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357

a wo rd on behalf of the

object

gretchen buggein

Material

eligion

is a journal dedica ted to

materializing the study of religion, but is it also

devoted t o studying the material of religion?

The editors are right when Ihey claim that many

studies of religious objects havei eeninward

looking,

satisfied with taxonomy and description.

They suggest that this older connoisseu rship

model,

one that led to biographies of objects ,

went out of fashion when schoiars initiated

a pervasive theorization, a turn to material

practices and how they shape selves and

communities. But with an eagerness to talk

about practice, have we too impatiently breezed

by the objects? Humans do things w ith images

and objects, but objects also do things to

u s ; because ofthis,we need to respect their

autonomy and integritytheir m ateriality. If we

have n object before us (and granted this is not

always possible), how do we be st make Lise of

it?

in the 1960s, influenced by the new social

history's interest in the ordinary doin gs of

ordinary peop le, social historians began thinking

seriously about objects as historical sources.

The promise w as tw ofold. Pirst. object study

would tell us things about people who had left

no other iiistorical record. Second, objects,

if investigated properly, would tell us things

abcu t human values and beliefs that were so

prevalent, so assum ed, that they were othenAilse

unarticulated. American material culture study

wa s deve loped largely by scho lars trained in

the decorative arts, who wan ted the domestic

objects they studied to domore, to answer

bigger questions. These schoiars, nonetheless,

remained dedicated to connoisseu rship,

a me thod that forced them to study objects

closely, to un derstand their forms, their

articulation, their materials, the d etails of their

production. This method dem anded spending

time interacting with material sources, it also

required that one know something of the

universe of ob jects in which a particular thing

lived.Objects, these scholars argued, existed in

answer to specific human needs, and they also

represented choices, in order to understand

those choices, the scholar needs to know what

was not chosen aswell.

Gretct ien Buggein teaches hu

siudlas in Ctms i Col lege, t t ie

U n i v e r s i t y ,

S i i . ' " ' " '

-'.

feftglon, arc httt:

Mater ia l ReKgkxi vr tume 5, Issue 3, pp. 35 7-3 58

D O I : 1027 52 /1 75 1 83 40 9X 125 50 00 773 00 66

R I

Although definitions can b e fuzzy, material

culture was never so m uch a field of study

as a me thod. As an example of this method,

consider an ordinary coffee mug (Rgure

):

10

centimeters (4 inches)

tall,

earthenware with

a w hite glaze, smooth surface, com fortable

handle, contains roughly ten fluid ounces of

liquid,emb lazoned w ith a university insignia, a

m ade in China decal on the botto m , A facile

treatment of this object might quickly suggest

that the object shows that Americans drink

coffee and like to advertise their educational

pedigree. One could then m ove on to

speculate abcut this ritual of coffee drinking. A

connoisseur, on the o ther ha nd, will first look at

the object closely, notice pa tterns of wear, ask

wha t it feels like in the ha nd, how comfortably

and successfully it does its job . She will wond er

about the choice of this rather than that material,

why the cup is white. She wili question how this

cup might come to be chosen over another, look

closely at the college mctto, ask questions about

global trade, a nd finally, get to questions about

ritual and economy. The proper place for theory

is after some open-minded data collection;

interpretation is built on a foundation ofboth

connoisseurship and theory.

It took A merican material culture studies a

while to find religionlargely becau se of strong

ties to the discipline of history, in wh ich the

study of religion remained mired in doctrine an d

2009

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denom inations un til quite reoentty. But a turn

to the study of lived reiigion elevated objects

to a criticai role. One of the key differences

between materiai and visual culture stems

from the latter's origins in art history, where

recognizing the autonomy of the object didn't

mean acknowledging its social agency but

rather affirming its unique greatness. Except

for antiquarians, historians rarely felf this way

abou t obje cts. Although I generally assume that

visual culture is a subset of material culture, I

do n't believe the questions are aiways the same.

Images and objects don't function in precisely

the same ways. We respond to both through

our senses, but there are important aspects of

objects that are handled and used for material

ends tha t require greater attention to materiality.

Nonetheless, a scholar of material religion m ight

apply the method outlined above to any material

thing:a plastic figure of a Catholic saint, a donm

room poster with a spiritual theme, a Hindu

idol.

The study of reiigion has benefited

immensely from scholarly attention to situating

objects within ritual contexts as material fonris

of performance, signaling the importance of

centering analysis in prac tice rather than the

object alone. We write enthusiastically about

practice and ritual. But the object, i fear, has

become somewhat incidental in this enterprise,

and I'm concerned that we are losing track of

its independent integrity as a historical source .

For me, as an architectural histohan, honoring

the integrity of the material means that when

I look at a building I do n't immediately jum p

to thinking about the dynamic set of relations

between social actors, institutions, objects,

space s, imaginarles, and the sacred. That is the

goal,of course, but not step one. I will want to

think about how the space is used; if possible

to witness people interacting with it. But first

I need to let the building speak fcr

itseif

If I'm

patient, I'll notice things I might otherwise m iss,

and these details will raise potentially revealing

questions. For instance, why is the sanctuary

da d in stone and the education building in

redwood siding? Why do the ceiling heights

change from space to space? What is the

plan,

fabric, lighting of the narthex, relative to

the worship space? Why does the two-story

education wing have fourteen rooms arranged

along long hallways? Then I'll m ove outw ard

to consider the universe cf objects: how does

this education wing compare, materially, to the

one at the B aptist church dow n the road,or the

public school next door? These are questions

commonly asked in vernacular architecture

studies, where the emphasis, coming out of

folklore and anthropoiogy, has always been on

understanding people and communities (see the

journal

uildingsand Landscapes]

I am drawn to religious buildings and objects

because want to understand lives. I begin with

a close study of the material world but tead

outward to bigger questions of practice and,

ultimately, cultural value and mea ning. If cne is

an archaeologist staring at a handful of a rtifacts

that are remnants of a civilization, it is natural,

in fact imperative, to give devoted a ttention to

the details of those things. If one studies the

modern world, however, a multiplicity of sources

clamors for our attention, tempting us to neglect

the difficult but important wo rk of really giving

material sources our attention. Connoisseurship,

I would argue, is foundational for the richest

scholarship that readers of

Ma terialReliglor}

hope to both produce and engage.

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