Researching Paganisms
 
click to return home
 
   
 

Not surprisingly, this is the title of a book I recently co-edited with Jenny Blain and Doug Ezzy. This brings together some of the many interesting scholars who are researching particular kinds of Pagan religioning today. Sadly, it also leaves out many other interesting scholars. Happily, the series that it is published in is just getting going and we can expect to see more quality discussions any day now!

 

  
 
(references to my publications can be followed up by clicking here).
   
       
  My research among Pagans has largely been interested in what attracts people to identify themselves as Pagans, and how Paganism is evolving as people contribute ideas and practices and energies and passions ...    
       
  I've also written about the processes by which people become Pagans; and the ways in which Pagans engage with death, dying and bereavement; how they deal with places they consider sacred but others treat differently; how they dealt with allegations about "ritual abuse" and Satanism; and how the practice of magic is now being combined with shamanic practice and environmentalist actions to form a potent inspiration for the future.    
       
  Most recently, I have written about the rising popularity of "animism" among Pagans, especially those who might be called "eco-Pagans". A chapter of my book, Animism: Respecting the Living World, discusses the activities of some of these people. click here for my animism website
     
  What interests me is now is how to deal with the conclusion I've reached in thinking about animism that there is no such place as "nature". In my book Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism (the revised second edition of which is about to be published), I agreed with my colleagues and friends that Paganism is a "Nature Religion". But what if "nature" doesn't exist? What if it is an illusion produced by European dualistic attempts to divorce "culture" (what humans do) from the rest of the world? What if it is part of the broader ideological separation of humanity from the world, materiality, embodiment, physicality, animality and so on and on and on??!! I think it is now obvious that this separation was always a fiction. Once we refuse to go along with the crazy game we'll wonder why some people still follow Descartes in deluding themselves that mind and matter, consciousness and physicality, are separate. But, if we do reject the illusion of the Cartesian gap, we have to stop thinking that there's a part of the world and experience that is called "nature". Note that in North America this book is called Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth.
       
  So, that's one on-going project.    
     
  Another is a more careful consideration of another claim I've made on a number of occasions that Paganism is becoming an indigenous religion. That means understanding indigenous religions a bit more, and then getting out a bit more to see what Pagans are doing that might prove or disprove my theory ... Or maybe I'd better nuance my theory and see if maybe some parts or paths of Paganism (some Paganisms indeed) might be becoming indigenous while others get ever more cosy with modernism.   click here for my thoughts on researching indigenous religions
       
  While all this interests me, the reason why I think it might actually be important is that Paganism seems to me to test various new / old possibilities for being human and alive in this wonderful world sadly dominated by business, bureaucrats and borish-politicians.   yes, I do mean Bush and Blair (but I actually think Reagan and Thatcher are still in power).
     
       
click here for information about my research students' work    
       
Click here for more information about Altamira's excellent series, including details of other books coming soon, and guidance on submitting a proposal.