I, stranger

I am reading a book written by Julia Kristeva, a French philosopher of Bulgarian descent. The book is called Strangers to Ourselves (Étrangers à nous-mêmes), and discusses the topic of ‘strangers’ – or ‘foreigners’ – in European history. Kristeva looks at the history of institutionalised xenophobia as well as cosmopolitanism, from the Hellenistic polis to the medieval feudal system to the modern nation state, and raises a number of important questions regarding citizenship, political rights, and belonging. Drawing on Freud's ideas of the individual subconsciousness, she argues that, ultimately, every single one of us is a stranger to her- or himself. According to Kristeva, a realisation of this existential alienation of the self may provide a basis for an inclusive ethics (and law) that no longer perceives the presence of foreigners as a potential threat, but rather as a reminder of the fact that, in the end, all of us are in the same boat. She writes:

Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. By recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself. A symptom that precisely turns ‘we’ into a problem, perhaps makes it impossible, the foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities.

The problem of classical multiculturalism, as represented by the works of Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor, is not that it is idealistic – there is nothing wrong with idealism in politics and political philosophy, as long as it does not turn into utopianism – nor that it challenges the narrow-mindedness of popular nationalism – which, arguably, is not challenged enough in contemporary political discourse. The problem is that it is too communitarian. That is, it reifies communities and minorities; it reduces individual actors to the ‘ethnic group’ or ‘subculture’ to which they supposedly belong; and by doing so, it denies ‘members of minority groups’ their individuality. However, as Kristeva makes clear, if we recognise the foreigner in ourselves, we realise that strangeness is fundamentally an individual, existential condition. The stranger has no real home, no real community. Minority communities do exist, but they are largely artificial constructions, made for political purposes such as legal recognition and economical support.

The Dutch language makes an interesting distinction between two types of ‘homeless’ people: those who do not have a place to live (daklozen, ‘roofless’) and those who do not have a place where they are at home (thuislozen). While a foreigner may have a place to live (i.e., he is not ‘roofless’), he will find it difficult to find a place where he can be at home. He may be one of those who say optimistically, ‘I can feel at home anywhere’, ‘I don’t care where I live, home is where the heart is’, but that comes down to the same thing: he has no physical place, no locale where he is at home. The former homeland, provided there has been any, has long ceased to be ‘home’; the new land, however, will always remain a mystery somehow, and will always make him feel that he does not fully belong because he is ‘different’, either in subtle or in not-so-subtle ways. The foreigner is uprooted, inevitably and irreversibly. And while some are capable of re-appropriating this uprootedness, and turn their individual hybridity into something empowering, many lack the power and resources to do so.

If a tree is uprooted, he will find it difficult to remain well-nourished. There is a reason why immigrants so often get health problems. Physical and mental belonging, personal identity, the power to express oneself verbally – things that most people do not usually reflect upon – are problematised continuously by daily-life encounters. Access to subsidies, tax deductions, immigration agencies, proper health care, education, phone help-desks and the thousand-and-one bureaucratic institutions one has to negotiate in order to survive modern society provide the immigrant constantly with new challenges and stress, and limit his opportunities. Of course, ‘the autochtonous population’ has to deal with and complains about some of these things as well, but they are socialised in the system and have learned how to negotiate it. People who have never lived abroad have little understanding of the fact that bureaucratic, medical and legal systems function completely differently in different countries (even within Europe). Moreover, people who have never had to deal with residence permits, long-term visas, citizenship tests, naturalisation procedures and so on have no idea how totally nontransparent, frustrating and humiliating the rules are. No matter how liberal the rhetoric, in any modern country the system guarantees that immigrants remain strangers, frustrated in their attempts to ‘feel at home’ by institutions that refuse to grant them that simple privilege. And I am only talking about so-called ‘legal’ migrants here – the situation of the millions of people around the world who live and work as ‘illegal’ migrants is much worse, as they do not have access to medical care, legal protection or education whatsoever, thus constituting an easy prey for those exploiting them.

The other day, I read my brother’s MA thesis. He had studied elderly Dutch ‘immigrants’ (question: why do we still use the word ‘immigrant’ when we talk about people who have lived in a single place for nearly sixty years?) in New Zealand, and looked at ways in which they shape and negotiate their hybrid identities through everyday practices, such as home-making and recreational activities. The thesis was well-written, and I particularly liked the ways in which he applied his theoretical framework to an analysis of the ethnographic data. Reading the thesis made me realise two things. First, while discriminatory structures, personal identity struggles, nostalgia for a home country that no longer exists, and a lack of understanding of the written and unwritten rules of a society can lead to frustration and powerlessness, those who learn to juggle their different identities and negotiate the societal structures in the new country often live a life that is more colourful, diverse and, perhaps, exciting than those who only know one place and one culture. In other words, for those who learn how to play with their existential ‘being different’, hybridity can become empowering. As Stuart Hall wrote:

[They] have succeeded in remaking themselves and fashioning new kinds of cultural identity by, consciously or unconsciously, drawing on more than one cultural repertoire. (…) They are people who belong to more than one world, speak more than one language (literally and metaphorically), inhabit more than one identity, have more than one home; who have learned to negotiate and translate between cultures, and who, because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures, have learned to live with, and indeed to speak from, difference. They speak from the ‘in-between’ of different cultures, always unsettling the assumptions of one culture from the perspective of another, and thus finding ways of being both the same as and at the same time different from the others amongst whom they live.

According to this view, it would be possible to overcome the existential homelessness that comes with being a stranger; to re-appropriate the strangeness, and re-establish multiple homes. This is a rather optimistic, if not idealistic, view of the migration experience; yet, it is valuable as it challenges popular views of identity and belonging as singular and static, and shows us the potential virtues of having multiple identities.

Second, the thesis’ focus on the objects and practices of everyday life (drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau) made me look at my personal strangeness and cultural hybridity from a new perspective. (For those of you who believe in synchronicity: it is perhaps no coincidence that I came across Kristeva’s book in a second-hand bookshop while I was about to read my brother’s thesis, at a time when questions regarding my personal ‘home’ and cultural identity were resurfacing.) Rather than approaching migration from a communitarian perspective, as the multiculturalists do – an  approach I have never been able to subscribe to, as it does not correspond to my personal migration experiences, which are characterised by a lack of any sense of ‘community’ – my brother looked at the practices and stories through which individuals, often subconsciously, construct (ils bricolent) their identity through home-making and other activities. I liked the particularism inherent in this approach, as it does justice to the simple fact that all migrants deal differently with their different situations, narratives and backgrounds. Even people living in the same country and sharing the same country of origin may have a very different background, and different ways of negotiating their identities.

When I look around, I see that our house is a patchwork, full of objects from all over the world. The hybridity is well-illustrated by our gods’ corner – our altar, where we usually pray – which has a variety of religious objects from Vietnam, Laos, the Netherlands, Japan, India, Slovakia and Egypt, representing a variety of buddhas and bodhisattvas, as well as Hindu deities, the Holy Virgin, and two wooden crosses (Franciscan and Coptic). The same applies to our eating habits: for breakfast, this morning, I had knekkebrød with pindakaas and cà phê sữa đá. Last night, for dinner, we had a nice mix of leftovers: rice with salad, bánh bèo, gyōza and ovenschotel with potatoes. While I am quite happy with cereals for breakfast, for lunch I usually have curry, fried rice or phở. I would not want it to be any different.

Yet, the question ‘what/where is my home’ occasionally pops up. For some reason, recently, it has been on my mind a lot. I like to be free, I like to be able to move from one country to another, and I am glad I am able to live fairly happily in different countries. But as I am spending a third of my salary on a tiny basement apartment, the desire to have a single place (that is, a physical location) that I consider mine is growing. House, home and place are intimately connected; as are home, society, culture and country. I am glad and grateful I have lived in five different countries, in many different cities – but the older I get, the more I look forward to finding (choosing?) the one place where I belong. Perhaps the wish is a natural consequence of growing older. Perhaps it is an illusion, and I will never be able to fully overcome that feeling of uprootedness and spatial alienation. But I believe it exists, somewhere out there; all we have to do is find it.

I grew up in the Netherlands, in a small village not too far away from the city of Groningen. Surrounded by countryside, it is a city that desperately tries to be urban, in which it succeeds remarkably well. Full of theaters, restaurants, art, nightlife and academic activities, Groningen is as interesting as the surrounding areas are boring. Nevertheless, when I was eighteen, I wanted to move somewhere more exciting; hence, I went to study in Leiden, while living in Amsterdam, the only more-or-less cosmopolitan-oriented city in the Netherlands. I enjoyed the years I spent in Amsterdam and Leiden, but I did not want to stay there. Having studied Japanese language and culture for several years, I spent a year as an undergraduate student in Tokyo; later, I went to London for my MA. After my studies, I travelled in Southeast Asia for a while, after which I lived in Vietnam for about a year and a half. In 2010, my wife and I moved to Oslo, where I was going to do my PhD – doing research on (and, partly, in) Japan. Right now, I feel that I belong to at least four countries – the Netherlands, where I grew up; Vietnam, where my wife is from; Norway, where we live; and Japan, which I study. Yet I also feel that I do not completely belong to any of these countries. When the glass is half full, I have four places I can call ‘home’; when it is half empty, I have none.

In the Netherlands, I know how most things work. I know where to buy cheap household appliances or smart yet affordable clothes. I know how to buy train and tram tickets (or at least I did; they changed the system, a few years ago, and now I feel much less self-confident when it comes to finding the right ticket). I speak the language. I do not feel shy when I order drinks in a bar. I support the national football team (and tend to convert to tribalism during important international tournaments). However, I detest the popular xenophobia, spread by mass media and opportunistic politicians, that has characterised Dutch political discourse in the last decade, and the strict immigration rules that have been implemented.  I cannot stand the arrogance and unfriendliness displayed by some people in the public sphere (mainly in the western part of the country, it must be said). Whenever I visit the country, I feel an odd mixture of nostalgia and alienation telling me that, the longer I am away, the stranger I become.

Vietnam is the country of my wife. It is the place where she grew up, where her family lives, where we got married. I love the Vietnamese climate, the food, the cafe culture. I love riding my motorbike through the rice paddies. I enjoy watching the dynamics of social and economical (alas, not political) change; I admire the ambitious students I have had the privilege of teaching, as they work so hard to fulfill their dreams. Yet, having experienced corruption, institutional discrimination and xenophobic violence, as well as pollution and noise, I do not think I would want to live in Vietnam permanently. Moreover, an academic career in my field is simply not possible there; not only because of economical concerns, but also because there is no such thing as freedom of expression. Many Vietnamese scholars have had works confiscated and banned.

I love being in Japan. I love Japanese food, I love visiting sacred places, I love the natural landscapes. Unlike Vietnamese, my Japanese language skills are sufficient for negotiating daily life. That is, I can book a business hotel online, manage a phone call or open a bank account – I am not sure about dealing with tax or immigration issues. However, while one should never say never, I do not think we will go live in Japan for a longer period of time. Japanese society is discriminatory – not so much towards white immigrants, and not so much towards men, but an Asian woman who does not speak the language will find it difficult to deal with practical matters, let alone find a good job.

But we do not live in the Netherlands, Vietnam, or Japan. We live in Norway. Life in Norway is good: I get paid to write my PhD dissertation; Oslo is a pleasant city to live in; people hardly ever get rude or aggressive, even when they are drunk; bus drivers usually wait for you when they see you running to catch the bus; and the city is surrounded by beautiful natural landscapes. But while I love spring and summer (short yet beautiful), the long and dark winters continue to be a challenge. And after almost two years of living here, I still get shocked when I see the prices of a mediocre restaurant, and cannot get used to the fact that I cannot buy a simple bottle of wine at the supermarket. I also fail to comprehend why I pay a significant percentage of my salary to be included in the national health insurance scheme, yet have to pay whenever I visit my GP or get medicines – more importantly, I do not understand why half of the medical sector has been privatised, and clinics not covered by national health insurance can charge huge amounts of money. And while I am grateful we can live here, and my wife can study without having to pay tuition fees, I am troubled by the fact that she is denied some of the basic rights that other immigrants do have, because she came here as the spouse of a non-Norwegian-yet-EU citizen. Institutionalised discrimination, that few people here are aware of.

Finally, what I miss most of my time in, basically, any other country I have lived previously, are spontaneous visits to bars with friends or colleagues. Or anything spontaneous, for that matter. Alas, the stereotype that says Norwegians are only able to act spontaneously when they get drunk (on a planned-in-advance party, on Saturday night, of course) corresponds quite well to my experiences. I have many nice Norwegian acquaintances, know many kind people – but for some reason, it seems to take an eternity for an acquaintance to become a friend. People are generally friendly, yet shy and distant, unless drunk. I find myself copying this behaviour, and have become less outgoing than I used to be.

We do not have to choose yet. We will stay in Norway for another two years, at least – with the possible exception of a few months spent in Vietnam or Japan. So there is no need to decide now. In the end, our choice will of course depend on career opportunities, as much as other material and immaterial factors. I just hope that, in about five years’ time, I will be able to invite guests to our house, wherever it is, and say: ‘Welcome. This is our home’ – after which I serve them a fusion kitchen dinner in the garden. To be able to, somehow, domesticise that existential strangeness Kristeva wrote about. To celebrate our hybrid life, at a place called home.

Noorse lente (5): Roze bomen, rode broeken

Eindelijk is het raak. De narcissen in de tuin verklaren ons de lente. Ze hebben gezelschap gekregen van een keur aan veelkleurige bloemen, wier namen ik niet ken. Bomen zijn wakker geworden uit hun winterslaap, die zeker een half jaar geduurd heeft. Als ik wakker word doe ik het het eerste uur normaliter rustig aan - kopje koffie, ontbijtgranen, mail checken, toiletbezoek, lang douchen, alles op zijn elfendertigst - maar deze bomen worden wakker met een mokerslag. Van de ene op de andere dag zijn de nauwelijks zichtbare knopjes op de kale takken opengebarsten, om plaats te maken voor een wolk aan bloesem - wit, lichtgeel of knalroze, voorwaar een fraaie metamorfose. Pas als alle bomen kleuren hebben is het echt lente, vind ik. Dit is geen voorzichtige voorlente, zoals we in maart kregen; dit is het echte werk. Je moet even geduld hebben, wachten tot eind april of begin mei, maar dan kun je ook genieten van een weergaloos schouwspel.

Toen ik in 6VWO zat, moest ik leren voor mijn eindexamen, en zat ik tot begin juni met mijn neus in de boeken. Maar scholieren hier hoeven geen eindexamen te doen. In plaats daarvan besteden ze de laatste maanden van hun middelbareschooltijd aan een collectieve rite de passage: de russ. De etymologie van het woord is me tot heden niet duidelijk - wie het weet, mag het zeggen - maar het komt erop neer dat ze maandenlang in groepjes door de stad dolen, doorgaans in benevelde toestand. Ze zijn eenvoudig te herkennen aan hun rode tuinbroeken, waarvan de flap natuurlijk voor het kruis hangt. De broeken zijn versierd met nationale vlaggen, stickers en witte koeienletters. Een enkeling draagt een blauwe broek in plaats van een rode.

De feestvierende jeugd heeft speciale visitekaartjes laten drukken, compleet met foto's van zichzelf en persoonlijke motto's. Die motto's moeten met een korreltje zout genomen worden, en bestaan niet zelden uit vieze woorden (poep en pies, dat werk) alsmede seksueel getinte frasen. Basisschoolkinderen hebben als taak de rode broeken te benaderen, en hun visitekaartjes te verzamelen. 's Avonds vieren de tieners vervolgens feest in rondrijdende 'russbussen'. Dat zijn speciaal omgebouwde bussen, bespoten met graffitimonsters en behangen met gigantische geluidsinstallaties, die brave burgers uit hun slaap houden. Toen ik vorig jaar de politie belde om te klagen over de wekenlang aanhoudende geluidsoverlast, werd ik behandeld als een onaangepaste allochtoon: gun de jeugd toch hun verzetje! Zo draagt iedereen zijn steentje bij aan de erkenning en legitimatie van de nationale liminale fase.

Hoe het ook zij, ik ben blij dat de kleuren terug zijn. Het gras is groen, de bloemen geel, de bomen roze en de broeken rood. We kunnen er tot laat in de avond van genieten. Deze week zaten we voor het eerst 's avonds buiten, in de zon, met chips en crackers met gerookte zalm, genietend van onze duurbetaalde biertjes. Het smaakte naar meer.

De mooiste maanden van het jaar komen eraan, en ik heb met de dag meer energie. Die kan ik goed gebruiken, want deze zomer wil ik het eerste deel van mijn proefschrift afhebben.

Noorse lente (4): Vertraging

Je denkt eerst dat het van een boom komt, kleine bloesemblaadjes, pollen van het een of ander, die een stukje door de wind meegenomen zijn. Maar je ogen tranen niet, en het is te vroeg voor bloesemblaadjes. Als je beter kijkt zie je dat ze van hoog uit de lucht komen vallen, en als er één met een koud kusje op je neus landt weet je het zeker: sneeuwvlokjes. Verdwaalde sneeuwvlokjes bij een half heldere hemel, waarin donkergrijs en lichtblauw broederlijk naast elkaar staan. De weergoden weten weer eens niet wat ze willen. Nu eens zonnig, dan weer kil, nu eens regen, dan weer sneeuw, en je stemming wisselt navenant.

Toen we eind maart het land verlieten teneinde de paasvakantie in het vaderland door te brengen stond de lente hier reeds in de steigers. Bij terugkeer zouden alle bomen wel blaadjes dragen, vermoedde ik. Maar nee, de tijd heeft stilgestaan. De knopjes op de bomen en struiken zijn niet of nauwelijks gegroeid. De krokussen en leverbloempjes staan er verdwaasd en verpieterd bij. Alleen het centrum van de stad heeft een metamorfose doorgemaakt, maar daar heeft de natuur weinig mee te maken gehad. Ik ga er tenminste vanuit dat die viooltjes in de bloembakken daar door mensen van de gemeente geplant zijn.

Als je de trams mag geloven is het al lang en breed zomer. Mix & match, roept een halfnaakte, grasdunne vrouw je toe. Zelf heeft ze ook een poging gewaagd, maar ze was weinig succesvol, want haar turquoise broekje staat voor geen meter bij het zwartwit gespikkelde topje. Desondanks staat ze metershoog op elke tram die langs komt rijden, steeds met dezelfde onzalige combinatie. Het is het enige naakt dat deze dagen in de straten te vinden is. Het kwik is naar verre diepten gezakt, er staat een kille wind, en geen weldenkend mens gaat zonder sjaal de deur uit. Maar al laten de bloemen hun kopjes hangen, de avonden lengen met de dag, en de vogels kwekken onverstoord voort. De lente mag dan stilstaan, omkeren doet ze niet.

We zijn net zo in de war als het weer. Het zal u niet ontgaan zijn: deze week is het proces begonnen tegen de massamoordenaar van vorig jaar. De media staan er bol van, alle details worden opgerakeld, iedereen weet weer waar hij toen was. Wij waren in Duitsland, op een fraai landhuis ergens in een bos bij een meertje, waar we de bruiloft van vrienden vierden. De enige informatie die we hadden kwam van andere bruiloftsgasten, we wisten weinig, we waren verdrietig en in de war. Twee dagen later lazen we alles in Duitse kranten. Eerst waren we bang, maar een paar dagen later wilden we al weer terug naar Oslo, naar huis, naar deze mooie stad waar de mensen zo bewonderenswaardig waardig reageerden. Geen moddergooien, geen roep om repressie, geen polarisatie - maar openheid, gezamenlijkheid, en de acceptatie van verschil. Zelden waren Noren zo lief voor elkaar als toen.

Maar bang ben ik nog steeds, en niet alleen vanwege Noorwegen. Politici en journalisten hebben hun best gedaan om de moordenaar af te schilderen als een gestoorde gek, een 'lone wolf' - de Nederlandse minister van binnenlandse zaken, thans vice-voorzitter van de Raad van State, durfde zelfs als een volleerde struisvogelpoliticus te beweren dat een dergelijke aanslag nooit in Nederland zou kunnen voorkomen - en zij zijn aardig in hun opzet geslaagd. De discussie ging vooral over de vraag of meneer al dan niet toerekeningsvatbaar is. Maar het feit dat de aanslag voortkwam uit en gelegitimeerd werd door een utopistische paranoïde ideologie die wijdverspreid is in Europa, niet in het minst in Nederland, werd en wordt nauwelijks onderkend. Ondertussen verspreidt het gif van de islamofobie zich - onder het mom van de vrijheid van meningsuiting - in massamedia, politieke discoursen en de krochten van het internet, waar duizenden boze jonge mannen elkaar zitten op te fokken met waanideeën over 'islamisering', 'linkse elites' en de teloorgang van nationale waarden. De deur naar meer geweld staat wagenwijd open.

Maar ik wilde geen pessimistische gedachten delen, ik wilde over de lente schrijven. Over lange lichte avonden, ontluikend groen, vrolijke feestjes en nieuwe energie. Niet over angst en geweld. Donkere gedachten zijn soms nodig, maar je moet ze ook weer los kunnen laten. Stoppen met malen, je kop leeg, en genieten van een sneeuwvlokje dat zacht kietelend op je neus valt.

En dus ga je een keertje niet naar je werk, om even een dagje niet in je kop te zitten. Vandaag, bijvoorbeeld. Je bezoekt de Zweed om de hoek, die elektronica, speelgoed, doe-het-zelf- en huishoudelijke artikelen verkoopt. Je koopt er een mop, een emmer, schuursponsjes, een fles allesreiniger en nieuwe speakers. Als je weer thuis bent ga je aan de slag. Het hele huis wordt onder handen genomen. De laadjes en kastjes worden uitgemest, de kleren opgevouwen en opgehangen, de papieren geordend, het fornuis geschrobd en de vloeren geboend. Ondertussen brul je belegen nederpop en musicalpulp mee. Voorjaarsschoonmaak, zo zou je het kunnen noemen. Urenlang ben je bezig, je gunt jezelf nauwelijks pauze, je ziet zelfs niet dat buiten de zon even is doorgebroken. Naarmate het huis zijn ruimte terugkrijgt luwt de wind in je hoofd.

Volgende week, dan wordt het weer warm. Dan kunnen we eindelijk buiten spelen.

Shinto's sacred forests: religious studies, environmentalism and the rediscovery of sacred space

The following article summarises part of my PhD research. It was published previously on the weblog of my research network, and commented upon by a professor in environmental anthropology. For the original post and comments, see here.

Recently, a group of scholars from the Biodiversity Institute at Oxford University started a new research project. The aim of their project is to produce a map of ‘religious forests and sacred sites’ all over the world, by ‘scientifically measur[ing] the coverage of religious and sacred land’ (Oxford University 2011). The project rests on the assumption that ‘[m]any of these ‘religious forests’ and sacred sites contain some of the richest biodiversity in the world, including some of the highest numbers of threatened species’ (ibid.).

One immediately wonders how the researchers are going to decide ‘scientifically’ which forests and other sites qualify for the predicate ‘sacred’, and which not; and, considering the lack of any consensus on how to measure sacredness, on what ‘scientific evidence’ the assumption that sacred sites are exceptionally rich in biodiversity is based. Nevertheless, the fact that a reputable university such as Oxford sanctions a collaboration between biodiversity scientists and religious environmentalist organisations is significant, as it points to a growing academic interest in the ecology of religious places.

The Oxford University research project on biodiversity and sacred space is part of a wider, ongoing trend: the alliance of religious institutions with environmentalist organisations, and the redefinition of all major ‘world religions’ by scholars-cum-activists as essentially benign and environmentally oriented. This so-called ‘religious environmentalist paradigm’, as Poul Pedersen (1995) has called it, has been advocated strongly by a number of scholars in the field of religious studies. Prominent examples include Harvard University’s organisation of the ‘Religions of the World and Ecology’ conferences (1996-8) and subsequent book series (1997-2003), as well as the establishment of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.

Sympathetic though these efforts may seem, the reinterpretation of religious ideologies as ecological ethics often comes down to rather selective and anachronistic reading, if not projection, and is therefore not entirely unproblematic. Nevertheless, the academic alliance of religion and environmentalism has contributed to an increasing attention to environmental issues on the part of many religious institutions themselves; if not always grounded in deep conviction, at least environmentalist rhetorics have come to be appropriated by representatives of a wide variety of religious groups for identity politics and PR purposes. Thus, the academically rooted ‘religious environmentalist paradigm’ seems to actually be contributing to the gradual transformation of religious worldviews and organisations, if only cosmetically.


ARC and Jinja Honchō

The project at Oxford University is carried out in collaboration with an organisation named ARC (Alliance of Religions and Conservation). This is a UK-based organisation, which defines itself on its website as a ‘secular body that helps the major religions of the world to develop their own environmental programmes, based on their own core teachings, beliefs and practices.’ One of the other projects carried out by ARC concerns forest preservation in Japan. In collaboration with Jinja Honchō (Association of Shinto Shrines; the umbrella organisation with which the majority of Shinto shrines in Japan are affiliated), it has monitored forest regeneration at three different shrine forests – most notably those surrounding the Ise Grand Shrines, generally considered the most sacred location in Shinto. Furthermore, in recent years, Jinja Honchō and ARC have been involved in a joint program (together with WWF and the Lutheran Church in Sweden) to establish a ‘Religious Forestry Standard’, formulating principles for the management of religious forests worldwide.

Interestingly, in Japan, Jinja Honchō has a conservative profile; until recently, it mainly devoted its attention to controversial issues such as the reestablishment of imperial rituals and symbols, the revision of the constitutional separation of Church (i.e., shrine) and State, and the opposition against equal rights for women and migrants. Accordingly, whereas it has been using environmentalist vocabulary for its English-language PR publications for a while, until recently environmental issues did not figure prominently in its Japanese publications, let alone policies. However, in the past two decades or so there has been increasing interest in the notion of Shinto as a so-called ancient tradition of nature worship, and within Japan a sizeable academic discourse has emerged surrounding the concept of chinju no mori (sacred shrine forest), in which Shinto ideologues, philosophers, ecologists and forestry scientists participate. This development seems to have exercised some influence on Jinja Honchō as well; there seems to be a movement within the organisation towards an increasing awareness of environmental issues, if only for pragmatic reasons. The question is whether Shinto really is a tradition of nature worship that is compatible with contemporary conservationist concerns, or not; and whether notions of ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’ within Shinto discourse correspond to uses of the terms by ecologists and conservationists.


Shinto and nature

When studying the relationship between Shinto and nature, one must bear in mind that both concepts are, to a certain extent, historical constructions, the meaning of which is subject to change. The concept ‘Shinto’ is complicated, and carries a variety of meanings. It is intertwined with normative notions regarding the nation, its origins, and its relationship to the imperial family. Different definitions correspond to different historical narratives and, accordingly, political positions. In other words, ‘Shinto’ is an ideal typical construction, that may be based on actual ritual practices and shrine traditions, but does not equal them. In any case, there is a fundamental difference between essentialist interpretations of Shinto, which typically assert that Shinto is the ‘indigenous’, ‘ancient’ tradition of ‘the’ Japanese people; and historical constructivist approaches, which see the modern, institutionalised religion Shinto as the product of a variety of historical and ideological developments, that emerged within the context (institutional as well as theological) of Buddhism and Confucianism, and did not become an ‘independent tradition’ until the second half of the nineteenth century. The ahistorical essentialist interpretation continues to be told in popular-scientific introductions to ‘world religions’, travel guidebooks, online encyclopedias and some academic publications.

In recent years, primordialist and essentialist notions of Shinto have been combined with environmentalist rhetoric, giving rise to something we may tentatively call a ‘Shinto environmentalist paradigm’. Shinto has been redefined as, fundamentally, an ancient animistic tradition primarily concerned with worshipping ‘nature’ and preserving the harmony between human beings and their natural environment. Several foreign scholars have written essays in which they advocated the idea that traditional ‘Shinto’ worldviews could serve as blueprints for environmental ethics. In Japan, a number of actors have been instrumental in this development, including cultural theorists, Shinto ideologues, shrine organisations, ecologists and artists.

A famous example of the latter is the film maker Miyazaki Hayao, well-known internationally for animated films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, in which environmentalist critique is combined with a creative reimagination of Shinto-esque deities. Within academia, the ‘Shinto environmentalist paradigm’ has been legitimated by means of a reimagination of prehistorical ‘Japanese’ as living in harmonious coexistence and correlation with their natural surroundings, supposedly expressed in animistic beliefs and practices. Scholars subscribing to this paradigm (such as Umehara Takeshi, Yasuda Yoshinori, Ueda Masaaki and Sonoda Minoru) generally assert that in the modern period, this traditional environmental awareness has been largely forgotten as a result of the import of ‘Western’ technology and ideology, which have caused widespread environmental, moral and cultural deterioration. In their view, the solution to contemporary problems (social as well as ecological) therefore lies in the reestablishment of ancient modes of relating to nature; i.e., in the establishment of an ‘animism renaissance’, and the preservation and reconstruction of sacred forests, so-called chinju no mori. Much recent discourse has focused on the latter concept, and a movement has emerged which focuses on raising public awareness about these forests, assisting shrines in forestry practices, and, in the process, redefining the role of Shinto in Japanese society.

Sacred forests?

What, then, are chinju no mori? Generally speaking, they are clearly demarcated patches of forest surrounding a Shinto shrine, to which sacred qualities are contributed; in contrast to other forests, they are usually small, have strong historical connections to local communities, and were traditionally believed to offer some sort of divine protection. They are imagined as old, if not primeval forests, representing a symbolic connection between the present and the ancestral past. Chinju no mori were first associated with conservation practices in the early 1980s; simultaneously, the notion that Shinto might be employed as a resource for environmental ethics developed. In recent years, the concept has been used widely by Shinto scholars, as well as ecologists and cultural theorists, who see them as crucial resources for the reestablishment of a Japanese society based on a harmonious relationship between humans and their natural surroundings. Accordingly, several shrines have set up projects that focus on forest management, environmental education and landscape reconstruction.

The chinju no mori trope has also been employed by Jinja Honchō. In its weekly newspaper Jinja Shinpō, as well as books and other publications, it is a recurring topic. However, shrine forests are valued not primarily because of their ecological importance or natural beauty. According to an editorial in Jinja Shinpō, the real value of shrine forests lies in their ability to generate, in children especially, love of local community and so patriotic love of Japan. Shrine forests are nothing less, the reader learns, than the key to restoring an ethical core to the nation’s education system, emasculated by 60 years of malign Western influence’ (Breen and Teeuwen 2010: 209). Not exactly your ordinary environmentalist rhetoric, to put it mildly. In fact, in Japanese discourse, chinju no mori seem to serve primarily as symbols signifying the continuity between the present and the ancestral past, often imagined as places that transcend historical change. As such, they represent the intimate connection between the nation, the land, its natural landscapes and the deities. Thus, their importance is symbolic and ideological rather than merely ecological.


Concluding remarks

We may conclude by saying that ‘sacredness’ is highly problematic as an empirical category – and so is, naturally, ‘sacred forest’. Religious land claims are, ultimately, land claims; no matter how ‘sacred’ a place, it is owned by somebody, has a certain economical value, and may be contested. Likewise, meanings attributed to places may be ideologically charged, and subject to competing claims. The question is not how sacred a place actually is – for sacredness is nothing but a quality attributed to a place, which cannot be measured scientifically, let alone quantified. The question is, ultimately, a question of power: who makes the claims regarding sacred place, and who controls the place? The category ‘sacred space’ can easily be employed for economical or political purposes; it may serve to legitimise particular claims, while discrediting others. Hence, studies of sacred space and sacred places need to take into account the economical and political factors involved in the construction and production of space. The Oxford University Biodiversity Institute’s project to ‘map’ religious forests worldwide will have to address these issues, for ‘mapping’ inevitably involves making controversial decisions as to what places are included, and what are not; as such, it is profoundly political, whether the participants realise this or not.

Jinja Honchō’s cooperation with an international organisation such as ARC serves several objectives. It sanctions an appropriation of shrine grounds as natural and primordial, it legitimises Jinja Honchō’s claims regarding the sacredness of these places, and it helps to frame Shinto internationally as an innocent nature religion – thus dissociating it from lingering militarist and imperialist elements. Identity politics is an important factor in the discursive construction of ‘green Shinto’, it seems. Nevertheless, few scholars have questioned the ways in which the categories ‘nature’, ‘environment’ and ‘sacred space’ are used by religious organisations for purposes of identity politics and self-justification. Likewise, so far the alliance of environmentalists, religious studies scholars and religious actors has received remarkably little critical attention. Their cooperation may well have produced positive results in terms of environmental awareness and natural conservation; nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that the agendas of different players are not necessarily similar – nor are they necessarily limited to convential notions of ecology and environmental conservation.


References:

Breen, John and Mark Teeuwen. 2010. A New History of Shinto. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Oxford University. 2011. ‘Scientists map religious forests and sacred sites’. On http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110108.html

Pedersen, Poul. 1995. ‘Nature, Religion and Cultural Identity: The Religious Environmentalist Paradigm.’ In Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland (eds.), Asian Perceptions of Nature: A Critical Approach. London: Curzon Press, 258-76.

Noorse lente (3): Leverbloempjes

Maart is meestal wit en koud. De lente komt hier doorgaans pas in april. Maar dit jaar was ze ongeduldig, en kwam een maand vroeger dan normaal. Het gevolg: een ongewoon mooie maart. Het kwik liep op tot boven de tien graden, een enkele keer zelfs tot vijftien. Het was licht en zonnig, en elke avond duurde langer dan de vorige.

Oslo is zelden zo mooi als nu. De natuur ontwaakt voor onze ogen. De wilg draagt al katjes. De knopjes op de heg worden elke dag een beetje groter, tot ze op een mooie ochtend opeens in blaadjes zijn veranderd. In de voorheen kale voortuin is een paar dozijn krokussen tevoorschijn gekomen. Geel, blauw, roze: de wereld krijgt er allerlei nieuwe kleuren bij. Maar het mooiste zijn de blauw-paarse leverbloempjes, die zomaar onder de heg vandaan komen. Ook in het bos groeien ze, hier en daar, door niemand geplant maar des te meer geliefd.

De kwettervogels houden het niet meer. Ze zitten met zijn allen in de heg te fladderen en bekvechten. En ze zijn niet de enigen die de lente in hun kop hebben. Een paar warme dagen, en de helft van de Noren heeft zijn kleren al uitgetrokken. Jonge moeders, verwend met een jaar ouderschapsverlof, flaneren zonder jas door de stad. Hun gezichten gaan schuil achter enorme zonnebrillen. Jonge mannen lopen rond in korte broek en T-shirt, een enkeling zelfs op teenslippers. Twee bikkeltjes van tien duiken zelfs in het ijskoude fjord, gadegeslagen door hun trotse vaders. Het is veertien graden, maar men waant zich reeds in de tropen.

De donkere winter is dood en begraven. En als de lente komt, dan komen de feestjes. Iedereen is opeens jarig, en wie dat niet is verzint wel een ander excuus om een feest te organiseren. Er wordt gedanst, geflirt en gezopen. De stad is een stel jonge beren, gulzig ontwaakt uit hun winterslaap. Er hangt speelsheid in de lucht.

Maar er moet ook gewerkt worden. Ik schrijf een boekrecensie en twee korte essays, lees een aantal artikelen, vervolg mijn pogingen klassiek Chinees te leren, word geïnterviewd door een studentenradiozender en geef een presentatie voor een onderzoeksworkshop over Oost-West discours. Veel collega-promovendi hebben de afgelopen weken hun proefschrift ingeleverd. Ik ben nog lang niet zo ver. In mijn hoofd begint mijn proefschrift weliswaar steeds concretere vormen aan te nemen, maar het moet zich allemaal nog materialiseren in de vorm van een stapel beschreven papier. Mij wacht nog een spannende anderhalf jaar.

Maar eerst een weekje uitrusten. De komende week is het paasvakantie, dan neemt het halve land een week vrij om met de familie de bergen in te trekken of naar Zuid-Europese stranden te vliegen. Wij maken van de gelegenheid gebruik om weer eens op bezoek te gaan in het vaderland. Eitjes eten, tulpen kijken, fietsen op het platteland. Even pauze.