C 04: Religious Resources: Achieving and Converting Resources in Central and Southern Asia

Summary

The project explores the means necessary to create, maintain and expand religious communities, using religious institutions in Southern and Central Asia as examples. It will be examined how institutions access those means and how they are used, highlighting the dynamics of creating and converting the value of resources by religious institutions and especially processes of sacralisation and de-sacralisation. For this study the central question is how meaning and value of resources changes in alternating religious and non-religious context. According to the concept used within the Collaborative Research Centre it is assumed that such conversions are significantly dependent on religious ideas, values, and interests of the involved institutions and actors. The regional focus will be on Southern- and Central Asia where important religious centres exist since centuries and where, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, new religious institutions emerge.

Case Studies

The case studies will deal with institutions considered to be representative for three of the major religions in this area and accordingly three case studies will be conducted:

1. The sacred dishes of the Jagannatha temple (Orissa/India/ Lisa Züfle)
2. New Mosques are needed in this country (Kyrgyzstan/ Yanti Hölzchen)
3. The trust Astan e Qods Razawi in the eastern Iranian province of Khorassan (Iran/ Katharina Müller)

Each case study allows the exploration of a particular aspect of value creation and value conversion related to resources. The case study located in India demonstrates how secular food is turned into sacred food, thus becoming one of the main attractions for the pilgrimage to this major temple. In Iran religiously motivated donations to the trust Astan e Qods Razawi are used mainly for mundane industrial and business ventures and not for the expansion of the shrine of Imam Reza. The third example from Kyrgyzstan highlights what kind of resources are needed to re-establish religious institutions.

Scientific Aims

By this approach, offering insights into detailed as well as general aspects of religious conversion of resources in Southern and Central Asia, the project pursues four closely linked aims:

1. Religious resources in society and economy. The mutual links between the interests of society and market-economy will be examined. This will offer a new perspective on religious resources, bringing their twofold (social and economic) nature and hitherto disregarded dialectic processes to the fore.

2. Religious capital, religious markets. A critical analysis of the ‘Neo-Capital Theory’ will discuss how its concept has to be expanded in order to make modern economic terms like ‘capital’ or ‘market’ useful for the description of beliefs and practices in the use of religious resources in Southern and Central Asia.

3. Conversion and creation of value. The ways and dynamics of converting and creating value with respect to religious resources are studied, taking into account short-, as well as long-term cycles of transaction. The influence of state organisation and the interests of religious institutions will be highlighted.

4. Ritual economics and old age benefits. Based on the idea of ‘ritual economics’ it will be explored how means of daily subsistence are transformed into sacred goods by rituals and how, vice versa, rituals contribute tangible goods for daily subsistence or instigate the production of vitally important commodities.

Long-term Perspective

During its first phase the project will target these aims by examining religious institutions. Initially the main interest will be on local, formally structured organisations and their specific ways of using resources. In subsequent phases of the project the focus will change towards informal religious contexts, especially on major religious celebrations and pilgrimages, as well as on transnational religion-based contacts. This is done in order to cover the whole spectrum from centralised to de-centralised organisation of religious activities, and accordingly from locally to transnationally acting individuals and institutions. By this it will be possible to contribute to the general theories of ‘ritual economy’ and ‘religious markets’.

Impact for the Collaborative Research Centre

The central interests of the project are the construction, conversion and use of tangible and intangible resources and ResourceComplexes. It provides case studies for the Collaborative Research Centre explaining how religious beliefs create a demand for certain resources and cause the emergence of social units, requiring, using and supervising these resources. By considering the mutual interrelationships between religious and economic practice, under state controlled as well as free-market conditions, hypotheses central for the understanding of ‘capital’, ‘conversion’, ‘ritual economy’ and ritual markets’ can be tested and further developed for the analysis of other case studies within the Collaborative Research Centre.

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