Veronica Strang's ‘Fluid consistences. Material relationality in human engagements with water’ is a highly welcome theoretical discussion regarding the role of water in society and social theories. As a discussion article, Strang's piece opens up a number of fields of enquiry where water empirically and theoretically challenges current theories, but given the limitations of an article there are still other spheres where water may contest dominant theories, and I will briefly address some of these aspects with an emphasis on holy water.
Strang's point of departure is current social theories challenging Cartesian dualisms, the apparent polarization between material-culture analyses and more phenomenological approaches, and the question of agency: whether things (in this case water) may have an agency on their own or whether agency is resulting from a combination of people and things. One problem with the above-mentioned theories and theorists is that they all in varying degrees work within the sociological tradition of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), who stated that in the social and human sciences social facts can only be explained by other social variables (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1966). C.P. Snow (Reference Snow1966) described this scientific divide as ‘two cultures’ – a universe of humanities as opposed to the natural sciences. Although material-culture studies and, for instance, actor-network theories include materiality and the role of nature (preferably in a modified form),
The name of the game is not to extend subjectivity to things, to treat humans like objects, to take machines for social actors, but to avoid using the subject–object distinction at all in order to talk about the folding of humans and nonhumans . . . Science and technology are what socialize nonhumans to bear upon human relations (Latour Reference Latour1999, 193–94, original emphasis).
Water, on the other hand, may enable an approach where ‘it is possible to reconstruct, describe, delineate and understand its movement and role in nature and in society and at the same time evade the problems created both by natural or biological determinism and social constructionism’ (Tvedt Reference Tvedt2010, 146). The fluidity of water, always being universal and particular, may open up further entrances for understanding human engagement with the cultural and natural worlds, since water is always culture (including religion) and nature at the same time (Tvedt and Oestigaard Reference Tvedt, Oestigaard, Tvedt and Oestigaard2010). In order to understand the religious role of water, one may distinguish between ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’. In general, ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ are often seen as identical and are used interchangeably, but the terms imply different relationships with the divine. Most people say ‘holy water’, but not ‘sacred water’, and this difference is important. Theoretically, ‘holiness’ refers to the Divinity and what is derived from the Divinity as attributes, whereas ‘sacredness’ points to consecrated items, ‘respected or venerated objects but not the divine itself and not to persons as individuals’. Moreover, it is ‘the holy Bible’ but the ‘sacred books of the East’ (Oxtoby Reference Oxtoby and Eliade1987, 434).
Although a small fraction of all people on Earth do not believe in any religion, and many believe in science, including those who develop social theories excluding the agency of holy water, the majority of the world's population believe in holy water in its various forms, whether they are Hindus, Christians or Muslims or belong to any other denomination. Among the Hindus, the most sacred festival is the Kumbh Mela, which is held every twelve years in Allahabad, on the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical, subterranean Saraswati River. It is a 42-day pilgrim festival. In 2001 it was estimated that between 50 and 70 million people came to this sacred confluence, in 2013 more than 100 million. They shared one aim: to erase their sins by bathing in holy water. On a smaller scale within Christianity, the holy waters of Lourdes in France are annually visited by some 5 million pilgrims. As nature, holy water is the same water in the hydrological cycle as any other water, but its significance is fundamentally different: it works because it is holy. Being culture, religion and nature at the same time, it has agency.
Understanding the nature and character of holy water is essential not only for challenging dichotomies like culture and nature and the Cartesian concept of body and mind, but also for understanding specific practices in, for instance, Hinduism or Christianity. The caste system is built upon notions that water transmits purity and impurity; one single drop of water may challenge high-caste status if the giver is impure (low-caste). Sin may therefore be seen as a bio-moral phenomenon and fluid (Parry Reference Parry1994, 127), and impure water may threaten both the body and the soul's purity. The purity of body and mind is the same, and affected by the status of the giver.
However, the relation between ritual purity and ritual impurity, on the one hand, and physical purity and physical impurity, on the other hand, is not straightforward. Holy rivers in Nepal and India are often notoriously polluted despite being the most holy and ritually pure. Cleaning of physically polluted rivers has often been challenged because of the intimate relation between nature (physicality) and religion (purity). The logic is simple, but also challenges Western dichotomies: if the water is holy and has the capacity to transfer and transform human impurity (sin) into purity, it has also the capacity to transform physical impurity into purity (i.e. a clean river). If the rivers do not have the capacity to transform physical impurity into purity, they may not have the religious capacity to do so spiritually either. In a similar vein, if engineers clean a river mechanically and chemically, it might be physical pure but not spiritually, since this was due to human, and not divine, interventions (Oestigaard Reference Oestigaard2005). Holy water has agency, particularly since it is holy, otherwise it would only have been neutral water, but even ‘secular’ water from a religious point of view embodies other qualities and capacities, as Strang points out.
Such notions of holy water are not restricted to Hinduism, but are also found in Christianity. Not only is baptismal water seen as holy among Catholics, offering protection against the Devil as well as enabling divine interactions, but also holy water has throughout the ages been used for a wide range of apotropaic and other purposes (Oestigaard Reference Oestigaard2013). Concepts of holy water also challenge Cartesian dualisms which originated in Christian contexts. With regard to the most holy River Jordan, despite being highly polluted, the Latin patriarch vicar general of Jordan explained in 2013,
There is a distinction between the physical state of water and the sacred realm. From a religious perspective it does not matter whether the water is dense or light, clear or cloudy, polluted or not polluted. This does not touch upon the aspect of faith . . . Pollution is a Western concern, it is Cartesian. Descartes's influence stopped on the northern shores of the Mediterranean (Châtel Reference Châtel2014, 225).
Water transcends Western concepts.
Thus, although just a few brief examples, these point to the fact that water can be seen as both universal and particular, always in flux and always culture (or religion) and nature at the same time, but in different forms and shapes at various points in history and specific contexts. It is fundamental not only for understanding society but also for challenging common theories. The ‘water’ blindness of many of these theories is obvious, but what is perhaps more striking is that they do not hold water, so to speak, when empirically scrutinized. This is also one of the great strengths of Veronica Strang's article: she uses a Western context and empirical material to challenge theories which to a large extent are based on Western premises and horizons of understanding. As Strang has shown, ‘secular’ water in Australia is intimately interwoven in numerous spheres transcending existing theories and conceptions; by including ‘profane’ or holy water, even in Christianity, this picture is further challenged. Thus, in all cultural and historical contexts, since water is always culture and nature and in flux, and every human at every point in time in history has depended upon water, water studies may enable new understandings of what has mattered the most to all people throughout history.
