Religion, kognition og kultur

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Religion, Cognition and Culture

The Religion, Cognition and Culture (RCC) research unit explores the dynamic interrelations between religion, cognition and culture from both top-down and bottom-up disciplinary approaches. Its scientific methodology is explicitly interdisciplinary and draws on and practices laboratory methods as well as fieldwork, textual, iconological and archaeological methods in close cooperation with its partners in psychology, the neurosciences and the humanities.

RCC is a Research Unit at the Department of Culture and Society

The RCC became a Research Unit in 2009 at the Department of the Study of Religion, Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University. It grew out of research priority areas initiated in 2003 (see below) by Armin W. Geertz and Jeppe Sinding Jensen who have been working with cultural psychology and religion since the late 1980s and religion, cognition and culture since 1990. In 2009 Jesper Sørensen was invited to become MINDLab Associate Professor at the RCC. He has worked with the cognitive science of religion since 1995 and specializes in magic and ritual behaviour. As of 2011, the RCC is a research unit of the Department of Culture and Society, Faculty of Arts.

RCC is a Principal Partner in MINDLab

The RCC is an independent research unit at the Faculty of Arts, but it participates in various research networks and is a Principal Partner in the research coalition awarded to Aarhus University (2009-2013) by the Ministry of Research and Innovation which is called MINDLab, directed by Leif Østergaard and Andreas Roepstorff. MINDLab consists of 120 researchers from all four faculties divided into five research sections or streams. One of the streams is called Cognition and Culture and is coordinated by Armin W. Geertz. The RCC is one of five groups in that section and one of the important results so far is that Associate Professor Jesper Sørensen has become permanently attached to the RCC.

MINDLab is housed at the Danish Neuroresearch Center (Dansk NeuroforskningsCenter). The official opening of MINDLab was January 15, 2010. MINDLab is closely associated with the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), to which RCC also is associated, and will become a part of the university-wide NeuroCampus Aarhus. The MINDLab website is contains the latest information.

RCC is Principal Partner in Interacting Minds at CFIN

The RCC is a principal partner in the Interacting Minds – A Biological Basis project at CFIN, which is supported by the Danish Research Foundation Niels Bohr Professorships. The award has led to a very fruitful cooperation with neuropsychologists Uta Frith and Chris Frith, both situated in London. The main purpose of the project is to explore the relationships between the human capacity for minds to interact and the putative biological substrate which enables this to happen. As in most RCC and CFIN projects, a set of tightly integrated approaches are applied such as conceptual reflection, brain imaging data, behavioural experiments, and clinical investigations. Interacting minds is one of the research groups in the cognition and culture stream at MINDLab.

RCC in on the board of research priority area Cognition, Communication and Culture

The RCC was also represented on the board of the research priority area Cognition, Communication and Culture (2004-2008) at the Faculty of Humanities under the direction of Andreas Roepstorff. The purpose of the CCC was to coordinate and profile cognition-related research across the  all faculties. Armin W. Geertz was coordinator of Culture and Cognition, one of the five CCC subtopics. CCC is currently integrated in MINDLab with monthly seminars primarily concerning topics relevant to the psychology and the two humanistic streams.

RCC is Principal Partner in the European Commission project Explaining Religion

The RCC is also a principal partner in the European Commission project called Explaining Religion (EXREL) which is a three-year interdisciplinary research initiative (2008-2010) that explored both what is universal and cross-culturally variant in religious traditions as well as the cognitive mechanisms undergirding religious thought and behavior. Directed by Harvey Whitehouse at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind, University of Oxford, EXREL was a large-scale project involving major centres for psychological, biological, anthropological and historical research on religion. The RCC, represented by Armin W. Geertz in coordination with Robin Dunbar, helped explore the area of religious recurrence and variation. In that capacity, the RCC has hosted PostDoc Fellow Quentin Atkinson (Oxford) and Senior Fellow Don Braxton (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, USA).

RCC helped found the Cognitive Science of Religion Consultation under the AAR

TheRCC was represented by Jeppe Sinding Jensen in the Cognitive Science of Religion Consultation under the auspices of the American Academy of Religion (2007-2009). The consultation is directed by Anne Taves, Religious Studies Department, University of California Santa Barbara and Ted Slingerland, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia and co-director of Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture. Its purpose is to promote the cognitive science of religion in the United States among scholars of religion. It wishes to advance cognitive scientific approaches “in a critically informed, historically responsible manner.”

RCC is Founding Member of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion

The RCC is Founding Member of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR) which was established during the January 2006 conference in Aarhus and which consists of colleagues from around the world who are working with cognitive approaches to the study of religion. The goal of IACSR is to promote the cognitive science of religion through international collaboration of all scholars whose research has a bearing on the subject. It is explicitly interdisciplinary, and the current Executive Committee boasts many of the pioneers in the cognitive science of religion.

RCC is associated with the Aarhus Network for Science, Technology, Medicine and Climate Studies

The RCC is furthermore associated with the Aarhus Network for Science, Technology, Medicine and Climate Studies (STM) whose purpose is to connect researchers and activities across departments and disciplines in the interests of science. The STM is co-host to the evolution website together with Interdisciplinary Evolutionary Studies (IES @ AU) at Aarhus University.

RCC established the book series Religion, Cognition and Culture

The RCC established a book series with Equinox Publishing in London entitled Religion, Cognition and Culture . The editor-in-chief is Jeppe Sinding Jensen, and Armin W. Geertz is co-editor. The purpose of the series is to explore the role of religion and culture in cognitive formation. It is explicitly interdisciplinary and it encourages contributions from scholars in the neurosciences, cognitive sciences, psychology, social sciences and the humanities. The first two volumes Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture and Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture are have appeared and further volumes are currently in press.

RCC history in brief

The RCC was designated as a Research Unit in 2009 by the Faculty of Theology but grew out of research priority areas initiated by Armin W. Geertz and Jeppe Sinding Jensen. In 2003, the initiators together with other members of the Laboratory on Theories of Religion at the Department of the Study of Religion were awarded money to pursue a two-year preliminary project called Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture (2003-2004) under the auspices of the Laboratory. During that period a number of conferences, workshops, graduate courses and Ph.D. courses were held designed to explore and bring into contact theories and approaches from the humanities and social sciences and theories and approaches in what can broadly be called neurocognitive studies. One of the most important insights gained in that project was that cognition is not exclusively about what goes on in the head, but more importantly about what goes on in the social and intersubjective dynamics between individuals. In other words, language, social intercourse, and bodily communication play a causal role in cognition. Our preliminary project convinced us that narrative and the communication of symbolic systems through material and intellectual culture are not just “stories,” and that they are certainly not simply epiphenomenal, rather they play a formative role in integrating diverse processes and regions of the brain and body. We also noted that religion is a very rich resource in manipulating the mechanisms connecting individual brains and bodies with social brains and bodies.

The research group was awarded financing to pursue a four-year project area on Religion, Cognition and Culture (which took on the acronym RCC) by the Faculty of Theology (2004-2008). The project was designated as a key research area in 2005 by the Faculty of Theology. The RCC expanded its program to the exploration of religion in general as a causal factor in cognition and culture. The RCC network expanded exponentially and doctoral students gravitated to the RCC as well as guest researchers who have spent productive time with us. The RCC entered into a number of cooperative ventures with colleagues in a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences; and it hosted four international conferences.

The designation “Research Unit” means that the RCC consists of junior and senior scholars (10 full time staff) pursuing groundbreaking research and teaching on all educational levels, from bachelor to doctoral levels. Besides teaching responsibilities in existing educational packages, the RCC is currently developing Master Classes in English for foreign graduate students. Individual educational packages, however, are already available as well as doctoral programs.

 

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Christian Mikkel Pade

Revised 2012.03.29