Whose Knowledge? Which Theology? : response to Jone Salomonsen (original) (raw)
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FORUM 34–35: RELIGION, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE 'ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION'
A b s t r a c t: This discussion concerns certain important issues in the anthropology of religion. In recent decades, there have been claims in the social sciences that 'religion' has outlived its usefulness as a concept, with criticism coming from a range of disciplines. Thus it is reasonable to ask how signifi cant and intellectually credible the term 'religion' may be, and how useful to our research and writing. Other questions that may be encountered when studying religion(s) are related to the confessional or non-confessional identities of researchers. In the anthropology of religion, there is particularly extensive attention paid to the personal standpoint of individual scholars and specifi cally to the extent of their involvement with a given religious tradition. On the other hand, among the specifi cities of religious fi eldwork is the high degree of 'agency' of our informants, as expressed especially in the efforts made in a particular religious group to convert the observer to their own beliefs. The participants of the discussion accept the challenges of these diffi cult problems, and strive to analyze the processes of anthropological and sociological description and interpretation of religion(s).
2024
This is the 8th volume of the academic journal of the Department of Theology & Culture, University College Logos
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2016
Making Religion claims a stock-check of discursive approaches and discourse analysis as an increasing field of inquiry in the study of religion. According to the editors, the chapters brought together in this volume aim to keep record of the field and to outline orientation towards new questions and research areas. Numerous contributions originated in the context of the easr conference held at the University of Groningen in 2014. As the title and the introductory chapter indicate, the goal is both to sketch theoretical approaches and concepts in the study of discursive constructions of religion, and to apply frameworks by means of elaborating case studies. Systematically, the papers are arranged in two sections, "Theoretical Reflections" and "Contexts and Cases." A "Response" is given by Reiner Keller, who is well known for his sociology of knowledge approach to the study of discourse. The first section includes seven chapters addressing various theoretical orientations. Titus Hjelm for example suggests a "critical Marxist-inspired" (p. 16) stance in order to readdress "questions of domination, ideology, and hegemony". (p. 15) Stephanie Garling is concerned from a Luhmann point of view with a particular shift of communication in development policy discourses that transforms religion from a potential "threat" into a "political resource" (p. 35). Relations of material and discursive approaches to religion are addressed by George Ioannides, whereas Jay Johnston in her chapter "Slippery and Saucy Discourse" puts emphasis on a "plurality of epistemologies" (p. 91) to highlight the shortcoming of a conceptual dichotomy between "reason" on the one hand and "belief" (p. 75) on the other hand with regard to perspectives on the study of magic. Adrian Hermann reformulates the historiographical endeavor to locate notions of religion in non-European contexts by reflecting on a "'global discourse of religion'" and "'translingual practice'" (p. 104). Teemu Taira elaborates a discursive perspective on how the notion of religion is ascribed or used in particular contemporary social contexts. A sociological and "praxeological approach" (p. 152) strongly influenced by Bourdieu is presented by Heinrich W. Schäfer, Leif H. Seibert, Adrián T. Simoncic, and Jens Köhrsen. The second section of Making Religion contains six chapters, including another contribution by Schäefer et al. Their approach presupposes the basic assumption that "[t]he principle of praxis lies in the 'complicity' between embodied and objectified history-between, on the one hand, the cognitive (emotional and bodily) dispositions that generate people's thoughts and, on the other hand, the social structures that generate their living
Religion, 1987
This two-volume reference work is presented as a `sequel' to J. Waardenburg's Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion published as volumes I and II in this same Mouton series (Reason and Religion). The work is meant to complement thè story' of the academic study of religion in its development up to 1945 implicit in the selections of representative scholars in the field gathered together by Waardenburg. The substance of these volumes does not, however, comprise select passages from key authors in `religious studies', that being virtually impossible given the extensive development of the field since 1945. Nor do these volumes present a unified historical narrative of that `further development' of religious studies. Rather, they contain the reflections of a `team' of scholars, each summarizing the character of the study of religion within the framework of various sub-disciplines, so to speak, that constitute that study. It is the aim of the editor (and most of the authors, it appears) not only to indicate the variety of legitimate research interests in religious studies, but also to show how that variety of approaches interrelate, or, at least, can be integrated so as to constitute a kind of unified theory of the nature of the study of religion. It soon becomes evident to the reader, however-and reluctantly admitted by the editorthat even with this two-volume assault on the problem there is no single paradigm for the study of religion even within sight let alone within our grasp. What unity does appear to exist derives more from the hopes expressed by the editor than from the substance of the essays. Volume I is focussed on `the humanities', i .e. on approaches to the study of religion that, as Whaling puts it in the introductions to the two volumes, transcend the positivism of the scientific approach to religious phenomena by means of the intuitive insight `that the study of religion has to do with man' (I : 25, 26 ; II : 12). In the introduction to the first volume, Whaling attempts to highlight, the contrasts between the classical and contemporary periods in the study of religion and enunciates some general methodological claims that seem to constitute a set of assumptions for all the authors. Five essays follow which cover the historical and phenomenological approaches to the study of religion (U. King), the comparative study of religion (F. Whaling), the study of religious texts and myth (K. Bolle), the scientific study of religion in its plurality (N. Smart), and the global context of the contemporary study of religions (F. Whaling). U. King's essay is more than merely descriptive. It is a polemical essay that argues for a historical and phenomenological study of religions that is more than a narrow, empirical approach to the phenomenon. Such an `empirical positivism', as she calls it, jeopardizes the autonomy of `religious studies' and is, moreover, inadequate to its subject matter. Her review of the methodological debates amongst historians and phenomenologists over the last 40 years, however, is thorough and stimulating .