Religion scholar visits campus, shares views on understanding culture

By Anne Dreyfuss, contributing writer
Posted on October 29, 2007

Students who want to understand other cultures need to go beyond the standard European way of thinking and adopt a perspective based on the way those cultures view the world, culture and religion scholar Barbara Holdrege told a JMU assembly Tuesday.

During JMU’s third annual Gandhi Lecture Series, Holdrege said that it’s critically necessary for students in the West to go beyond their own cultural horizon and adopt a way of thinking that does not put the European vision first.

The lecture, titled “South Asia and the Middle East: Connecting Cultures Outside of and in Spite of the West,” was sponsored by JMU’s Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence and the College of Arts and Letters’ Visiting Scholars Program.

The lecture focused on inspiring students to adopt a new way of thinking that goes beyond traditional Western ideology.

“We must bring the indigenous traditions back into the current conversation,” said Holdrege, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Comparative studies create systems of classification that place Europe at the top and South Asia and the Middle East at the bottom, Holdrege said.

Holdrege is currently involved in a project at the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space that brings together scholars from different traditions to cross-examine the dominant European paradigms and look at cultures other than the West in an attempt to generate a new way of thinking.

“I don’t want to foster an idealized point of view, but that doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to look seriously at these different categories and bring them into the comparative conversations,’’ Holdrege said. `It’s a beginning; it’s an alternative way to think.”

Some students who attended the lecture plan to bring Holdrege’s advice back to the classroom.

“We need to think critically because in our studies we have a Westernized view,” freshman Aaron Branch said.  “We don’t get a good worldview. It is important to break down the boundaries and take a world spectrum view when looking at different cultures.”

Freshman Karima Karim said she already incorporates a mix of different world views into her life.

“I’m a Muslim, but I follow some values from Christianity,” she said.  “I’m already doing it. This lecture just gave me another reason to continue.”

Matthew Stansberry, a senior philosophy and religion major, agreed.

“It is the case that the Western-European standard has predominated the scholarly realm,” he said. “We need to step outside our Western way of thought and take a look at others in a different light to understand why they are how they are.”