The Sociological Review Volume 55 Issue 3 2007 [Doi 10.1111%2Fj.1467-954x.2007.00721.x] Chris...

7/27/2019 The Sociological Review Volume 55 Issue 3 2007 [Doi 10.1111%2Fj.1467-954x.2007.00721.x] Chris Shilling; Philip

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Cultures of embodied experience:technology, religion and body pedagogics

Chris Shilling and Philip A. Mellor

Abstract

Two trends have dominated recent sociological analyses of embodiment. There has,

on the one hand, been a proliferation of analyses identifying bodies as the experi-ential vehicles through which we exist and interact in the world. On the other hand,this has been accompanied by a large growth in studies suggesting that technologicaladvances have both increased our exposure to instrumental rationality and radicallyweakened the boundaries between humans and machines. Considered together,these trends raise an important question which has, however, been marginalised inthe literature: if bodies are increasingly shaped and even constituted by the perfor-mative demands and invasive capacities of technology, what implications does thishave for our lived experience of ourselves and our social and natural environment?In addressing this issue, our paper revisits Heideggers discussion of the technologi-

cal enframing of humans and asks two questions. First, what have we lost experi-entially by being positioned as a standing reserve for technologically drivendemands for efficiency in contemporary society? Second, can the analysis of reli-gious attempts to reframe human experience provide us with a perspective fromoutside this technological culture that enables us to appreciate the embodied expe-riences, dispositions and potentialities of humans in fresh ways? Our approach tothese issues proceeds via a comparative study of the body pedagogics of moderntechnological culture and two, very different, religious cultures.

Introduction

Sociological studies on embodiment continue to flourish in terms of theirtheoretical diversity and empirical scope, but have been characterised by acentral, and as yet unresolved, problem. Drawing on such figures as Merleau-Ponty (1962), but also on more traditional sociological writings, there has, onthe one hand, been an unprecedented interest in phenomenological issues oflived experience which identify bodies as the experiential vehicles through

which we exist in the world and interact with other body-subjects (eg Young,1990; Crossley, 2001; Nettleton and Watson, 1998; Howson and Inglis, 2001;Shilling, 2001; Wacquant, 2004). On the other hand, there has also been aconcentration of writings concerned with how technologicaladvances, medical

The Sociological Review, 55:3 (2007) 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 The Editorial Board ofThe Sociological Review. Published byBlackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,USA.


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interventions and genetic engineering have both increased the scope of instru-mental rationality and weakened the boundaries between humans andmachines to the extent that we are all (to one degree or other) cyborgs (egFeatherstone and Burrows, 1995; Bell and Kennedy, 2000; Virilio, 2000; see alsoHarraway, 1994 [1985]). While the former trend is associated with the devel-

opment of a carnal sociology (Crossley, 1995; Wacquant, 2004) as a way ofunderstanding bodies as active, sensorily and sensually experiencing phenom-ena, the latter emphasises our potential transformation into a post-human,technologically enhanced, performatively efficient species. The problem thathas yet to be addressed adequately is this: if our bodily being is increasinglyshaped and constituted by the performative demands and invasive capacitiesof technologies, what implications does this have for our lived experience ofourselves and our social and natural environment? This issue has not beenignored completely especially in feminist critiques of medical technology (eg

Martin, 1987) and theoretical explorations of our relationship with nature (egMacnaghten and Urry, 2000) but has not had the attention it deserves as anissue of major social importance.

In addressing this problem our analysis revisits Heideggers (1993 [1954])discussion of the technological enframing of humans and asks two questions.First, what have we lost experientially by being positioned as a standingreserve for technologically driven demands for efficiency in contemporarysociety? Second, can the study of certain attempts to re-frame human experi-ence in religious terms help sociologists step outside this technological

enframing and appreciate the embodied experiences, dispositions and poten-tialities of humans in fresh ways? Our approach to these issues proceeds byway of a comparative study of the body pedagogics of modern technologicalculture and two, very different, religious cultures.

We here define culture as referring to the customary bodily practices,norms, rituals and beliefs of a social group.This definition not only brings intofocus the embodied as well as the ideational dimensions of culture in con-trast to those cognitive approaches to the subject which deal exclusively withthe mind (eg Hofstede, 1998: 5) but also facilitates a focus on experience.

Emphasising concern with technological and religious cultures, moreover,highlights how the embodied experiences associated with distinct ways of lifecan overlap and interrelate within social groups. Thus, in contrast to assump-tions about the all-powerful nature of techno-science (Virilio and Lotringer,1997), technological life in the modern age is conceptualised in this paper asone cultural framework among others (albeit an immensely influential one).1

The spread of technology and instrumental rationality may be dominantfactors shaping our embodied experiences in the northern hemisphere.However, for a significant minority within this context and, perhaps, for the

majority outside it, religious and other values continue to steer the develop-ment and deployment of technology (Parsons, 1978; Szerszynski, 2005).

The religious cultures we examine are Taoism and charismatic Christianity.We have chosen these because they contain features which throw into sharp


532 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 The Editorial Board ofThe Sociological Review


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relief the particularities of contemporary technological life, and for theirgeneral social and sociological importance.2 Taoism remains enormously influ-ential in China (now a major global centre of industrial development), hasinfluenced Western thought (Clarke, 2000), and was central to Webers (1964)writings on religion and capitalism. Furthermore, Taoisms significance is

growing and one sign of this is the suggestion that if Weber were alive today hewould write a second volume of the Protestant Ethic, titled The Taoist Ethicand the Spirit of Global Capitalism (iek, 2001: 13). The importance ofcharismatic Christianity is equally clear: it is increasingly visible in Africa,Asiaand South America, and is the only form of Christianity growing rapidly in theWest (Jenkins, 2002; Mellor, 2007). With world-wide adherents of around 523million (Robbins, 2004: 118), some predict it will soon surpass Catholicism andso become the predominant global form of Christianity (Casanova, 2001:435).

The concern with body pedagogics in this paper is intended to assist theexploration of lived experience in cultures, as they are transmitted from onegeneration to the next over the lifetime of those inhabiting them. Specifically,body pedagogics refers to the central means through which a culture seeks totransmit its main corporeal techniques, skills, dispositions and beliefs, theexperiences typically associated with acquiring these attributes, and the actualembodied changes resulting from this process (Shilling, 2005a, 2007). Thisnotion of body pedagogics inevitably simplifies the myriad processes, com-plexities and variabilities involved in the transmission and development of

cultures, but it nevertheless provides us with a useful ideal-typical and corpo-really sensitive way of accessing some of the central elements involved incultural reproduction in a manner which renders them amenable for compara-tive analysis.While it has limited affinities with Mausss (1973 [1934]) notion oftechniques of the body, and Foucaults (1986) technologies of the self, itsfocus highlights the relationship between the pedagogies and lived experienceof culture marginalised by Mauss, and the experiential and ontological dimen-sions of human embodiment neglected by Foucault. Furthermore, by recogn-ising culture, experience and embodiment as analytically significant each in

their own right, the concept of body pedagogics can facilitate analyses whichexplore how these factors interact and shape each other without engaging indiscursive reductionism or other forms of conflationism (Shilling, 2003, 2005b;Mellor, 2004).

Examining the relationship between these cultures and their body peda-gogics allows us to clarify key characteristics of our contemporarytechnologically-driven embodied condition. The enhanced efficiency andcapacity associated with the technological body is associated with an histori-cally unprecedented capacity to intervene in the external environment (a

capacity also associated with the generation of unprecedented risks [Beck,1992]). Comparing technological culture with others, however, we suggest thiscapacity has developed at the expense of those experiences oftranscendenceand immanence that, in various forms of interrelationship and complexity, are

Cultures of the embodied experience



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central to the embodied dynamics of religious traditions. Issues of transcen-dence and immanence are not usually seen as central to contemporary soci-ology. However, it is the exclusion of just these experiences that is signalled byHeideggers (1993 [1954]: 31141) focus on the absence of techne (a creativerather than an instrumental approach towards producing something new)

from technological culture. This exclusion makes it difficult for individuals torelate to their embodied and external environment in a manner free fromrational instrumentalism. This exclusion also underpins sociologys long heldinterest in the difficulties individuals confront in avoiding a sense of fracture,fragmentation and anomie in rationalised, industrialised societies and is, there-fore, deserving of study.

Technological culture

In a lecture delivered in 1953, Heidegger made a distinction between technol-ogy and techne that was central to his view of modernity and continues to haveimportant consequences for understanding embodiment (Heidegger, 1993[1954]).According to Heidegger, the essence of technology in the modern erainvolves an instrumental rationalism of total mastery over nature. It involvesan enframing of nature, an approach which calls upon the environment to beimmediately on hand as a standing reserve forced to yield its properties andpotential to any efficiency based demand placed upon it. Consequently, the

defining property of modern technology is the insistence on domination andcontrol irrespective of the properties of the material it is involved with, some-thing that reaches a point where people themselves are regarded as a standing-reserve. What is tragic about this situation is that it is unrecognised by themajority of those subject to it: people are so used to regarding the worldthrough the prism of rational instrumentalism that they fail to see that theyhave become the object of this logic (Heidegger, 1993 [1954]: 320, 329, 333).

The tragic features of Heideggers analysis reflect his long-standing inter-est in the quality of lived experience, an interest closely related to his religious

concerns (Elliott, 2004), but he did not develop the implications of his analysisfor the bodily character of human beings. He recognised that the body isalways stretching beyond its own skin, actively directed towards and interwo-ven with the world (Aho, 2005: 100; Heidegger, 2001: 846), but he did notexamine in detail the processes through which the technological enframing ofthe body is initiated and sustained, and admitted towards the end of his lifethat the body phenomenon confronted philosophy with its most difficultproblem (Heidegger, 1979). In expanding upon Heideggers analysis, wesuggest that the central pedagogic means through which this culture is trans-

mitted is work. In contrast to those writers who think work has lost its cen-trality in the constitution and maintenance of culture (Wilson, 2004: 2), thesuggestion here is that instrumentally rational work has become core to thespheres of production and consumption in technological culture.




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In production, work in the form of waged-labour continues to provide themeans through which people acquire the skills and dispositions that disciplineand mould their bodies to the performative demands of their role. Employeesare increasingly expected to embody corporate ideals of efficiency and theminimisation of waste in their actions and appearance. Flexibility has become

a byword not only for manufacturers, consultants and computer specialistsbeing able to produce what customers want, when they want it, but also forembodied subjects who are prepared to manage themselves in a manner whichinvolves their bodies standing ready for external demands (Shilling, 2005b:73100). This is exemplified by those high-flying professionals whose workrequires them to travel thousands of miles a year, be constantly availablethrough mobile phones, laptops and conference calls, and structure theirdomestic lives around employer priorities (Sassen, 2003). More generally,Ehrenreich (1990: 236) shows the pervasiveness within middle-class America

of individual attempts to develop (through diet, exercise and various healthregimes) a form of physical capital that makes them a productive resource.The creation of performative bodies is also reflected by the increasingdemands of emotion work. From C. W. Mills (1951) identification of thesmiles and personalities sold by white-collar staff in the 1950s, to Hochs-childs investigations of the deep acting required to sustain adherence to thefeeling rules common in the service sector of the 1980s, the body has againfaced growing pressure to respond to productive demands (Mills, 1951;Hochschild, 1983; see also Zapfet al., 2001).At the opposite end of the labour

hierarchy from high-flying professionals, the focus on productivity central towaged-labour is evident in the millions of people who take extra shifts andextra jobs in various employment sectors and thereby embody the demandsfor flexibility central to technological culture (Toynbee, 2003).

The centrality of work to the transmission of technological culture hasextended to the sphere ofconsumption. During an historical epoch in the Westwhen there has been a decline in the numbers of people who live their lives inrelation to transcendent religious ideals, and a concomitant valuing of youth ina culture which seeks to shield its members from mortality, conceptions of

self-identity are often associated with the aim of maintaining a young,appeal-ing appearance (Featherstone and Hepworth, 1991). Further, as a sign ofvisual distinction, the size, shape and look of the individual body is regarded asbeing on call to be remoulded in line with changing ideals of body fashion.This is reflected in the massive growth over the last few decades of cosmeticsurgery.

If work is the primary body pedagogic means through which individuals areprepared in technological culture to be enframed by the demands of efficiency,the characteristic experience associated with the purposive orientation of this

modern work is for the body to be related to as an object. This occurs in twoways.The first involves the general fading away of an experiential awarenessof the body which can occur whenever one is engrossed in an activity such asreading a book but which is also particularly characteristic of work in a




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technologically rationalised society in which instrumental action is prized andrewarded above other behaviour. Leders (1990) account of what he refers toas the dys-appearing body (in which our experience of the body fades awaywhen engaged in purposeful work unless we are subjected to some physiologi-cal or social disruption which returns it to consciousness) can be interpreted in

this way, not as a universal model of body experience as perhaps intended, buta damning indictment of the fate of embodiment in the modern era (Shilling,2005b: 59). Missing from Leders account is any sense of the body being eitheran integral and positive component of the experience of action, or intimatelyinvolved in the pouring of the self into the tools used in craft work in whicha focus on activity includes a subsidiary awareness of the body (Polanyi, 1958:59).

The second way in which the body is experienced as an object at work iswhen the body itself is a focus of employment. The spheres of fashion and

professional sport provide examples of this, but the growing importance ofemotion work provides this mode of experience with a more general rel-evance. In these examples, the body is for long periods to be worked on as anobject. In the world of ballet, for example, denying hunger and the aches andpains of repetitive practice is a prominent way in which dancers objectify theirbodies in order to keep them slim and prepare for performances (Wainwrightand Turner, 2003; Aalton, 2005). Thus, the body pedagogics of work in tech-nological culture are associated with experiencing the body as an absent/present object. In this context, it is hardly surprising if the mind/body dualism

that dominates Western philosophy is reflected in the actual experiences ofembodied subjects who feel that the mind formulates their goals, directs theiractivities and (when necessary) disciplines their unruly bodies.

The typical result or embodied outcome of the body pedagogics of techno-logical culture is, as Heidegger suggested, that the body becomes a standingreserve ready to be called upon for the purposes of efficient performance.Thismay increase the productive capacity of technological culture, but has majorconsequences for the embodied personality of the individual. Weber andSimmel suggested that individuals developed coherent personalities by orga-

nising their actions and experiences in line with their self-identities by stand-ing over, controlling and organising/dominating their surroundings (eg Weber,1948 [1919a]). The major criticism levied against this heroic view of person-ality involves its masculinist connotations and its neglect of human interde-pendence (Bologh, 1990). However, we can see this focus on control as anunderstandable response to a culture which prizes efficiency above all else.Thedifficulty with this response, though, is that it has become virtually impossiblein technological culture: if embodied subjects have become a standing reserve,it is they who are available to being ordered and reordered on the basis of

external demands. This is illustrated by the IBM computer programmers inSennetts (1998: 132) study. Sennett relates how these individuals were maderedundant and how they talked retrospectively about needing to have takenmore seriously the technologically driven changes occurring in computing and




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to have reskilled themselves accordingly. In the absence of such action, unem-ployment damaged them materially and existentially. They no longer felt incontrol of their surroundings and were worried about being bereft of meaningand purpose.

In summary, technological culture is not simply the contextual background

within which individuals and communities construct their identities. It is alsothe source of a particular body pedagogics that seeks to shape lived experiencein accordance with instrumentally rational demands. However, while we haveemphasised its potency in this regard, in line with the ideal typical nature ofour analysis in this paper, its effects are neither guaranteed nor unchallenged.The are not guaranteed as the centrality of work in technological culture doesnot always result in the experiential and instrumental objectification of thebody. People can seek to relate to their embodied selves in different ways,while the bodys own frailties and capacities sometimes exceed and escape the

disciplining effects of technology. Neither do the body pedagogics of techno-logical culture exist unchallenged by other pedagogic forms, particularly withregard to religion.Heidegger himself looked to Taoism and Christianity to findresources to mitigate the negative aspects of technological cultures (Petzet,1993; Chan, 2003, Parkes, 2003; Elliot, 2004), and these religious culturesremain significant today.

Taoist culture

For Heidegger,Taoism was of interest because, in contrast to the technologicaldesire for mastery over all things, it sought to promote a way of being inharmony with the world (Chan, 2003). Similarly, Webers (1964) analysis ofTaoism and Confucianism focuses on an explicit contrast between the majorvalues informing Chinese civilization and those promoted by Puritanism(for him, it was the world-transforming rationalism of the Puritan ethic thatpreceded the contemporary dominance of technological instrumentalism).

Whereas Calvinist Protestantism disenchanted the world, introducing anunbridgeable rupture between God and humans and a doctrine of predesti-nation that isolated the individual and committed followers to a this-worldlyengagement with their environment according to Gods ethical imperatives(Weber, 1991 [190505]), neither Taoism nor Confucianism introduced suchtension between humans and their environment. Instead, they promotednorms encouraging people to live in the world as a well adjusted part of thatworld (Weber, 1964; Kirkland, 2004).Without any satanic force of evil againstwhich to struggle, and living in a cosmos characterised by a harmonious order

in which it was ethically improper to be anexpert or make oneself an end forany external goal (especially by pursuing profit), there was no moral basis onwhich instrumental or technological rationalism could flourish (Weber, 1964:160, 246).




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Central to Taoism (and Confucianism) is the notion of the Tao, the immu-table order of harmony, tranquillity and equilibrium underlying the universeand human society (Yang, 1964: xxix). One of the classical texts of Taoism,Lao Tzus Tao Te Ching, explains that while words are unable to describeadequately the Tao, it possesses an essence that initiated and perpetuates the

universe (Tzu, L., 1963). Generating the continuity that underpins all materialand immaterial phenomena, the Tao is also responsible for the universal forcesofyin and yang (the distinctive energies that give rise to all differences andoppositions in the world,yet which form an integrated whole). It is this view ofessential cosmic harmony which underpins the Taoist emphasis on adjustmentin the world.While the cosmic pessimism of Puritanism resulted in an ethic ofworld domination to be accomplished through working, what Weber regardedas the radical world-optimism of Taoism eventuated in a body pedagogicemphasis on wu wei, non-action or what Palmer and Breuilly translate as

actionless action (Tzu, C., 1996). This is the main pedagogic means throughwhich Taoism is transmitted.

This notion of actionless action may be difficult to grasp from a Westernperspective. It refers to not interfering with the natural workings of things, tonot expending unnecessary effort, and to acting in line with the nature of things(Capra, 1999: 117). It is in this context that Taoists are said to reject thetrappings of worldly knowledge, striving and affluence, and embrace insteadsimplicity and a life in which egoism is rejected in order to achieve a onenesswith the universe (Weber, 1964: 182). As Graham (1989: 186) explains, this

simplicity involves an intelligent responsiveness which would be underminedby analysing and choosing but which approximates instead to the instinctive-ness of the swimmer able to stay afloat by acting with, rather than strugglingagainst, the forces and currents of the ocean. Thus, actionless action is not amatter of laziness, but involves cultivating a relationship with the worldaligned, rather than in tension, with its inner workings. Part of this involves thecultivation of ones own bodily self (Kirkland, 2004: 202), and Webers (1964:191) analysis of Taoist culture refers to the gymnastics of breathing as ameans of harmonising the embodied subject with the principles of the cosmos.

Methods of breathing have for centuries and across a number of religions beenseen as a technique that yokes together body and mind in promoting newlevels of embodied consciousness (Mauss, 1973 [1934]). This process is identi-fied in the Taoist classics as a means of bringing into equillibrium the yin and

yang energies of the body with the natural order (Graham, 1989: 197). Formsof exercise like Chi Gung and the martial art Tai Chi Chuan are intimatelyrelated to this goal, and the Taoist view of energy and harmony is also closelylinked to traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture (which seek to realignand order the flow of energies in the body that become disrupted in illness;

Liao, 1990; Ots, 1994). A final point that should be made about actionlessaction is that while its focus is on the individuals relationship with theirenvironment, it contains an ethics which extends beyond the embodied subject(see also Foucault, 1988). As Chuang Tsu (1996: 83) writes in one of the Taoist




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classics, actionless action is not only beneficial for individuals, but involves aregard for the physical and thesocial body that is the best course for governorsof the world (see also Kirkland, 2004: 208).

If the cultivation of actionless action and its various techniques constitutethe central body pedagogic means through which Taoist culture is transmitted,

we can characterise the major experience associated with this form of learningas being; a process in which embodied subjects achieve the sense of an increas-ing connection to, and interdependence with their surroundings. Weber (1964:182) describes this somewhat dismissively as contemplative mysticism, buthis interpretation is based on a contestable view that the march of scientificreason leads to the inevitable disenchantment of the world. Webers interpre-tation also neglects the effects that Taoist exercises related to posture, breath-ing and movement exert on physiological processes (there is growing scientificevidence that tai chi chuan, for example, can have significant effects on blood

pressure, respiration, balance and affect control); processes that can shape thesomatic dispositions with which one relates to the social and natural environ-ment.3 There is a stilling of disruptive passions in the Taoist experience ofbeing, as well as an absence of the egoism that Durkheim (1952 [1897]; 1984[1893]) viewed as an increasing problem in fast growing rationalised econo-mies bereft of appropriate moral structures. There is also a redirection ofexistential focus away from an efficient and productive doing and towardsachieving an alignment with ones surroundings. This is quite different fromthe objectifying absence/presence of the body in technological culture, and

involves instead an extension of embodied experience unlimited by the exte-rior topography of the flesh.

The result or outcome of this experience of being associated with Taoistbody pedagogics is that the embodied subject is turned not into an instrumen-tal object, a standing reserve for efficiency, but exists in a state of immanencewith respect to the environment. This notion of bodily immanence has notbeen subject to much exploration. Deleuze and Guattari (1988) approach partof what is involved here in developing their concept of the Body WithoutOrgans; a metaphorical way of talking about how the relations we establish

as organic beings are not limited by our material bodies. More specifically,the immanence experienced by the embodied subject of Taoism involves analignment with the energies and forces that constitute all social and naturalphenomena; an alignment that facilitates an emboldening of the individualenabling them to develop the full potentialities of their embodied self(Kirkland, 2004: 203). In Webers (1964: 200) terms, the world becomes amagic garden in which people are no longer restricted by the visible featuresof rational-secular existence. Once fully developed, indeed, the belief is thatthe immanent individual will have reached a state that will not be extin-

guished, even when the physical body ceases to be ones form (Kirkland, 2004:189). While there was no transcendent sphere into which all Taoists passedwith death, the alignment of their energies and being with the wider cosmicharmony of the universe meant that the individual lived on. Whereas the




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demands of efficiency characteristic of technological culture resulted in livesconstantly surrounded by anxiety{ worn out by concerns, those able to dwellin the sphere of immanence recognise that differences, oppositions, hardshipsand challenges should be met with calm equanimity as integral parts of exist-ence (Tzu, C., 1996: 149, 18). Having reached this stage, there is no limit to

existence, no reason why one should not be a person who rides the clouds andmounts upon the sun and moon, and wanders across and beyond the four seas(Tzu, C., 1996: 18).

In summary, what Taoist body pedagogics seek to instil is a type of livedexperience at odds with that characteristic of technological culture and, whilethere is obviously no guarantee that this will be the outcome for all of thoseimmersed within this cultural tradition,Weber was clearly right to identify it asinherently inhospitable to the technological rationalism that came to dominatethe West. In contrast to the objectification and commodification of work and

natural and social environments, with their attendant truncation of lived expe-rience (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]), Taoism promotes an ethic of embodied imma-nence. While Weber contrasted Taoism with Calvinist forms of Protestantism,however, more recent Protestant developments offer a type of body pedagog-ics thoroughly different to and at odds with that outlined in his ProtestantEthic.

Charismatic Christian culture

It is not uncommon to contrast the somatic practice of Taoism with belief-centred religions such as Christianity (Parkes, 2003: 201). This contrast ismisleading,however,not simply because of the importance of body techniquesacross Christian history (Mellor and Shilling, 1997), but because of the bodyscentrality to the recent resurgence of certain types of Christianity. Indeed, akey feature of the late twentieth century development of charismatic culturesof Christianity (centred on intense experiences of being filled with the HolySpirit, manifest in speaking in tongues, sacred swoons and gifts of healing),

which has grown so rapidly that there have even been claims of a newreformation (Cox, 1995), is the spread of similar forms of embodiment acrossotherwise very different societies (Beckford, 2003: 207; Mellor, 2007).

While sometimes dismissed as a distinctively modern form of worship,devoid of traditional foundations, charismatic spirit possession, trances andother altered states of consciousness have been traced not only to the pente-costal Christian churches of the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible, but to Jesushimself (Davies, 1994). In direct contrast to the asceticism of Webers Puritans,charismatic Christianity encourages individuals to find God through all five

senses (Poewe, 1994: 249; Coleman, 2000: 68). As Jonathan Edwardss Treatiseon Religious Affections (a text which exerted a decisive influence on modernevangelical, pentecostal and charismatic churches) notes, true religion is notjust a matter of mind, but a matter of heart based on experiences approximat-




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ing to palpable sensations (Schrder, 2000: 1940). The foundation for thisexperiential focus is an intensely emotional encounter with Christ and theHoly Spirit.

The primary body pedagogic means through which charismatic Christianityis transmitted is that ofcommunion. Communion refers here not to the pro-

cesses surrounding the administration of the Eucharist, as in Catholicism, butto a range of activities involving prayer, touch, and song, united by their aimof enabling embodied subjects to contact and commune with God.This is evid-ent in the hugely successful Alpha Course which, after its development inLondon, has become a major evangelising programme across a range ofchurches in Europe and the U.S.A.This course aims to educate individuals intothe basic truths of Christianity but its underlying intention is to create anemotional experience which encourages personal identification with Chris-tianity (Watling, 2005: 92).As such, it has much in common with the emotional

communion promoted by charismatic Christian evangelisation such as theToronto Blessing associated with John Wimber and the Vineyard churches.Crucially, the pedagogic device of communion has to be deployed repeatedly.The process of education into the truths of charismatic Christianity takes timein order that the embodied subject is prepared for their reception.Thus, at theheart of the Alpha Course is the communion-focused Holy Spirit Weekend.Here, individuals have the opportunity to abandon themselves to the spirit,an abandonment carefully prepared for earlier in the course. Furthermore,the weekend itself involves a structured pattern of prayers, videos, and discus-

sions helping individuals to become sufficiently open to bodily, psychologicaland spiritual transformation that they can receive the outpouring of the HolySpirit during the culmination of the course (Watling, 2005: 98).

This pedagogic mode of communion is not designed to stimulate just anyintense emotional experience, however, but a specific feeling oftranscendence.The experience of transcendence is key to Durkheims (1995 [1912]) explana-tion of how individuals congregating in the presence of what they consider tobe sacred feel swept up and overcome by an intense experience that takesthem beyond themselves, making them feel part of a wider, moral order. The

individual is added to, distanced from egoistic appetites, and comes to inhabita transcendent sphere characterised by shared moral categories and emotions.The encounter with transcendence encouraged by charismatic Christianityshares these general features, but it is an experience of contact with a tran-scendent God, incarnate in Christ, and made immanent through the HolySpirit. Charismatic prayer, for example, evokes a feeling of other worldlinessbut also involves the individual in a particular effusion of a soul that attachesthose who abandon themselves to the Spirit to an experience that has beenthe fruit of the work of centuries of Christianity (Mauss, 2003: 33; see also

Csordas, 1994).The embodied outcome intended to result from this body pedagogics is very

different from the instrumentalism of technological culture or the immanenceof Taoism. A form of religion integrated around the key notion of transfor-




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mation (Martin, 1990: 163), and productive of rituals of rupture that seek toreconfigure an individuals habitus (Robbins, 2004: 128), it aims to bring aboutphysical and spiritual rebirth. The body has always been central to Christianpractice. The Apostle Paul, for example, attacked those who lived according tothe lusts of their hearts, thereby dishonouring their bodies (Romans, 1:

246). He also repudiated those early Christians who sought to accommodatethe gospel to philosophical ideas about the transcendence of crass bodilyexistence on the basis that if Christ was God incarnate as an embodied, fullyhuman being, then human bodies contain religious potentialities that can bedeveloped by imitating him (Hays, 1997; see 1 Corinthians, 15: 1219). None-theless, this potential can only be developed fully through a re-formation of thebody involving in charismatic Christianity a religious rebirth. In Biblical terms,followers must become imitators of God who walk, talk,desire, think and feelin a way that is entirely at odds with their previous existence (Ephesians, 4: 22,

5: 1). This is clear in the ultimate aim of the Alpha Course, which is to enableindividuals to embody the attitudes of Jesus and become Christ-like (Watling,2005: 101), while an even more distinctive example of the charismatic Chris-tian search for physical rebirth concerns a painting displayed among theSwedish Word of Life community that shows Christ with the physique of abody-builder (Coleman, 2000: 147). Coleman notes the prevalence in sermonsof the theme of the spiritual body-builder, exemplified in this depiction, andexplains how World of Life members seek to refashion the flesh through aform of mimesis where Christs body is the model for spiritual pumping iron.

There is a long tradition in Christianity centred on this theme of physicaland spiritual rebirth. Late nineteenth century forms of muscular Christianity,as well as links between sport and contemporary evangelical groups such asthe Promise Keepers, indicate the endurance of this form of Christian bodypedagogics (Hall, 1994; Higgs, 1995; Clausen, 1999; Ladd and Mathisen, 2002).In the Bible itself, Paul refers to how Christ will change our lowly body to belike his glorious body (Philippians, 3: 21) and charismatics understand thevarious forms of communion and the experience of transcendence to have thepower to bring about this transformation. Thus, the outcome of charismatic

Christian body pedagogics neither instrumentalises the embodied subject inrelation to technology, nor results in an immanent relation with the energiesand forces of the cosmos as a whole, but strives towards a rebirth of humanbeing.

Given the immense importance of this religious form in the world today, theimplication of this pedagogic emphasis for body studies and sociology is thatthe Puritan asceticism Weber associated with the origins of modern instru-mental rationalism has now given way to a re-formed Protestant Ethic, bothnewer and, in its recovery of Biblical body symbolism,older than the model he

envisaged. The fact that this religious form is, perhaps, uniquely comfortablewith the evangelical deployment of technology (Noll, 2001), yet thoroughlycommitted to its contextualisation within a Christian framework, suggests it isparticularly worthy of sociological attention in terms of questions about lived




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experience in societies dominated by technological culture. Further to this, wecan now return to the two questions posed at the beginning of this paper: whathave we lost by becoming a standing reserve for technologically-drivendemands, and can the study of religion help us step outside the technologicalenframing of human experience?

Technology, experience and the loss of Techne

Heidegger (1993 [1954]) addresses the question of what we have lost with theadvance of technological culture by contrasting technology with techne.Techne referred in Ancient Greece to the creative, even poetic, bringing forthinvolved in the skills of craftwork, the fine arts, and philosophy. It entailed notjust the ability to work on nature, materials or ideas in a sensitive, skilled

manner, but the cultivation of bodily techniques and responses within amethod that facilitated this art of revealing. This was reflected in the bodypedagogics associated with techne. In cultures that value techne, the educationof the body is regarded as complementary to the education of the mind andspirit. Socrates and Plato, for example, extolled the virtues of training the bodyas well as training the intellect. Gymnastics and sport moulded character,helped produce a well rounded personality, and cultivated self control andcourage in thought, word and deed (Brasch, 1990).

The importance oftechne went beyond exemplifying a particular mode of

being in the world, however, as those who possessed the capacity to revealthe potential of what inhered within themselves and other this worldly phe-nomena were able to participate in the spheres of immanence and transcen-dence that were the province of religion.This was explicit in the public displaysof physical control and competition in Ancient Greece. The Olympic Gameswere understood to have originated as sports between the gods, for example,and maintained their religious character: gods and heroes continued tocompete in them, albeit sometimes in disguise, and the Games were structuredon the basis of sacred oaths, prayers and dedications (Golden, 1998). The

Games thus possessed elements of both the immanent and the transcendent.More generally, techne involved a cultivation of the body which facilitatedcontact with the sphere of creation in the same way as did poetic processes ofbringing forth involving other raw materials.As Heidegger (1993 [1954]: 339)put it, such creativity could help illuminate the presence of the gods and thedialogue of divine and human destinies.

Heidegger emphasises that while techne has historically been key to manycultures, contemporary technology sought to eradicate it. The potential expe-riential effects of this become clear if we compare the body pedagogics of

technological culture with those of Taoism and charismatic Christianity. Whatdistinguishes the former from the latter above all else is that technologicalculture seeks to exclude individuals from contact with either transcendence orimmanence. Technological culture seals the world within a self-referential




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frame in which instrumental efficiency is the criterion for action. Never havehumans been able to manage and manipulate so much.The problem with this,for Weber (1948 [1919b]), was that the instrumental rationality of technologi-cal culture eroded values and left individuals struggling with existential ques-tions of ultimate meaning. This fate was not just to do with the absence of a

religious framework of values or cognitive meaning systems, however, butinvolved a qualitative difference in lived experiences, a diminution of embodiedpotentialities in terms of experiences of transcendence and immanence.

Taoism, in contrast, seeks through its body pedagogics to cultivate anadjustment and interdependence that situates people as an integral part of aharmonic order. Embodied subjects are not instrumentalised in terms of thedemands of efficiency, and avoid objectification, but develop an immanentrelation with the energies and forces that infuse and surround them. In termsof Heideggers discussion of techne, individuals cultivate within their bodily

selves a relationship to the environment which adds to them by aligning themwith their surroundings.Though very different in terms of its body pedagogicsand aims, charismatic Christianity is similar to Taoism in reaching beyondtechnological rationalism. Within its Trinitarian theological anthropology,Christianity seeks to do this through communing with a transcendent Godwho has become incarnate in His creation as Christ and immanent now, incertain prescribed bodily contexts, as the Holy Spirit. Again, the technologicalinstrumentalism of the embodied subject is rejected as basis for life, and actionis oriented towards the imitation of Christ. Like Taoism, the embodied per-

sonality within charismatic Christianity is added to, receiving eternal truthsand working towards a perfection of bodily being through religious rebirth. Incomparison, technological culture may have achieved unprecedented materialsuccess, but it endangers the individual with an emphasis on a pervasiveinstrumental rationalism that erodes the creative embodied potentialitiesunderpinning techne.

Conclusion

In highlighting the specificity of modern technological culture, we have exam-ined its characteristic body pedagogics and compared these with the contrast-ing pedagogic means, experiences and outcomes of two religious cultures. Thisideal typical analysis obviously simplifies the many differences and varietieswithin cultures, and it is only possible to examine certain issues associated withthe embodied transmission of these cultures within the constraints of onepaper. The whole issue of those subsidiary or non-typical means, experiencesand outcomes involved in cultural transmission and cultural transformation,

for example, are important issues for further exploration. So too are issuesregarding the precise manner in which the means, experiences and outcomesof particular body pedagogics result in cultural reproduction or transforma-tion. Nevertheless, the notion of body pedagogics provides us with a useful,




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provocative and corporeally sensitive way of examining cultural issues thatbuilds on recent work in the sociology of the body. In particular, it has enabledus to throw into sharp relief the bodily consequences of technological culture,and provide a comparative dimension to the question of what embodiedsubjects have lost experientially in this culture.

This is an important issue which has not been investigated by those studiesof the body that exhibit a technological rationality of their own (by portrayinghumans as body-machine assemblages; Galison, 1994; Balsamo, 2000), or evenincorporate at their centre a technological enframing portraying humans asa standing reserve (eg Butlers [1990, 1993] view of individuals as hailed topre-set subject positions within a heterosexual matrix views people as analways available resource for a sexual culture predicated on binary opposi-tions). Such writings constitute more of a reflection of technological culturethan reasoned critical analyses of it. Focusing on culturally different body

pedagogics, in contrast, not only provides us with an alternative way of explor-ing this issue, attentive to the different ways in which lived experience can beconstituted, but raises important questions about the interrelationshipsbetween contemporary technological and religious forms.

In relation to the religious forms examined here, it is easy to dismiss theincreasing significance of Taoism and charismatic Christianity merely as indi-cations of the need for psychological coping mechanisms in the context of thestresses of technological culture (iek, 2001).Along with the technologically-oriented body studies noted above, however, such accounts fail to step outside

the technological enframing of human experience and, consequently, interpretreligious developments as reflections of prevailing cultural forms rather thanas challenges to them. The fact that charismatic Christianity can enthusiasti-cally use media technologies to spread its message across the globe (Coleman,2000; Noll, 2001), while simultaneously promoting rituals of rupture that seekto lift individuals out of the enframing of technological culture, means that itwould be a mistake to reduce it to a mere reflex of the modern (Robbins, 2004:137; Droogers, 2001: 54). Similarly, despite fears amongst some Western schol-ars that Taoism would suffer in the face of the adoption of Western rational

utilitarianism in economic practices (Parkes, 2003), the spread of globalisingforms of technology, economics and culture in China have actually led to arenewal of traditional religious practices (Yang, 2000). Instead of dismissingthe importance of religious cultures and their associated body pedagogics,then, it makes more sense to see their continuation and resurgence in terms oftheir concern to nurture types of lived experience that invest individuals witha sense of meaningfulness and connection to others and the world (Heelaset al., 2004; Szerszynski, 2005).

Our account of these issues has necessarily been programmatic, but it is not

only a call for further research and analysis but also for the opening up of anew set of possibilities and research trajectories for sociologists of the body,culture and society. Sociologists have been well aware of the costs of technol-ogy in terms of environmental damage and the erosive powers that instrumen-




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tal rationality has in relation to non-rational values. What we have explicatedis a distinct, if related, issue: a key feature of technological culture is itspromotion of a form of bodily being that can deny individuals experiences ofimmanence and transcendence, and it is the denial of these experiences thathas been central to traditional sociological concerns about the problem of

personality and the increase of anomie and suicide in industrial societies.These experiences continue to be central to a number of religious cultures thatcurrently confront technological culture, and it is the further comparativeinvestigation of these cultures and their body pedagogics in relation to moderntechnology that can open up new avenues in the study of the embodieddimensions of contemporary society and culture.

University of Portsmouth

University of Leeds

Notes

1 In answering this question we treat technology in the modern age as one cultural framework(albeit an enormously influential framework) among others. Heidegger did not believe thathuman will could on its own bring an end to the technological enframing of life, but did suggestthat transforming our relationship to language and art could result in a different way ofunderstanding being.

2 It is true that Taoism as practised in the West has been seen as part of the modern andindividualistic phenomenon known as the New Age movement (Heelas, 1996), while charis-matic Christianity has been seen as a manifestation of the privatisation and instrumentalisationof religion (Bruce, 2002). These views usefully highlight the sometimes shallow and self-absorbed character of certain contemporary religious phenomena, but fail to account for thesignificant transformations in lived experience where individuals immerse themselves moreseriously in the traditions, rituals, prayers and modes of being characteristic of these religiouscultures. Alternatively, the case of Islam is particularly interesting and important, not leastbecause of the utilisation of advanced communications technologies in the cause of religiousterrorism by certain Muslims. This, however, demands a much more wide-ranging analysis thanthe comparisons possible in this paper, and is something to which we shall return in a furtherstudy.

3 In contrast,Capras (1999:39) exploration of the parallels between Eastern religion and modernphysics disputes the idea that mysticism is immaterial, and suggests that the acceptance of thenon-rational in Taoism leads to a bodily experience of oneness with the surrounding environ-ment and an embodied consciousness in which every form of fragmentation has ceased, fadingaway into undifferentiated reality.

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