In What Is Religious Human Capital Fixed? Paul Firenze Special Lecturer in Philosophy Providence College

Transcription

1 In What Is Religious Human Capital Fixed? Paul Firenze Special Lecturer in Philosophy Providence College April 2013 Preliminary Daft Please do not circulate or cite without permission The title of this paper is in the form of a question because it is an inquiry into the concept of religious human capital, and does not provide anything like a settled answer regarding what exactly religious human capital is, or what it is fixed in. However, I will suggest that potentially important avenues for future study of religious human capital may be found by regarding religion as a form of embodied social practice which carries within it normative constraints which guide people toward valued ends. This approach to religion has the potential to influence our understanding of religious human capital insofar as it provides new insights into how the adjective religious ought to be applied to human capital. To begin, it is important to define religion and to see what is at stake in that definition. I. Defining Religion as Social Practice Although the issue is far from settled, there is increasing agreement among scholars of religion (or religionists, as many now prefer to be called) that substantive definitions of religion are preferable to functionalist definitions. In this regard, many of the seminal figures in the economic approach to religion have been on the right side of this debate. Laurence Iannaccone, for example, has defined religion as any shared set of beliefs, activities, and institutions premised upon faith in supernatural forces. 1 Rodney Stark and Roger Finke define 1 Laurence R. Iannacone, Introduction to the Economics of Religion, Journal of Economic Literature 36 (1998),

2 religion as very general explanations of existence, including terms of exchange with a god or gods. 2 And while these definitions have their own shortcomings, they are right to include as an important part of religion the substantive elements of gods and the supernatural. Many religionists have come to favor such substantive definitions because functionalist definitions, that is, those which say that religion can be identified by the social and/or psychological function/s it serves (for instance social cohesion or mental contentedness), these functionalist definitions find it difficult to say how it is religion specifically which is serving this function, and not some other phenomenon which produces similar effects. 3 But in trying to define the substance of religion, it will also be helpful to avoid looking for some kind of pure religion or a religious essence, which would imply that religion itself has some kind existence outside of human beings and their societies, a metaphysical claim which many religionists, leery of being considered secret theologians, wish to avoid. Instead, I will take what Kevin Schilbrack calls a critical realist perspective on religion, arguing that religion is a socially dependent fact which is ontologically subjective (it would not exist without human beings) but is epistemologically objective, and is therefore independent of the scholar who studies it, and independent of any individual s preferences or beliefs. 4 This epistemological objectivity prevents the scholar from claiming that just anything they wish can be fitted into a definition religion. And even though societies in other places and times may not have had the word or concept for religion that corresponds exactly to the way we have come to use it, this does not mean we cannot find things out there in the world that correspond to what we have come to recognize and define as religion in other words, religion is not a culturally relative 2 Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), See William A. Arnal, Definition, in Guide to the Study of Religion, eds. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (New York: Continuum, 2000), Kevin Schilbrack, Religions: Are There Any? Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78 (2010),

3 term, applicable only to the modern West. We can identify religion in the world because it takes the form of contingent social practices, and as it is performed it transforms bodies, which are the intersubjective ground of experience. 5 Religion is thus best studied within the larger web of social practices in which it is embedded. But what is the substance which distinguishes religious social practices from other kinds of social practices? Whatever is the substance of religion by which we come to define it, this substance or content should be capacious enough to accommodate a wide range of its historical and cultural manifestations, and yet it should be narrow enough not to allow in just anything anyone might want to consider religion, thereby rendering the definition useless due to its lack of discrimination. 6 When anything can be described as religion or religious, nothing can. Interestingly, one of the oldest social scientific attempts at defining religion has turned out to be one of the most useful. E.B. Tylor s substantive definition of religion as belief in spiritual beings, while it contains problematic words such as belief and spiritual which tie it too closely to Protestant conceptions of religion, does provide a good starting place by stressing the importance of non-human beings to religious practices. 7 So, following Stanley Stowers, I regard religion as variously linked social practices (involving arrangements of entities at sites) that carry understandings involving the existence and activity of gods, ancestors, and various normally unseen beings, and that shade off into other anthropomorphic interpretations of the world. 8 This rather dense definition, and its grounding in practice theory, requires a brief unpacking here. 5 Ibid., This is one criticism of many functionalist definitions, in that by arguing that religion is anything which performs a particular function in society, it is difficult to distinguish religion from, say, ideology. 7 E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London: Murray, 1871). 8 Stanley Stowers, The Ontology of Religion, in Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith, eds. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Equinox, 2008),

4 Insights from practice theory, in particular the work of philosopher Theodore Schatzki, allow religionists to talk about religion as having an ontology (as existing in the world), because social practices, including religion, are regarded as ontologically basic, as opposed to the way mind, individuals, or social wholes are considered basic to other forms of theorization. 9 When the particular shared understandings of a religious group take the form of practices (organized doings and sayings) which can be observed and explained (that is, redescribed by the scholar), religion can be seen to concern not simply the posited existence and activity of normally unseen beings, but also the posited interactions between humans and these beings. 10 These interactions make the difference between what we might describe as purely human endeavors and practices and religious ones. That is, they serve a function identifiable as religious because there is an effect, influence or difference made in that group or society by beings for which there are practices of identifying as religious. The substance of religion (human interactions with gods, etc.) thereby carries within it its own function, which may be quite different in different places and times, depending on the manner in which religion links to other practices within a particular place and time. So while religion will always have some social function, we cannot accurately say that religion is (just) its social function. In fact, it is normally better to avoid the contentious use of the word function altogether, with its mechanistic connotations, and instead to say that religion has certain verifiable social effects. For Schatzki, social practices (bundles of activities) occur at what he calls social sites, which are made up of human beings and non-human entities (chairs or gods), ordered in such a way that the human and non-human entities and their actions and arrangements relate, enjoy meaning (and identity), and are positioned with respect to one another. All social life exhibits, as 9 Ibid., For the importance of the practice redescription to the religionist see Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 4

5 a result, relatedness, meaning, and mutual positioning. 11 However, in this arrangement, meaning (the understandings carried in practices) cannot be said to come merely from an entity s subject position, as might be the case according to structuralist theories. Instead, rather than meaning deriving from difference, meaning arises from actuality: actual relations among entities, and what these entities actually do. 12 This is why what something is is, fundamentally, what it is understood to be. Understandings, moreover, are carried in social practices and expressed in the doings and sayings that compose practices. 13 Thus, specifically religious understandings are carried in the social practices of human interactions with gods, ancestors, non-obvious beings, etc. As a practice, then, religion has both substantive and functionalist elements. The substance of religion (religious practices) is the actuality of relations among the entities humans and gods, and the function (or rather, the social effect) of these practices is what these entities actually do as a part of these relations. Like Schilbrack s socially dependent facts, which include religion and are independent of any individual s beliefs or desires, the shared understandings of religious practices are out there in public space accessible in principle to anyone who has been properly socialized. 14 Individuals carry embodied versions of these practices as a part of their understandings of the practices. II. Embodiment and Religious Practices For some time, attention to embodiment has been a growing concern within the humanities and the social sciences, including the field of religious studies. This has been an important move for religious studies in particular in its attempts to break away from theology as an academic discipline. In particular, attention to the body has corrected the Protestant-style 11 Theodore R. Schatzki, The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), Ibid., 57; emphasis in original. 13 Ibid., Theodore R. Schatzki, A New Societist Social Ontology, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (2003),

6 tendency to equate religion with interiority and belief thus my earlier concern with Iannaccone s definition of religion as premised on faith in supernatural forces. 15 The religious subject is now being studied less for its beliefs or theological commitments and increasingly for the ways that religious practices are made manifest in bodies. This attention to embodiment has two trajectories, both of which have tended toward an increasingly empirical approach to religion. On the one hand, as mentioned above, a focus on embodied religious practices and their accompanying norms shifts the focus from the inaccessible, private religious experience of an a priori self, and toward the accessible, public religious practices of groups and the persons who comprise them. On the other hand, attention to the body shows how the individual body can be resistant to social conditioning, thus helping to undermine claims of cultural relativism and structuralism. 16 The body potentially provides accessibility and universality to the religionist. Focus on embodied practices grounds the object of study (the religious subject) in society and biology. In many ways this is a radical departure from what has been the focus of earlier scholars of religion, the figure now properly seen as an imaginative pattern of the Enlightenment : the individual. The figure that in an earlier time would have been called the soul, a (no longer necessarily immortal) will using an intellect. 17 If the body was considered at all, it was as the lesser/lower half of the Cartesian mind/body duality. Religion was seen as the realm in which the soul/intellect, with the aid of the will, attempted to master the recalcitrant flesh and reached toward truth, knowledge, and enlightenment. Here again, in some important ways, the economic approach to religion has found itself on the cutting edge of the study of religion, in particular in its opposition to so-called secularization theories of religion, which in 15 Constance M. Furey, Body, Society, and Subjectivity in Religious Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80 (2012), 8-9. Emphasis added to the Iannaccone quotation. 16 Furey, Mary Midgley, The Soul s Successors: Philosophy and the Body, in Religion and the Body, ed. Sarah Coakley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 54. 6

7 part have been based on the idea that as the rational, intellectual functions of religion are better served by other, more secular social institutions (like science, for example) religion will wane. The idea that religion is solely about rational beliefs which can be shaped and changed by the introduction of new value-neutral facts and logical arguments is not borne out by the fact that increasing secularization has not resulted in a diminution of religious participation (and for this observation the study of religion has the supply-side economic approach to thank). In other ways, however, the economic approach has been hampered by its commitments to this very same idea of the a priori self, unbound by social conditioning or the body, especially to the degree this approach is committed to methodological individualism, that is, to taking individuals as ontologically primary in its explanations. Now, methodological individualism can take the (individual) body into account, but this seems to come at the price of making that body s choices determined by biological forces, as opposed to its being determined by cultural conditioning. Alexander Rosenberg has suggested that preferences (the drivers of choice) can be considered stable only by making them a schedule of needs, and tying those needs to the biology of homo sapiens rather than to the subjective preferences of homo economicus. 18 I would not go as far as Rosenberg in his rather thoroughgoing biologizing of preferences, in particular because we can also see the accounting for preferences to be within the domain of cognitive science, which, as we will see below, shows that when value concepts are instantiated in the body via social practices, these values become constraining needs. However, the freely choosing subject constrained only by the logic of prior human/social capital investments cannot be found here. 18 Alexander Rosenberg, Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992),

8 Despite being ostensibly concerned with the material aspects of human life, the economic approach to religion can be burdened by its ontological commitments to a libertarian form of freedom as well as to a value monism (based in hedonism). While on the one hand this approach sees religious human capital as fixed in individuals, it might also discuss capital as a form of embodiment resulting from the social practices in which individuals are engaged. Human capital often seems to be regarded as a purely mental phenomenon, a matter of the brain work of education and beliefs. This seems to be a result of theoretical commitments: 1) to seeing all choices as rational (that is, formally logical, conscious, and dispassionate); and 2) to subjective preferences as stable and pre-given (not constituted by and then reformed as a part of engagement in social practices). By underplaying considerations of embodiment and its role in normativity, we miss dealing with the potential plurality of forms value can take, especially regarding potential forms of value experienced as intrinsic, and in doing so underestimate the importance of embodied social practices to normativity and to the variety of forms of rationality. One way to approach this apparent shortcoming might be to ask the same question of the concept of human capital that is being asked of religion in section one. That is, are we interested in giving a substantive or a functionalist account of human capital? If human capital is substantive, of what is it comprised? As in the discussion of religion in section one, whatever answer one might give does not guarantee that capital will make any difference until it can be shown how human capital works in different contexts. This leads to a potentially functionalist definition of human capital, which raises the question of whether the effects attributed to human capital are in fact attributable to it, and not to some other thing that has a similar function and produces similar outcomes. 8

9 A notion of human capital tied specifically to practices may be a way of overcoming this substantive/functionalist problem, as I argued that focusing on practices could do with the substantive/functionalist problem with religion. In fact, I want to suggest here that human capital is best seen as a form of embodied practice. Practices are plural in their ends and in their logic. The logic of the practice, what it makes sense to do in a particular case, will be contained within the practice itself. This is why it may not always make sense to maximize some good or state of affairs in a particular situation, while in others it might make perfect sense. If human capital can be thought of as being fixed in anything, I suggest it is best to think of human capital as fixed in particular practices, or rather, perhaps, to think of certain practices themselves as a kind of human capital, the produced means of production. III. In What Is Religious Human Capital Fixed? Bodies and Practices Research in the cognitive sciences is increasingly showing that what we have traditionally thought about the mind and its ability to reason are constrained by the brain s embodiment. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued, our faculty of reason itself is shaped by the body, and our conceptual systems become neurally instantiated in our brains, [meaning] we are not free to think just anything. 19 This instantiation of our reason and our concepts occurs as we engage in various practices which require reasoning and conceptualization. Certain ideals and values (and the reasons for pursuing them and the concepts by which they are understood) are embedded as the ends or goals of social practices, and these practices are then embodied by individuals who undertake these practices. The objectivity of these practices (that they are out there and available in the world) enables the cognitive agent simultaneously to take on these practices (to embody them) as a part of their own understandings, and at the 19 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 5. 9

10 same time to become an extended entity, one which can use these practices as efficient short cuts to production. Practices can thus be regarded as a way human beings off-load labor on to the world. This off-loading can be seen as a form of capital in that the practice is an analogous technology (or technique) for fulfilling particular ends and projects (for realizing particular ideals and values) in which the particular group or individual is engaged. 20 Nevertheless, this technique for producing human capital should not be equated with the view of capital as the conscious product of labor and waiting. 21 The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark argues that while evolution is constrained to build solutions gradually through a series of simpler but successful ancestral forms, an engineer starting from scratch might take a radically different approach to solving the problem. 22 From the engineer s ahistorical perspective, the biological solution currently in place may appear strange, and most likely will appear inefficient. The concept of human capital as the product of labor and waiting is, I would suggest, the attempt at starting from an ahistorical perspective on individual preferences (they are pre-given and stable over time) while still trying to account for the appearance of change through the purposeful and efficient production and consumption (implementation) of one s various forms of capital. But I would suggest that it is better to view capital formation as part of a practice which guides people toward particular valued ends. As the always already produced means of future production, human capital s value is found in its ability to help create future value through an already-existing (and therefore already normatively constrained) practice. However, to be constrained should not imply that these practices are determined, because the practices are taken on, embodied, and thereby given 20 See Andy Clark, Where Brain, Body, and World Collide, Daedelus (1998), Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics: An Introductory Volume, 8 th ed. (1890; London: Macmillan, 1920), Clark.,

11 particular, unique instantiations by individuals, which allow for modifications of the practices. This is how we are able to account for change. Returning now to religion, according to a practice theory approach to religion and human capital, human bodies (or at least parts of them) are the product of as well as the producers of religious goods. That is, human bodies are the produced means of production; human bodies are themselves, in part, religious human fixed capital. This should not sound too foreign to what I take to be traditional understandings of religious human capital. Like other forms of human capital identified by economist Gary Becker, religious human capital is necessary for both the production and consumption of particular religious goods. As the already produced means of future production, Religious capital is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of most religious activity. 23 What I am hoping to add to this conversation about religious human capital is that human bodies are not simply the producers of religious human capital, but they are the product as well. Here the words of economist Amartya Sen seem appropriate when he argues that the human capital approach should be supplemented by the human capabilities approach, because human beings are not merely means of production, but also the end of the exercise. 24 As the product of prior religious capital investments, humans embody religious goods. What makes them goods is manifested in the logic of the practices, what it makes sense to do in a particular situation, thereby giving practitioners reason to value them. These reasons are tied to practices and are understandable only within the context of these practices. So the question with which this paper will end is, what difference might it make to the empirical study of religious human capital if it is seen as embodied in persons as a result of their 23 Laurence R. Iannaccone, Household Production, Human Capital, and the Economics of Religion, in The New Economics of Human Behavior, eds. Mariano Tommasi and Kathryn Ierulli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 1999),

12 practices? In this understanding, religious human capital is not merely something one has, but is also something one is. The object of study (the religious subject) would not be a soul/intellect which accumulates and possesses capital, and relates to this capital as one might to other capital stock in one s portfolio, but would be a body which acts out of norms based in practices built on the interactions between humans and gods, ancestors, or other normally unseen beings. These interactions would include, but sometimes also go beyond, relationships of exchange between parties. These normally unseen beings might also serve as normative exemplars in a wide variety of ways, from paragons of physical beauty to just legislators, from courageous warriors to moral standard-bearers. These interactions could also take the form of gift giving by the god(s) (as in the Christian concept of grace) or by the human group (as a form of thanksgiving or piety). Once embodied and understood in these ways, religious human capital would be marked, perhaps even more strongly than it is now thought to be, by its inalienability and incommensurability, a result of its physical instantiation via practices which carry within them their own logics and their own understandings, understandings not only of what one has and what one wants, but what one is, and what one ought to do and to be. Bibliography Braun, Willi, and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds. Guide to the Study of Religion. New York: Continuum, Clark, Andy. Where Brain, Body and World Collide. Daedelus (1998): Furey, Constance M. Body, Society, and Subjectivity in Religious Studies. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80 (2012): Iannaccone, Laurence R. Household Production, Human Capital, and the Economics of Religion. In The New Economics of Human Behavior. Edited by Mariano Tommasi and Kathryn Ierulli. New York: Cambridge University Press,

13 . Introduction to the Economics of Religion. Journal of Economic Literature 36 (1998): Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics. 8 th Edition. New York: Macmillan, Midgley, Mary. The Soul s Successors: Philosophy and the Body. In Religion and the Body. Edited by Sarah Coakley. New York: Cambridge University Press, Rosenberg, Alexander. Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Schatzki, Theodore R. A New Societist Social Ontology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (2003): The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, Schilbrack, Kevin. Religions: Are There Any? Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78 (2010): Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor, Smith, Jonathan Z. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Stowers, Stanley. The Ontology of Religion. In Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. NewYork: Equinox, Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture. London: Murray,