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Sacrifice as Loss/Sacrifice as Gain: The Work of Ivan Strenski
Library of Social Science: Scholarship as a Developmental Process
The write-ups below crystallize central ideas that appear in Ivan Strenki’s
papers and essays. Click each link to read the complete Newsletter issue.

Ivan Strenski

We once thought of publications as discrete entities: writings within a physical container, such as a book or journal. We imagined that our scholarly contributions were more or less final, even eternal.

Now, we live in a “liquid” world. Texts flows into our computer or tablet or smartphone. No narrative is final. One idea leads to the next. Library of Social Science embraces scholarship as a developmental process. We don’t have to say everything at once. Writing and publication come to resemble life itself.

Ivan Strenski is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, author of 15 books and over 75 articles and recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the sociology of religion. We are grateful that he has made his publications available for readers of the Library of Social Science Newsletter. We expect he will have more to say soon.

Ivan Strenski: Sacrifice means loss, giving up, destruction and death. But talk about sacrifice carries on as if this loss, subtraction, actually achieves addition. Soldiers sacrifice themselves in battle, but rather than count this as diminishment, it actually adds to the social body. By calling a death a sacrifice it is ennobled and raised to a level above profane calculation of individual cost-benefit analysis—to the level of a so-called ‘higher’ good.
Papers and Essays by Ivan Strenski
Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim ‘Human Bombers’
  • PART I: Human Bombers: Suicide or Sacrifice?
    To understand Muslim “human bombers”, we see them within the discourse of jihad, but also within that of “sacrifices” and “gifts”. Suicide bombers act because of their social relationships—whether these are with other human beings or with divine persons. Human bombings are not simply matters of utilitarian military tactics, but are also religious and social—martyrdoms and sacrifices. Beyond their action in service of jihad, “human bombings” are seen as supreme gifts given in the interests of enhancing the conditions of others.
  • PART II: Human Bombers as Sacrificial Gifts
    Gifts are relational, not solitary actions. Who is obliged to accept them? In the case of the Israel/Palestine dispute, besides Allah, it is the imagined community of Palestine that—in the minds of the bombers—is obliged to accept the offering of the death of the self-immolating bomber. It is for Palestine and Palestinians that these sacrifices are offered, who are obliged to accept them.
  • PART III: Nation-Building, Meaning-Making and Sacrifice
    Nations, like religions, are meaning-making entities of a transcendent sort, creating an aura of sacredness about their doings. Not only do national borders mark boundaries of a sacred precinct as ‘tabu’ (as do any temple’s holy of holies), but also the accessories of nationalism—its flags, monuments and anthems—partake of the same religious glow as a sacred being.

A dilemma sits at the center of sacrificial discourse. Sacrifice means loss, giving up, destruction and death. But, much talk about sacrifice carries on as if this loss, this subtraction, actually achieves addition. Soldiers sacrifice themselves in battle, but this doesn’t count as diminishment. It actually adds to whatever social body of reference is in play. So, the question is why and how can sacrifice add to the social whole, when, in the fact of destruction and death, it subtracts from the social whole by removing one of its members from the body of the living?

We need to pay greater attention to the “sacrificial” designations of “human bombings”. In calling a death sacrifice, it is typically ennobled, raised to a level above the profane calculation of individual cost-benefit analysis—to the level of a so-called ‘higher’ good, whether that be of a nation or some transnational or transcendent reference, like a religion. There is no doubt that the Palestinian bombers give themselves in a spirit of obligation characteristic of the gift that I described. Their deaths are seen as a sacred duty to sacrifice, to give up themselves totally.