tomorrow. wish i could come a watch. just think this time tomorrow you will be enjoying your next squat spoiling the countryside somewhere else.”

Posted by “Zoey”:

“Muppet. Blame the government because a bunch of scroungers try and pass themselves off as Roma? maybe we should sue you for all the money the scroungers have siphoned off the taxpayer. Eh? How bout that??

Fire up those bulldozers soon Constant and co.”

One anonymous commenter repeatedly posted excerpts from an article appearing in The Daily Mail on September 17th, 2011 titled “Travellers’ real homes are back in Ireland and they will NOT be ‘homeless nomads’ if they are evicted.” The article  describes homes in Ireland owned by some of the applicants named in the petitions to allow residents to remain on Dale Farm. The article uses “evidence” of home ownership and financial resources to refute the claim that the residents of Dale Farm would have nowhere to go were they evicted.  The homes mentioned are in Rathkeale, Ireland.

The Telegraph reports, in a photo caption “The unofficial portion of Dale Farm is exclusively occupied by members of the Irish Traveller community, whose cultural roots are in the town of Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland.”

Several commenters on the Travellers blog referred to the case earlier in the month of forced laborers rescued from another Traveller site. One commenter, responding to a question about why 90% of Gypsy and Traveller land use planning applications are rejected asked “Do you condone slavery then?” implying that supporting the rights of the Travellers at Dale Farm meant supporting slavery and forced labor Police claim to have found at another Traveller site. Another anonymous commenter challenged the authenticity of the Travellers’ identity and the use of the discourse of ethnic cleansing: “The people at Dale farm are not real gypsies or romani. How can you compare the eviction to Ethnic cleansing?”

According to reporting by Alexandra Topping, John Baron, MP for Basildon and Billericay, supported  the decision to evict, stating: “I believe we have the moral high ground; everybody has to obey the rules . . . People talk about human rights for minorities, but what we shouldn’t forget is that the majority have human rights too and we are putting that into practice.”

This post represents the beginning of some research I’m doing on the Irish Traveller community at Dale Farm. The working title is “When Nomads Fight To Stay: Land Zoning, Globalized Activism and Forceable Eviction at Dale Farm”

On July 4th, 2011, decades of legal battles came to a head with an eviction order for around seven acres of land in the Dale Farm community, in Essex county England, UK. After the courts ruled that they had settled there illegally, around 400 nomadic Irish Travellers were ordered to leave by August 31, 2011 or face demolition of their homes and property. The part of the settlement in question is described by local authorities as “unauthorized” in contrast to the neighboring and contiguous portion of the farm that is considered “authorized.” The land is classified or zoned as “green belt” and development has occurred without “planning permission.” However, all land in question was owned by Traveller, Romani and Gypsy families, however the seven acres in question, the county claims, were not zoned for residential construction.

Travellers, activists and supporters of the residents have deployed the discourse of “ethnic cleansing” to refer to the eviction. Activists and NGOs are asking not only for housing for the Travellers, but “culturally appropriate” housing. The local government (Basildon Council) is estimated to be prepared to spend 18 million pounds (about 30 million dollars) to evict and demolish the property. In September, 2011 Security forces constructed a compound outside Dale Farm from which to plan and coordinate the eviction.

“…modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system” (Agamben 2005:2)

What’s happening here at the intersection of racism, prejudice and land zoning? How are zoning restrictions being used to enact exclusion of these nomadic people? How does international law speak to these issues? Are the travelers de facto stateless people, or UK citizens who also live in a legal grey area due to their nomadic tradition, lifestyle and reaction to those facts?

The former owner of the land, Ray Bocking, a scrapyard dealer sold the land to the travellers in 2001. He is interviewed, the video is available on YouTube. Prior to the Traveller residence, the land was mostly concrete and was used as a scrapyard. However, the Basildon council argues that they the land is “greenbelt.” Constant & Co. have been hired as the bailiffs in this matter. The following text appears on the Constant & Co. web site under “Enforcement Services,” in the submenu “Travellers & Squatters”:

Travellers

Constant & Company are employed nationally on a daily basis to recover possession of land from unwanted trespassers. We believe we are the most experienced, professional and busiest company in this type of work.

Court proceedings involve delay that can be extremely expensive. An occupation over several weeks at a trading site or shopping mall can result in a disastrous loss of business, but there is a fast alternative course of action that we utilise regularly and very successfully for many high-profile clients. Our bailiffs take legal possession of an occupied site usually within 24 to 48 hours of being instructed. Police are informed and called upon as necessary. We arrange attendance of tow trucks and cleansing contractors if needed.

Maybe your property has recently been occupied and has now been vacated. You may be thinking about clean-up services, temporary site security and/or concrete barriers quickly to prevent it happening again? We are your ‘one-stop shop’ and can provide a tailored, cost effective solution through our carefully selected partners.

A telephone call will initiate the process.

On August 5, 2011, Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing said “Evictions constitute a grave breach of human rights if not carried out with full respect for international standards…We urge the UK authorities to halt the evictions process and to pursue negotiations with the residents until an acceptable agreement for relocation is reached in full conformity with international human rights obligations.”

UN-HABITAT responded to inquiries from the press on September 14, 2011 stating: “ We do not promote nor advocate forced evictions. We recognise and promote the progressive and full realization of the right to adequate housing as articulated in international instruments and the Habitat Agenda. We understand that resettlement may at times be an inevitable part of urban development.” However, in “cases where resettlement is inevitable as a result of all other alternatives and options having been exhausted” the statement calls on parties to “follow due process.” According to the statement, due process means: “a. timely information and sufficient communication to the affected population; b. participation and involvement of those affected; c. adequate compensation; d. alternative adequate housing; e. follow-up post-resettlement to ensure livelihood and economic development.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has offered to enter the negotiations however the offer was rejected by the UK government. Expressing concern for further consequences of the forced eviction, Jan Jarab, the European representative for UNHCR said “It is actually very symbolic, this is the largest Irish Traveller site in the UK and it sends the message across the UK and also across the European Union that the Government is putting its weight behind an eviction based approach.”

September 19th, just before evictions were about to proceed, at 4:46pm, The Guardian reported (via the Press Association) that residents were granted a “last-gasp injunction restraining Basildon council from clearing structures from the site pending a further hearing at London’s high court on Friday.” The Telegraph reported that Justice Edwards-Stuart of London High Court “directed that Basildon should serve a schedule on the residents by noon tomorrow specifying what enforcement measures were proposed on a plot-by-plot basis” and that “residents were to take reasonable steps to permit council officials onsite to discuss arrangements with individuals, to discourage any further student protest, and to procure the dismantling of barricades”

In response the Dale Farm Travellers blog posted: Dale Farm resident, Kathleen McCarthy said, ‘We still need somewhere to go, if we have to leave here. Today is a great victory, but we still need Basildon Council to approve a legal site for us.’

Alexandra Topping for the Guardian wrote: Asked if the council would keep moving the Dale Farm Travellers on, he said they would not be allowed to settle elsewhere in the area: ‘We will keep on moving them until they find a proper site.’

Bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of exception. University of Chicago Press.

This is a screen shot taken of the Familyradio.com web site today. Harold Camping, a preacher and radio broadcaster in Oakland, California had predicted that 6pm local time today, May 21, 2011, the Rapture would begin across the world. This idea of a “rapture” or a “rising” comes from a passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 where Paul speaks of the return of Jesus:

According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Camping’s followers have been spreading the word, handing out fliers and bibles and holding signs in cities across the U.S. over the last few weeks, and have even taken out advertisements in the New York City Subway system. The subway ads (the Guardian reports) were paid for by ex MTA worker Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent his $140,000 life savings to cover bus shelters and subway cars with advertisements warning New Yorkers of the end times.

It would appear that 6pm local time has now come and gone in many parts of the world, although here in New York City, we’re still counting down, with less than 5 hours to go. And at familyradio.com, they’re still broadcasting.

My reaction to finding this article, in which neighbors complain about an Amateur radio operators antenna, was to remember how important Amateur Radio is. Amateur Radio operators (known to one another as Hams) continue to provide the only long distance rapid communication in and out of regions on public, open airwaves during revolutions, disasters, military crack-downs, etc. when totalitarian governments or military coups have attempted to stop all other forms communication by blocking telephones and internet.

Autocratic regimes now seem to be able to easily shut down cyberinfrastructure  entirely and in short order, as evidenced from the cases in Burma, China and Egypt.  However, in most of these cases Ham Radio operators serve as a remaining link in and out of the closed borders – routing information, not necesssarily via morse code (though some do) but through voice communication and the exchange of call signs.

Ham radio crosses geopolitical borders and boundaries easily and regularly.  I grew up around it because my dad is an operator, and as a kid, the hundred foot antenna over our house was the object of much speculation by neighbors. But this tower allowed him to talk to people all over the world, freely, long before the internet. And as a kid I would sit in his station and scan the dials listening carefully for the codes, “dits and dahs” of morse code, the time broadcasts and chatter across the airwaves, and even got to hear the radio communication between NASA and the space shuttle.  Hams call out “CW…CW…” seeking contact with other Hams across the globe not to annoy neighbors, but to maintain free communication over the commons of the airwaves.

(my father and other operators at their Amateur radio station)

Catholic News Service reports on the release of “Confession,” an iOS app that walks users through confession.  And once they’ve confessed, the sins are “erased”:

“Once you go to confession, all that information is wiped out,” said Kreager. “All it’s going to remember is personal data like your name, age and date of last confession.”

It would appear that 1980 was the year…

Run your own Books Ngram here.

There are two kinds of offworld anthropology: Near Distance and Long Distance. With typical Earth-centrism, the “distance” is measured in light years from the Blue Marble. Try explaining to a Gorgolian that he’s “Long Distance” when you’re on his doorstep.

At least Gorgolians won’t spit in your face when you try to interview them about the meaning of bio-zeppelin design in their culture.  Read more…

(via Savage Minds)

In The Hacker Ethic, Pekka Himanen argues that the hacker community’s values are a “general social challenge” which include “the goal of getting everybody to participate in the network and to benefit from it, to feel responsible for longer term consequences of the network society, and to directly help those who have been left on the margins of survival” (Himanen, 2001).

In the case of WikiLeaks, hacker-activists (organizing under the broad and decentralized social movement known as Anonymous) are emerging as hacktivist heroes coming to the defense of free speech, public cyberspace and an open internet. In the same moment the sequel to Tron is about to premier, cyberactivism is front and center in the media, discussions online and global government actions and policy debates. The hacktivists responding to WikiLeaks share at least one goal with the heroes of Tron: a “free system.”

…the radical nature of general hackerism consists of its proposing an alternative spirit for the network society – a spirit that finally questions the dominant Protestant ethic. In this context we find the only sense in which all hackers are really crackers: they are trying to crack the locks of the iron cage. (Himanen, 2001)

In Tron, religion is both a belief in Users, the humans who write programs, and also the struggle for a “free system.” The belief in Users comes up in a discussion between a program named Crom and one of the guards who is about to force Crom into the equivalent of a gladiatorial contest:

Crom: Look. This… is all a mistake. I’m just a compound interest program. I work at a savings and loan! I can’t play these video games!

Guard: Sure you can, pal. Look like a natural athlete if I ever saw one.

Crom: Who, me? Are you kidding? No, I run to check on T-bill rates, I get outta breath. Hey, look, you guys are gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, very angry. He’s a full-branch manager.

Guard: Great. Another religious nut. [pushes Crom into the holding cell]

After he’s in the cell, the conversation about Users continues with a fellow prisoner:

Ram: I’d say “Welcome Friend”. But not here. Not like this.

Crom: I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

Ram: Do you believe in the Users?

Crom: Sure I do. If I don’t have a User, then who wrote me?

Ram: That’s what you’re doing down here. You really think the users are still there?

The living programs in this computer-world are pressured, through a program of domination and oppression by the military forces of the Master Control Program, to renounce belief in the Users (and therefore also in the possibility of a free system). Their belief  is called “superstitious and hysterical,” they are tortured, forced to fight one another and eventually killed (de-rezzed). We can see parallels with early Christians here, imprisoned by Romans and waiting to be sent into The Colosseum.

Of course, they are also the resistance movements in WWII Europe, the IRA, the PLO, the American revolutionaries of the 13 colonies and the American socialists of the 1930s and the radicals in Seattle in 1999, and the Central and South American freedom fighters, etc.  They are archetypal resistance fighters in the struggle against oppression, occupation and domination. The forces of domination claim their resistance is about superstitious belief in Users, but this isn’t the depth of their belief. Their cause is religious because it is about their belief in a possible better world, it is what Tillich called “ultimate concern” and what Dewey called “our common faith.”

The humans/Users also debate the religious nature of their programming work – for example this conversation between Dillinger, an evil CEO who has taken control of the corporation Encom and who is doing the bidding of the malicious Master Control Program (MCP) and Dr. Gibbs, one of the company founders and original programers:

Ed Dillinger: Encom isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore. We’re billing accounts in thirty different countries; new defense systems; we have one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment in existence.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: Oh, I know all that. [starts for the elevator] Sometimes I wish I were back in my garage.

Ed Dillinger: That can be arranged, Walter.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: [stops and turns back to Dillinger, visibly angry] That was uncalled for! You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it! And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer!

Ed Dillinger: Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore; it’s out of your hands now.

The “spirit” of Dr. Gibbs does exist inside the computer, in the form of the temple gaurdian Dumont who says they “keep me around in case one of them wants to deal with the other side.” Programs inside the system use his input-output tower to communicate with their users. It is, for them, a temple for access to the divine.

But the goal of commuicating with the users isn’t salvation, forgiveness or enlightenment, the goal of access to this divine communion is access to information.  The Master Control Program is a machine of governmentality, reproducing repression, controlling the lives of programs through censorship by preventing them from having access to communication with their Users. The MCP’s power comes from its ability to operate in secret and without oversight and it complains about the presence of Tron, saying:” I can’t afford to have an independent program monitoring me.” Tron is a threat because he is a conduit for free access to information. As Tron says:

My User has information that could… that could make this a free system again! No, really! You’d have programs lined up just to use this place (the input-output tower), and no MCP looking over your shoulder.

Information can “make this a free system again.” Kevin Flynn, the human/User protagonist of the film, is a hacker, a cyberactivist, he is a hacktivist. Flynn’s rallying cry in the film is echoed by the hackers who are organizing around a social movement in defense of an open and free internet: “Now for some real user power.”

References

Himanen, P., Castells, M. (2001). The Hacker Ethic, and the Spirit of the Information Age. New York: Random House.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has put volume 2 of their “Handbook” on the web.  This has already produced some interesting media content.  For example, the Huffington Post reports “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints takes no stand on drinking Coca-Cola.”  This suggests one of the immediate effects of making this document available is the conflation of the “document” with “the church” and therefore with “the religion” at least in this media source.  It is worth asking what the differences are between this textual “Handbook” and LDS faith as a “religion on the ground” in terms of how the faith is practiced by individuals and communities – and what kinds of variations exist between doctrinal ideology, practice, policy, the “Handbook” and lived religion.

Alexander Soucy explores how ”performances of authority, primarily through language, relate to the larger context of religious studies” noting that ”the tradition of the academic study of religion has historically been white, male, and biased toward textual traditions or the textual aspects within traditions“ (2009, p.352). Soucy suggests that by continuing this trend “we uncritically accept” and lend “authority to elite male modes of religious practice while either ignoring or devaluing practices associated with women or other marginalized groups” (Soucy 2009, p.352).

The LDS community inhabited by my childhood friends, for example, may not have had a “policy” on Coca-Cola, or caffeinated beverages, but the “Mormon” culture of the region practiced abstention from consumption of caffeine, in at least most cases.  And this abstention was linked, by practitioners to their faith.

Of course, this document does provide a vital resource for understanding the bureaucratic structures of the church and how the institution defines itself and its members in terms of titles, policies and practices.  For example, on which version or translation of the Bible to use, the handbook advises: “The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical translation is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations” (21.1.7).  The handbook also includes a section on the internet about which it says “When carefully used, the Internet can help coordinate the work of the Church, strengthen faith, and minister to the needs of others” (21.1.22).

The Table of Contents for the Handbook:

Introduction

1. Families and the Church in God’s Plan

2. Priesthood Principles

3. Leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ

4. The Ward Council

5. The Work of Salvation in the Ward and Stake

6. Welfare Principles and Leadership

7. Melchizedek Priesthood

8. Aaronic Priesthood

9. Relief Society

10. Young Women

11. Primary

12. Sunday School

13. Activities

14. Music

15. Stake Organization

16. Single Members

17. Uniformity and Adaptation

18. Meetings in the Church

19. Callings in the Church

20. Priesthood Ordinances and Blessings

21. Selected Church Policies and Guidelines

Appendix: List of Items Referenced

Index

References

Soucy, A. (2009). Language, Orthodoxy, and Performances of Authority in # Vietnamese Buddhism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, # lfp017.

As I browse publisher’s web sites for forthcoming volumes on religion, anthropology, sociology and other topics relevant to my research, I’m struck by one of the categories frequently used: Indigenous Religions.  Listed with categories for books on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Comparative Religions, etc. this Indigenous genre stands out.

The other genres are, for the most part, what have been historically called “World Religions.”  This category sometimes refers to the many “religions of the world” as in Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions” but usually it mean something more like “religions of the majority.”  Tomoko Masuzawa (University of Michigan, and currently a scholar at the IAS School of Social Science) problematizes the construction of this category in her book “The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism.”  The book has been waiting on my shelf for a careful reading but I’ve had a quick look at the introduction in which she notes “everybody, in effect, seems to know what ‘world religions’ means, more or less.”  Discussing the role of the phrase in the academy, she observes that the list of  world religions “almost invariably include Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism, and also typically count among their number Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto . . less typically but still very frequently included are Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Sikhism.”

Masuzawa argues that the demarcation between “Eastern” and “Western” religions is “articulated from the point of view of the European West.”  An observation that while seeming initially quite obvious, has a profound consequence when you consider, say, a Buddhist in California talking about their practice in an “Eastern religion” from a geographic position in which Asia lies directly to their West.  Of course, they might practice in a line that considers itself rooted more in Colorado than India. But clearly “Eastern” means something else here. Masuzawa proposes this positioning is rooted in the nineteenth-century origins of early linguistic studies (philology), which identified the “Semitic”, “Aryan” and “Oriental” languages as matching up with contemporaneous ”racialized notions of ethnic difference.”  Amazingly, these divisions persist in religious studies departments (and publishing houses), without much attention to their  basis in colonial logic.

And so, returning to the “Indigenous” question: with this oddly positioned binary of religious categories in hand, the academy categorizes everything else – whatever doesn’t fit in East or West – into “Indigenous” or “Tribal” religion.  This includes the “animism,” shamanism,” and any other practice once called “primitive religion.”  What do we make of the essentialism and universalism of this category? Certainly it persists in part because of the continued centering of Mircea Eliade (and Émile Durkheim, and others) in religious studies curricula.

After all, Eliadean methodology attempts to locate “original,” “archaic,” and “primary” religion in historical or existent “primitive man” and extrapolate a broader understanding of all religious belief and practice from the resulting monolithic construction. Eliade names this monolith “archaic religion” and his dialectic places it in opposition to the “highly evolved” religions.  I’ve been working on a critique of the Eliadean Community of Practice from linguistic anthropology, especially considering Joseph Errington‘s notion of a “Colonial Linguistics.” Reviewing the literature, I’ve found a range of critiques of Eliade which I’ll include here.

Previous critiques of Eliadeʼs dialectic of binary oppositions include feminist (Christ 1991, King 2002), postcolonial (Kehoe 1996, Bilimoria 2000, Joy 2001), theories of religion (Smart 1978, Alles 1988, Segal and Wiebe 1989), postmodern (Olson 1999, King 2002), and methodological (Leach 1966, Strenski 1973, Allen 1978, Werblowsky 1989).

In a feminist critique, Christ points to Eliadeʼs practice of giving grandiose names to male gods but referring only to unspecified (and lower-case) “goddesses” (1991:84) and draws attention to Eliadeʼs valorization of the “Indo- European” conquest over “sedentary populations,” a conquest Eliade compares to “carnivores hunting” (1991:88). Christ uncovers gendered features of Eliadeʼs discourse, the particular (female) versus the universal (male), and Eliadeʼs claim that hierarchical relations of the sexes are an essential characteristic (1991:93). Christ (1991:93) and King (2002:373) both argue that Eliadeʼs history of religion is flawed by its dualism and universalization of male experience.

In a postcolonial critique, Kehoe accuses Eliade of cultural imperialism and labels his “new humanism” as a “very old primitivism” (1996:377). Kehoe takes issue with Eliadeʼs labeling of contemporary societies “archaic” and his misrepresentation of those peoples (1996:383,384). Eliadeʼs primitivism, in Kehoeʼs view, is a “yearning to shed bourgeois clothing and partake” of the “archaic ecstasy” (1996:388). In Kehoeʼs reading, Eliade may lead an “inauthentic [life] of spurious culture” (Sapir 1924) but by constructing the “primitive shaman” he can reassure himself that “archaic ecstasy” is still possible (1996:38). Bilimoria (2000:171,198) and Joy (2001:177) both critique Elaideʼs binaries (true/false, transcendental/totemic, belief/myth, sacred/profane).

In a theories of religion critique, Smart proposes a “grammar of religion” to replace Eliadeʼs sacred/profane polarity (1978:176). Alles sees Eliadeʼs dialectic as a totality, and calls on Saidʼs (et al.) critique that totality is “an instrument of Western colonial domination and cultural imperialism” (1988: 115,117). Segal and Wiebe critique Eliadeʼs claim to the sui generis character of religious phenomena (1989:600).

Olsonʼs postmodern critique draws from Foucault (1967:189) to dispute Eliadeʼs assertion that history is a “body of facts” arguing that there is no untainted “primal” historical material (Olson 1999:360). Olson contrasts Eliadeʼs linear, hierarchical hermeneutics with Deleuze and Guattariʼs de-centered rhizomatics (Olson 1999:366,383). King is critical of Eliadeʼs “transcendental pretense of modernity” which she says universalizes thinking and attempts to impose that system on others (2002:371).

Leachʼs critique of Eliadeʼs methodology points out the use of “exotic ethnography” in order to construct Eliadeʼs notion of “archaic religion” (1966:279). Strenski criticizes Eliade for searching for “higher,” “trans-historical,” “primary,” “original” “prehistoric” meanings (1973:303-306). Strenski argues that Eliadean methodology makes religion “independent of culture” (1973:310). Allen argues that Eliade seeks an “invariant core,” an “essential meaning” of symbols (1978:273). Werblowsky critiques Eliade for finding commonality disparate non- western, non-modern experiences (a “paleolithic hunter and the Buddhist monk” for example) (1989:297).

All references can be found in my Critical Reading of Eliade bibliography.

Rand Paul, Libertarian candidate for Kentucky’s seat in the US Senate and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, is set to take office January 2011 to replace Jim Bunning. During the election campaign, an article in GQ magazine “revealed” that while an undergraduate at Baylor (the world’s largest Baptist university) he was a member of a “secret society” called the “NoZe Brotherhood.”

A fellow member of this “society,” John Green, said the group “aspired to blasphemy” in response to the schools dogmatic Baptist religiosity.  The president of the school at the time described them as “lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious.”  According to one informant, a female student who was Paul’s teammate on the swim team Paul and a fellow NoZe Brotherhood member kidnapped her:

“He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They’d been smoking pot.”

Paul and his friend then drove her into the country and stopped near a stream and forced her to engage in taboo religious acts.

“They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him . . . they blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’ At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no.”

Jack Conway‘s campaign took a literalist interpretation of parts of this story (at least for the purposes of the election), using the following image in advertising against Paul:

And during a debate, Conway attacked Paul saying:

“When is it ever a good idea to tie up a woman and ask her to kneel before a false idol, your god, which you call Aqua Buddha?”

Aside from the fascinating political questions (among them: does conway believe that? Is he calling him on his hypocrisy or calling him a ‘bad Christian’?), my first question was: what exactly is an Aqua Buddha? Paul, now senator-elect, hasn’t said much more than a statement from his campaign:

“During his time at Baylor, Dr. Paul competed on the swim team and was an active member of Young Conservatives of Texas.”

So, we’re left to try and piece together this “ritual,” and ask: was it a practical joke? a stunt? an act of violence or intimidation? or religious activity?  While it’s easy to dismiss it as a stunt, a discordian game in the face of the pervasive Baptist dogma of their school, the choice of words, actions and the way they’ve constructed this “idol” speaks to their religious experiences and beliefs in a way worth noting.

So what is an Aqua Buddha?  According to Conway’s ad above, it appears to be very literally, an aqua colored Buddha.  But the informant’s interpretation of their motivation suggests it was a stand-in for the “golden calf,” an idol constructed in the minds of these two young men to represent precisely what they were forbidden to worship: Nature, in the form of water, and a figure from a non-christian religion, the Buddha.  Read as such, and depending on the victims beliefs and the field of cultural and social factors involved, an act like this could be religious torture.  Imagine the story from a different angle: a young Buddhist woman kidnapped and dragged to a creek by two young men and then forced to proclaim her faith in Christ.

In this instance however, the victim (now a clinical psychologist) doesn’t make that claim saying instead: ”They never hurt me, they never did anything wrong, but the whole thing was kind of sadistic. They were messing with my mind. It was some kind of joke . .  I never saw Randy after that—for understandable reasons, I think.”

In the New Religious Movements email list (NRM_Scholars), a request for sources on “Religion and the Internet” brought some interesting responses.  I’ve collected the references offered by the wise community of researchers on that list, added my own and aggregated some from other lists to start a new bibliography on Religion, the Internet and Cyberspace.   The new bibliography joins the others under the Bibliographies tab above and I welcome your contributions to the list.

In what I have reason to believe is a new campaign from the Yes Men, a web site has launched announcing a free trade-in program for the iPhone 4cf, a new “conflict free iPhone.”  See my previous blog post about some of the ethical issues of the iPhone manufacturing process.  This new site is a brilliant example of cyberactivism following up on the spoofed New York Times print and web edition the Yes Men created in November 2008.  And, it’s been timed to occur on the same day as an Apple event that was advertised as “. . . Just Another Day. That You’ll Never Forget” which turned out to be an announcement earlier this afternoon that Apple is including the Beatles catalog in iTunes.  On the same day John Lennon, the counter-culture musician who penned and sang “Give Peace A Chance” is plastered across the Apple homepage, this site launches asking consumers to engage with manufacturers, mining companies and lawmakers. Today, from your iPhone, you can consider the connections between genocide and mineral sourcing for technology production, and then go over to iTunes and purchase “Come Together” for $1.29 (Timothy Leary’s campaign anthem in his California Governor’s race challenging Ronald Reagan in 1969).  The power of the Yes Men campaign comes from this mind-bending juxtaposition, and the way that experiencing these two announcements draws the user into consciousness about the modes of production without ever using the term or even mentioning capitalism.

The Conflict Free iPhone site mimics Apple’s web presence precisely, the layout and style are indistinguishable from a site Apple might produce.  The text claims that the “new iPhoneCF guarantees to all its customers the same high quality phone as the original iPhone 4 with the added bonus of taking you one step closer to a world without conflict.” And further reports that Apple has decided to ensure the minerals used in the production of their devices are not sourced from mines in Africa “under the control of rebel groups further fueling a conflict that has has killed more than 5,000,000 civilians.”  Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, has previously answered questions from consumers about the sourcing of minerals used to manufacture the iPhone, stating that “there is no way to be sure” about the source of minerals.

The site can be seen at http://apple-cf.com and the following slide show contains screen shots of the pages, in case they’re taken down by the cease and desist that I imagine Apple’s lawyers are sending out right now.

Under the “Do” page, the site offers 7 steps consumers can take: 1. hold the technology industry accountable by calling for a code of ethics in manufacturing; 2. engage in consumer education, ask questions; 3. take steps to enforce S. 2125: Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; 4. report violations of the law to the FBI; 5. perform citizen’s arrests of officials who are breaking the law; 6. perform citizen’s arrests of shareholders and officers of mining companies “implicated in pillaging the resources of the Congo and fueling the conflict in the Congo over the past 14 years”; and 7. support a class action lawsuit filed against a Canadian mining company.

The site was brought to my attention by a “press release” from “Apple” revealing the site as a hoax.  Another sharp example of the way the Yes Men frequently play both sides of the corporate vs. activist game, first acting as the corporation itself in making an announcement, posing as the company, and then posing again as the “real” company denying that the previous action was authentic.

Oversoul, Alex Gray, 1997

In the Fall 2010 issue of Anthropology of Consciousness, Marc Blainey looks at the “discord in the West between viewing psychoactive substances as either ‘hallucinogens’ or ‘entheogens’,” and makes the case for renewed interest in ethnometaphysics. His article has me thinking more about anthropologists produced by a (mostly) entheophobic culture looking at practices and people who are more entheophilic and the ways in which those biases against certain states of consciousness affect the ethnography.

Synchronistically, I recently wrestled with this issue in my review of  Lee Gilmore’s new ethnography, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. While Gilmore’s book is a beautifully written portrait of her experiences as an insider at the festival, she elected to exclude entheogens from the volume.  In this section of the review, I address one of the reasons Gilmore chose to exclude entheogens, namely that she does not engage in the practice herself:

Gilmore explores areas of inquiry in this ethnography that once fell outside her personal experience, but does not explain why she was unwilling to become a participant observer in the area of ritual entheogen use as she did in other experience-far arenas. In the introduction to this volume, she cites James Clifford in support of her reflexive ethnographic strategy (p. 12). Clifford critiques the authoritative voice of the ethnographer in his analysis of experience as an “effective guarantee of ethnographic authority” (The Predicament of Culture, 1988 & Writing Culture, 1986) and cautions against smoothing over informants’ many voices with the ethnographers own “monophonic authority” as narrator and interpreter. Through much of the ethnography, Gilmore is careful to avoid this problem by regularly quoting festival participants. However, we do not hear from participants on the question of entheogen use, and are instead left only with Gilmore’s voice assuring us that the practice is not relevant. (Oman-Reagan, 2010)

Reading Blainey’s article, I wonder if her choice to exclude entheogens might arise partly from her ethnometaphysical positioning. Perhaps this kind of exclusion of certain practices (almost taboo practices for some in ‘this’ culture) marks the work as closer to the entheophobic side of our culture that perceives psychedelic use as hallucinatory rather than revelatory or entheogenic.  Here’s a relevant section from Blainey:

As an example of the utility of ethnometaphysical analysis, I point to the question of why the earnest ritual ingestion of entheogens (psychoactive plant and chemical substances used as spiritual sacraments [Forte 1997]) is so widespread amongst ideologies that have been categorized (albeit problematically) as “shamanistic”? Following R. Gordon Wasson’s (1980: xv; Winkelman 2000:3) partition of cultures according to their keenness for or aversion to mushrooms (mycophiles and mycophobes respectively), I will term cultures with a dedication to entheogens as entheophilic, while those (like our own) that largely disdain the effects, calling them “hallucinogens,” are classified as entheophobic.

Perhaps the most fruitful classificatory venture with respect to the ethnometaphysical distinctions underlying entheophilic and entheophobic worldviews is the neurophenomenological model, which designates Euroamerican culture as monophasic while recognizing most other cultures as polyphasic (see Laughlin et al. 1992; Winkelman 2000:3). Winkelman (2000:25) identifies the neurophenomenological approach as a “structural monist perspective,” accounting for both physical (matter) and spiritual (mind) extremes, as well as pondering the interaction between them. In identifying the deeply ingrained disinclination of the standard Western enculturation process to esteem atypical forms of consciousness, monophasic logic arguably stems from a foundational view of the observer as merely a passive window looking out unidirectionally on an external materiality. This echoes Charles D. Laughlin’s (1999) characterization of Euroamerican culture as “materialist,” in that it is “primarily concerned with tracking external events while in the waking state.” Such a portrayal is quite similar to Benjamin Whorf’s (1941) model of the Standard Average European (SAE) worldview where the reification of externality relegates internal consciousness to the epiphenomenal domain of the “imaginary.” Regardless of the label used, one need simply consider the legal and religious norms of Western society where the only sanctioned psychoactive substances are coffee, nicotine, alcohol, and painkillers (aimed at lessening both physical and mental discomfort without prompting deep existential reflection). For the average Euroamerican, any suggestion that the external world’s integrity is to some extent reliant on the observer’s observing of it (such as with some esoteric corollaries of quantum mechanics or as is commonly experienced in altered states of consciousness) presents a grave threat to ideological norms. Hence, the popular disapproval of entheogenic experiences as “hallucinatory” invokes accustomed ethnometaphysical beliefs that routinely become defensive whenever the primacy of external reality is questioned in our culture. (Blainey, 2010)

The ethnometaphysical approach, Blainey writes, “avoids partialities towards any one ontological system.”  This strikes me as an approach that can be readily applied productively to ideas of being and consciousness within “our own” culture.  For example, in rave and dance music culture, entheogenic spirituality movements, ayahuasca centered  neo-shamanism and so on.  The ethnometaphysical approach can help to address the bias of the entheophobic culture that Blainey describes so perfectly:

In contrast to the dominance of dualism and physicalist monism in the West, I suggest that what we are dealing with when we consider the various accounts of both Westerners and non-Westerners who claim to have had beneficial experiences with entheogenic intoxication is a fondness for a metaphysics of mystical monism. For instance, the traditional stance of Western science with regard to entheogens has been to identify them as “hallucinogens” and their effects as “hallucinations,”—characterizations that disclose the dualist/physicalist inclinations of Western thought in general. This is furthered by the “objective” portrayals found in pharmacological volumes where the ingestion of “hallucinogenic” mushrooms containing the active compound psilocybin are said to cause “disturbances in thinking, illusions… and impaired ego functioning” (Julien 2005:612 emphasis added). (Blainey, 2010)

References

Blainey, M., 2010, Special Section: The Future of a Discipline: Considering the Ontological/Methodological Future of the Anthropology of Consciousness, Part II. Anthropology of Consciousness, 21: 113–138.

Oman-Reagan, M.P., 2010, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Lee Gilmore. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, Volume 1, Number 2, November 2010 , pp. 176-180

“Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe,” by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman, argues for a theory of everything built on biology, not physics.  Lanza writes “according to biocentrism, it’s us, the observer, who create space and time.”  On the surface, Lanza appears to be applying the post-modern turn to the traditional empirical methods of positivist sciences.  It would seem he’s calling for these “hard” sciences to adopt a centering of the observer, that focus on positionality we find in contemporary approaches to interpretation in the social sciences.

Lanza privileges life and consciousness over physics and takes on the “big questions” that we all ask when presented with the current view of the universe: What was there before the big bang? and  What’s past the edge of the universe?  Lanza’s work is also taking sides in an old debate between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein about whether there is a “reality” external to our observation and perception.  Einstein said yes, Bohr said:

When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it.

Lanza is challenging some of the fundamental ideas of current science, ideas that have (in my view) become scientific dogma.  And as a result it would appear that he’s (perhaps unintentionally) building an understanding of the universe wherein science, consciousness, religion, physics and perception are at home together.  And unlike the theories that only attempt to resolve against scientific dogma, one that takes consciousness and culture into consideration would truly be a theory of everything. The most profound conclusion of his theory is that life is not a product of the physical processes of the universe, but quite the opposite: that life creates the universe.

Wikipedia’s summary of the main points of Biocentrism:

1. What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.
2. Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.
3. The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.
4. Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.
5. The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.
6. Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.
7. Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

Some data to share from the site statistics over the last month. Usually, an English language website will have the US, UK and Canada as the top three countries of origin for visits. For some reason, Kenya is currently number two for this site between the US and UK. The visitors are mostly from Nairobi and are spending a fair amount of time on the site, with a few visits from Eldoret as well. I do peripherally know someone who is doing fieldwork in Kenya, perhaps it’s related.

Otherwise, most of the site visitors come from the USA, and the majority of those are in New York, California, Oregon and Washington.

Here are the key words that are bringing readers to the site, the second to the last is my favorite:

exoanthropology, religion and technology, information technology and religion, mor anthropology, jenna tiitsman, religion and information technology, religion technology, cyberculture film, effects of information technology on religion, information system and religion, information technology in religion, information technology religion, mesopotamia technology, new age religion and technology, pope vehicle, “second life” best shapes, “two types of religions” rituals, abolitionism, ancient egypt river of death, apple lion vlaams belong, apple the new religion social research, auto complete algorithm, autocomplete google algorithm manipulate, autocomplete religion venn diagram. bodies of water in mesopotamia, bruno latour religion ritual, buddhist and technology, bureaucratic foxconn, can sun make the river death, captain kirk religion technology, castells the rise of the network society, charmed tv show embedded witchcraft, contemporary christian architecture, copenhagen finger plan, craig howe lakota, crossing over in ancient egypt, crossing river after death, cybercultures and ritual, cyborgism, earth becoming mars, effect of information technology on religion, effect of technology on religion and ethics, energy technology and religion, ethnography and religion, exoanthropologist, films that combine religion and technology, fish fillet sandwich, genesis and geography, get superhuman abilities, google autocomplete algorithm