Review: A Phenomenology of Indigenous Religions: Theory and Practice, by James L. Cox

Abstract

This collection of essays by James L. Cox in the Bloomsbury series Advances in Religious Studies could be considered a career-capstone book, one spanning the author’s many years within the profession studying the phenomenology of religion. The essays were originally published between 1998 and 2018 across a range of journals, handbooks, edited volumes, and anthologies in various subfields of religious studies. According to the Foreword by Steven Sutcliffe, Cox has been, “the leading English-language proponent of phenomenological methodology for the study of religion for the past twenty-years” (ix). The introduction and conclusion, both written specifically for the volume, reflect this career perspective and the author’s admitted choice of essays to “contribute positively to critical contemporary debates about future directions in the academic study of religions” (8). Cox ought not to be criticized for considering his legacy, especially when the benefits are as rich as they are in this collection.The essays describe phenomenological studies using historical, methodological–theoretical, personal case study fieldwork approaches. Cox has carried out his own research in Africa, Alaska, and Australia–New Zealand. The major phenomenologists are discussed, so Edmund Husserl, Maaike Bleeker, Gerard Van der Leeuw, Wilfred C. Smith, Ninian Smart, and Mircea Eliade, among others, are all mentioned. A chapter devoted to the debate between E. B. Tylor and Andrew Lang on the origin of religions cautions how current phenomenology can avoid the pitfalls of the past, most especially the problem of “ignoring indigenous agency” (190).At the core of phenomenology are epoché (the suspension of one’s judgments by bracketing them), empathetic interpolation (intense empathy), and eidetic intuition (grasping the essence and meaning without preconceptions), and these are used by Cox to advance the theoretical application of phenomenology, as promised in the subtitle. In a most interesting chapter, he applies phenomenology to the emerging field of non-religious studies. The result is a better refined and nuanced method that can identify non-religion in the “empirical world” and provides descriptions of the “positive content of non-religion studies” (171).But the principal focus of this book is phenomenology’s relevance to the study of indigenous religions, and this is where the book’s strongest arguments are made. Cox makes it his mission to introduce to the field of religious studies T. G. H. Strehlow (1908–1978), a scholar little known outside of Australia (28). He is given a good deal of coverage and two chapters are devoted to considering his contributions to phenomenology and for his helping push the study of indigenous religions beyond the caricatures and “nauseating insults” (32) earlier anthropologists had used for non-European native peoples. Strehlow and his theoretical and empirical methods are used to build upon Cox’s own phenomenology of religion and Cox finds great merit with Strehlow’s “repatriation of knowledge” (205) and its importance to phenomenology, not to mention to indigenes themselves. Cox uses the guiding principle that “if religious adherents cannot recognize themselves in academic interpretations of their beliefs and practices, they are not being described accurately, nor are scientific principles being observed” (221). This is a suitable axiom for any social studies methodology and Cox advises researchers to emphasize “the central place of local agency at all stages in a research project” (225).There are no real shortcomings to the book, and it could be very valuable even to newcomers to the subjects of phenomenology or indigenous studies—most especially because of its historical orientation combined with an exhaustive methodological overview. The description of Strehlow’s life and work is a case study itself, and perhaps including selected photographs of his activities, indigenous artwork, and/or drawings from myth, etc. could only have enhanced descriptive depth. For example, as part of introducing Strehlow, who had amassed quite a collection of artifacts and archival material, Cox might have incorporated appropriate material to share. And while some objects put in his care were “secret–sacred objects,” he also collected “films, genealogical records, maps of totemic clan wanderings, accounts of myths, and detailed descriptions of secret ceremonies” (28). I have confidence in Cox’s judgment and doubt that he would ever violate the rules of propriety. The efforts of his entire career, after all, have been governed by “intense empathy” (1).This volume, and Cox’s career, consequently, lends significant weight to the argument that the phenomenology of religion need not be inconsistent or in conflict with other, purportedly more scientific, approaches to the study of religion. Quite the contrary. The phenomenological ethos is entirely in keeping with that of modern science. As Cox concludes, “one’s ideas become increasingly credible when they respond to interactions with critics and when they change creatively through exposure to new sources of knowledge” (226). What could be more scientific than that?