scholarly journals THE CONSTRUCTION OFSALAFIYYA: RECONSIDERING SALAFISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Lauzière

For nearly a century of scholarship, uncertainties and paradoxes have beleaguered interpretations of the origins and meaning of Salafism (al-salafiyya). Although academics and journalists alike are well aware of the various definitions and conflicting narratives of Salafism, relieving some of the confusion that beclouds the term continues to prove difficult. Given that concepts are fluid and relational, this state of affairs may seem inevitable. Yet there are reasons to believe that the current confusion surrounding Salafism is in part attributable to faulty scholarship and that consequently the substance and history of this religious orientation will remain unnecessarily puzzling so long as the production of knowledge about Salafism goes unexamined. In that sense, recent scholarly efforts to remedy the situation by providing deeper insights into the intellectual, geographical, and political diversity of Salafism have produced mixed results, for they have largely overlooked two of the most persistent epistemological problems that are at the root of much of the present-day ambiguity.

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 389a-389a
Author(s):  
Henri Lauzière

Scholars have long struggled with various and even conflicting historical narratives and definitions of Salafism (al-salafiyya), but a closer look at the history of the concept itself—rather than of the ideas for which it stands—goes a long way toward explaining the perennial confusion that has typified this religious orientation. This article examines the production of knowledge about Salafism as a conceptual construct and a typological category. It argues that although Salafi epithets have existed since the medieval period, they did not start referring to a religious concept known as salafiyya until the 1920s. By the same token, the widely accepted idea that salafiyya referred to an Islamic modernist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a historical fiction that originates with Louis Massignon. The history of Cairo's Salafiyya Press and Bookstore, however, sheds important light on the process by which the construction of Salafism took place.


Cultura ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Chien-shou CHEN

Abstract This article attempts to strip away the Eurocentrism of the Enlightenment, to reconsider how this concept that originated in Europe was transmitted to China. This is thus an attempt to treat the Enlightenment in terms of its global, worldwide significance. Coming from this perspective, the Enlightenment can be viewed as a history of the exchange and interweaving of concepts, a history of translation and quotation, and thus a history of the joint production of knowledge. We must reconsider the dimensions of both time and space in examining the global Enlightenment project. As a concept, the Enlightenment for the most part has been molded by historical actors acting in local circumstances. It is not a concept shaped and brought into being solely from textual sources originating in Europe. As a concept, the Enlightenment enabled historical actors in specific localities to begin to engage in globalized thinking, and to find a place for their individual circumstances within the global setting. This article follows such a line of thought, to discuss the conceptual history of the Enlightenment in China, giving special emphasis to the processes of formation and translation of this concept within the overall flow of modern Chinese history.


This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.


Author(s):  
Svend Brinkmann ◽  
Michael Hviid Jacobsen ◽  
Søren Kristiansen

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.


2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-474
Author(s):  
Robert Marc Friedman

The Department of History of Science at Johns Hopkins shaped by Harry Woolf and Robert H. Kargon brought together diverse scholars who nevertheless shared a basic outlook. Historical questions and scholarly craft took precedent over theo-retical or historiographic positioning. At the same time, students were allowed great freedom to explore and develop new perspectives for analyzing science historically. When Russell McCormmach arrived in Baltimore in the fall of 1972, he joined a departmental culture of intellectual tolerance and forthright expres-sion. In paying homage to Russ and the department I illuminate the departmental culture into which Russ entered, Russ's seminars and academic mentoring, and .nally Russ's vision for combining art and scholarship. Russ shared a deep affection for solid conceptual history of physics while supporting our ventures into new historiographic terrain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña

This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.


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