“The Inevitability of Religion”
Anthropologist Thomas Hauschild will be next “Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professor”
The renowned German social and cultural anthropologist Prof. Dr. Thomas Hauschild will assume the “Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professorship” at the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in the summer semester 2017. In a public lecture series in Münster, the scholar, a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, will focus on the “inevitability of religion”. After decades of increased secularisation, religions have such a great influence on politics again that, according to Hauschild, one has to ask whether human collectives can ultimately live without religion. Hauschild pleads for religious research that takes the subjective experience of religious believers seriously without abandoning scholarship’s neutral foundation.
The opening lecture on June, 26 is entitled “Kath’olos in Süditalien – Kirchliche und staatliche Politik im Stresstest der gelebten Religion (Kath'olos in Southern Italy – church and state politics under the stress test of lived religion)”. Two more lectures will follow, one on fetishism in colonial Melanesia and the artistic avant-garde of the early 20th century, and one on shamanism and neurobiology during the period preceding the revolutionary movements of 1848. The lectures will take place on Mondays between June, 26 and July, 10 2017, from 6.15 pm to 7.45 pm in the lecture building of the Cluster of Excellence, lecture hall JO 1, Johannisstraße 4 in Münster. During his stay at Münster, the academic will work on a book on apparitions and cults of spirits. His aim is to “balance the knowledge about the historically specific, social and political conditions of apparitions against the influence of rudimentary biological universals, that is, the ‘protrusion of a spiritual realm into our world’, as described for example by the German poet and physician Justinus Kerner.”
“Materialistic explanations for religion that include scientific and sociological arguments seem even more important today”, says Hauschild, “As they are increasingly unsettled by postmodern criticism and the self-assertive discourse of the protagonists of religions.” However, materialism should be able to co-exist with other religions within a state community “without too much friction”. “It is unclear whether this is possible, because civil society is increasingly occupied by the sensitivities of religions.”
“Source of inspiration for the research at the Cluster of Excellence”
The speaker of the Cluster of Excellence, sociologist of religion Prof. Dr. Detlef Pollack, emphasises that Thomas Hauschild is “an anthropologist with original ideas” and owing to his wide range of research interests he can “be a particular source of inspiration for the interdisciplinary research at the Cluster of Excellence”. The findings of his field research and historical analyses are of great interest for many subjects at the Cluster of Excellence. “This offers opportunities to walk new paths in academic thinking about religious forms of sense and practices.” Among the Blumenberg visiting professor's research focus areas are the inevitability of religions, cults of spirits, religious resources in imperial consumer societies and the religion of IS and Al Qaida terrorists.
Thomas Hauschild, born in Berlin in 1955, served as a professor for social and cultural anthropology at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. He is a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Science and Humanities. As a fellow or visiting professor he was active at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies at Vienna, Austria (IFK), the Institute for Advanced Study at Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg) and the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie at Weimar (IKKM). Thomas Hauschild has published numerous books, arousing academic and public interest, among them “Hexen” (Witches), “Der böse Blick” (The evil eye), “Magie und Macht in Italien” (English edition “Magic and Power in Italy”, 2010), “Ritual und Gewalt” (Ritual and Violence, 2008), and “Weihnachtsmann. Die wahre Geschichte” (Santa Claus – The True Story, 2012). Between 1982 and 2015, the former stipendiary of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung completed extended periods of residential research on religion and politics in the province of Basilicata (Southern Italy).
In the summer semester 2017, the Cluster of Excellence has for the first time appointed two Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professors: in addition to social and cultural anthropologist Prof. Dr. Thomas Hauschild from the University of Halle-Wittenberg, the renowned British sociologist of religion Prof. Dr. Linda Woodhead will contribute to the research association. In lectures and a workshop in Münster, she focuses on the world-wide growing number of so-called “nones”, people who are unaffiliated with any religion. (dak/vvm)