The Pursuit Of Certainty: Religious And Cultural Formulations (the Uses Of Knowledge)

The Pursuit of Certainty The peoples of the world are now facing economic integration and social interaction on a wider scale than ever before. But has this produced a greater sense of common reason, or shared world citizenship? Contemporary global communication, itself celebrating diversity, has paradoxically stimulated local commitments to exclusive ethnic, cultural and religious identity. The chapters in this book explore the ways in which anthropology can throw light on these diverging new ‘certainties’, often possessive of place, bodily substance or cultural heritage and often claiming divine justification. The contributors are leading anthropologists from the world-wide Commonwealth, the UK and Europe. One is at present teaching in the USA, where several others have also held posts. They present a dozen original case studies which provide a valuable critical perspective on recent religious and ethno-cultural movements. Two chapters show how displaced African communities have had to reorient themselves to current definitions of politico-cultural identity (and an epilogue discusses the dilemma this concept poses for the Greeks, to whom we owe an older and more accommodating notion of civilization). An analysis of current discourse about ‘diversity’ in the influential setting of an American campus is followed by studies of the acceptance of a Pakistani Sufi cult in Britain, and of intensifying religious fundamentalism among Madras Christians, Israeli Jews and Malaysian Muslims. Concluding contributions focus on responses which the proselytizing religions have provoked within the complexities of traditional communities: they consider debates between Christians and Buddhists in Sri Lanka, ecumenical musings of the Yoruba diviners, and vernacular/Islamic interactions in Benin and off the East African coast. The Pursuit of Certainty is a convincing demonstration of anthropology’s relevance to the contemporary world and its turbulence. It offers ground-level insights into a growing global consensus about the primacy of cultural difference; into the shrill new certainties which are spreading in some areas—though being resisted in others; and into the ‘post-Enlightenment’ rise of religious justification in human affairs. Wendy James is University Lecturer in Social Anthropology and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. ASA Decennial Conference Series The Uses of Knowledge: Global and Local Relations Series editor: Marilyn Strathern Other books in the series: Worlds Apart Edited by Daniel Miller Shifting Contexts Edited by Marilyn Strathern Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge Edited by Richard Fardon What is Social Knowledge For? Edited by Henrietta Moore The Pursuit of Certainty Religious and Cultural Formulations Edited by Wendy James London and New York First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of