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Religious Narratives, Communication and Social Systems; Theoretical Perspectives on Religious Change, Adaptation and Resilience.
@
Hans Geir Aasmundsen
Associate Professor
University of Stavanger, Norway
Friday March 31 @ 1pm
117 Anderson Hall
Abstract:
The question of what religion is and/or what it does on individual, collective social, and cultural levels have been at the heart of the study of religion, be it within the frames of the discipline itself as well as in anthropology, sociology, psychology and even theology, for a long time. With this conglomeratic tradition as a backdrop, I will present a theory that combines insights from sociology (social systems), linguistics and religion (narratives) as well as from all of these (communication). Apart from clarifying what is meant by these concepts, I ask what the role and function of narratives hold for religio-social systems. This will be exemplified by looking specifically at the Evangelical, and global network, the Lausanne Movement’s emphasis on “Holistic Mission” and “Creation Care”. At the heart of the theory is communication (words and actions, rituals and ceremonies, the material and the symbolic). Communication in this context is the expression of the Evangelical metanarrative and particularly the Holistic Mission and Creation Care narratives. Communication then becomes the praxis of the social system – its modus operandi. Finally, by employing such a theory, understanding the elasticity of the narratives and their potential for dual communication, internal meaning and at the same time handling external “noise”, religious (and social) change, adaptation and resilience can be explained.
Bio:
Aasmundsen received his Ph.D in Religious Studies at the Södertörn University, Stokholm, and is currently an associate professor at the University of Stavanger, Faculty of Sciences of Education and Humanities. Previous to that, he was an associate professor at the University of Bergen. His main research interest is the study of Pentecostalism in socio-cultural contexts, religion, narratives and communication and aspects of globalization, with a particular focus on Latin America and, more recently, on the transnational Lausanne Movement founded in 1974 by American preacher Billy Graham.