Blind Spots in Cultural Psychology of Religion: Neutrality, Normativity, and Ontology
Blind spots have resulted in dimensions of human experience that were simply not "seen," or when seen, were not recognized as relevant for a fuller understanding of what it means to be human. Sexuality, religion, race, subjectivity, and gender were at one point unseen and then ‘discovered’...
| Published in: | Research in the social scientific study of religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2022
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| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Further subjects: | B
History of religion studies
B Religious sociology B Social sciences B Religionspsycholigie B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft B Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft & Religionswissenschaft |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Blind spots have resulted in dimensions of human experience that were simply not "seen," or when seen, were not recognized as relevant for a fuller understanding of what it means to be human. Sexuality, religion, race, subjectivity, and gender were at one point unseen and then ‘discovered’ by psychologists. This essay examines three forms of cultural and psychological blindness related to the field of psychology of religion. (a) The normative impact of culture on the psyche. A plethora of psychological processes (cognition, memory, perception, emotion, identity, and so on) reflect the impact of the culture in which we live our lives. After considerable research demonstrating the cultural context of psyche, it became apparent that the normative culture shaping the field of psychology was, in fact, the social force of Western, modernist values. b) For much of the past century psychology studied the religion of the abstracted, autonomous, unbounded individual on the assumption that to describe a single person was in reality to observe generic human identity and religiosity. In the past 30 years, however, we have discovered that at macro and micro levels how embedded spirituality is in cultures that co constitute our subjectivity. c) At a deeper level there is the blind spot identified by recent anthropological research. Ontological assumptions have blinded the researcher to the integrity of spirituality in exotic cultures. The result has been the marginalization of spiritualities deemed irrational. It is argued that this lack understanding of spirituality in local culture is, in part, because religious traditions in different local cultures are ontologically different. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004505315_020 |