Subgrantee Group
Religion and Sport: An Ethnographic Study of the Adaptive Consequences of Syncretic Meaning Systems
Principal Investigator: Richard Sosis, University of Connecticut
This project aims to understand how religious meaning systems become syncretic with, or replaced by, secular meaning systems, and the adaptive consequences of this interaction. Specifically, I will examine how sport communities create social worlds that generate meaning for members and how these meanings interact with religious meanings and identities. This research extends previous work on religion as a complex adaptive system and understands both religion and sport as ritually evoked institutional systems in which meaning plays a motivational and stabilizing role. How humans balance encounters between meaning systems, prioritize different meaning systems, and use meaning systems strategically in different socioecological contexts remain largely unexplored areas of inquiry. Moreover, we have little evidence or knowledge about whether syncretic meaning systems elicit adaptive benefits, similar to what religious meaning systems offer. Or, alternatively, syncretic meaning systems may create internal conflict and tension that minimize the benefits typically associated with consistent and comprehensive meaning systems. The research proposed here aims to address these concerns by conducting ethnographic fieldwork within a table tennis community. The project employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine:
The personal and socioecological conditions under which meaning systems do, and do not, emerge.
The process by which meaning systems emerge and how they develop and change over the life course.
How meaning systems derived from sport impact and coexist with religious meaning systems and identities.
How meaning systems derived from sport interrelate with other core aspects of the community, such as its rituals, taboos, moral obligations, sacred values, authority structures, and narratives.
The adaptive costs and benefits of meaning systems derived from sport.
The adaptive costs and benefits of syncretic meaning systems, resulting from interactions between sport and religious meaning systems.