26.09.2019
Pamela E. Klassen - Public Lecture as part of the International Summer School „Problematizing Morality. Ethnographic Approaches to the Normative Dimensions of Everyday Life“
Thursday, 26.09.2019, 18:00
Pamela E. Klassen - Ceremonial Morality: What a History of Oath-Making Reveals about Practices of Living in a Good Way
A dominant strand of Christian theology has defined morality as biblically-rooted in Mosaic law, distinguishing it from “ceremonial” and “civic or judicial” laws also found in the Hebrew Bible. This theological view has had significant effects on definitions and policing of religion and ceremony in British colonial jurisdictions including North America and India. In this talk, Pamela Klassen conjoins the ceremonial and the moral with a specific focus on the lasting practice of oath-making in colonial secular jurisdictions. Informed by the work of scholars of religion and law such as Robert Yelle and scholars of law and Indigenous studies such as John Borrows, she considers oaths as a site at which “secular” politics and “religious” commitments commingle in the performance of ceremonial morality.
The International Summer School is jointly organized by members of the Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology, the Collaborative Research Center 923 "Threatened Order - Societies under Stress", and the Department of Sociology. It is funded by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Tübingen (ZUK 63), the University’s Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, and Universitätsbund Tübingen e.V.
Public Lectures at Schloss Hohentübingen (Hörsaal Klassische Archäologie/Ernst von Sieglin)