Recognizing Religion: Disciplinary Traditions, Epistemology, and History

Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Michael Lambek
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Subject

AbstractQuestions of methodology hang on epistemology. I consider the conceptualization of the subject of the study of religion, arguing that the disciplines that carry out the study and also the objects or subjects of their study can be understood as traditions. I briefly review the conceptualization of religion within the anthropological tradition, noting a tension between understanding religion as socially immanent or as a set of explicit beliefs and practices constitutive of the transcendent. Religion is probably conceptualized rather differently within religious studies, especially insofar as each tradition has formulated itself in relation to secularism in its own way and in relation to, or confrontation with, other distinct traditions, whether of science or theology. Drawing on a meteorological metaphor, I suggest that both disciplines and religions qua traditions can be understood to change along historical “fronts;” these form both the conditions of our knowledge and its appropriate subject matter.

What is Religion?

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bergunder
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Common Definition ◽  
Historical Reconstructions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

Religious studies cannot agree on a common definition of its subject matter. To break the impasse, important insights from recent discussions about post-foundational political theory might be of some help. However, they can only be of benefit in conversations about “religion” when the previous debate on the subject matter of religious studies is framed slightly differently. This is done in the first part of the article. It is, then, shown on closer inspection of past discussions on “religion” that a consensus-capable, contemporary, everyday understanding of “religion,” here called Religion 2, is assumed, though it remains unexplained and unreflected upon. The second part of the article shows how Religion 2 can be newly conceptualized through the lens of Ernesto Laclau’s political theory, combined with concepts from Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, and how Religion 2 can be established as the historical subject matter of religious studies. Though concrete historical reconstructions of Religion 2 always remain contested, I argue that this does not prevent it from being generally accepted as the subject matter of religious studies. The third part discusses the previous findings in the light of postcolonial concerns about potential Eurocentrism in the concept of “religion.” It is argued that Religion 2 has to be understood in a fully global perspective, and, as a consequence, more research on the global religious history of the 19th and 20th centuries is urgently needed.

The Student of Religion as Critic: A Marxist View

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-326
Author(s):  
James Thrower
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Western World ◽  
University Departments ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

That the study of religion can be pursued and, as a matter of fact, has been pursued, from a variety of standpoints - some overt and some covert - is today something of an uncomfortable commonplace to those involved in teaching Religionswissenschaft and Religionsgeschichte in Western university departments of Religious Studies. In thus exhibiting a diversity of approach the study of religion is, however, not alone among the humane disciplines: the study of history, of politics, of society, of art and of literature are equally beset by problems of Problematik and of methodology that take up much of the time and much of the energy of their practitioners. The student of each of these disciplines must confront, both at the outset of his studies and continually throughout their pursuit, questions relating to point, purpose and meaning, and in the study of any of the disciplines I have mentioned - of history, literature, art, politics, society and, today, we must add, of science also - there is in the contemporary Western world little, if any, agreement among those involved in the pursuit of learning in these areas either on the Problematik - that is, on the questions to be put to the material that forms the subject matter of the discipline concerned, or about the methods to be employed in describing, understanding, analysing and ultimately synthesising the material of these disciplines into a coherent and meaningful whole.

scholarly journals Synergyzing Tertiary Education Islamic Studies Curriculum for A Sustainable Tomorrow

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Salako Taofiki Ajani
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Job Security ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Education Today ◽  
The Subject

Islamic Studies is a subject taught at all the levels of formal education today without prejudice to religious background, belief inclinations or geographical boundries. Its study concentrates on the teaching of some subjects like religious studies in addition to other secular subjects like Languages, Law, Mathematics, Science, History, Philosophy etc. This subject has religious and secular topics in its curriculum content. However in the recent times, the number of students studying this subject in the universities has contniued to decrease across the globe and particularly in Nigeria. This decrease has been a sort of concern to teachers teaching the subject, concerned Muslims and Islamic lecturers in the universities whose jobs are being threatened for lack of students to enroll for the subject in the universities. This study therefore attempted to look into the reasons why students do no longer wish to study the subject in the universities. It was observed that students these days would want to study a course which would gaurantee them future job security and incomes. This study confirmed that Islamic Studies might not be able to guarantee this presently because of the content of the curriculum in use. The study concentrated on lecturers who had been in service for over a decade and analysis of the findings further confirmed that the present curriculum of Islamic Studies needed to be synergized to accommodate practical oriented skills, computer appreciation and Islamic financial courses to make Islamic Studies adequate and worthwhile for study to sustain its tomorrow’s future. This would make the subject more attractive and enable the students acquire practical skills which would make them function more effectively in the society without jeopardising their religious beliefs and practices.

3. Myth and religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Segal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Subject

‘Myth and religion’ explores how twentieth-century theories from religious studies have sought to reconcile myth with science by reconciling religion with science. One tactic has been to re-characterize the subject matter of religion and therefore of myth. Another has been to elevate seemingly secular phenomena to religious ones. As part of this elevation, myth is no longer confined to explicitly religious ancient tales. Plays, books, and films are like myths because they reveal the existence of another, often earlier world alongside the everyday one—a world of extraordinary figures and events akin to those found in traditional myths.

LXIII. Influence of Superstition on Vocabulary: Two Related Examples

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hope Emily Allen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Common Word ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Interesting Development

During the period covered by the Early Modern English Dictionary, witchcraft occupied the mind of the average man, and became the subject-matter of literature (dramatic, theological, philosophical, legal) to an extent probably not known in any other epoch. It is natural that such a predominating interest should have its effect on the vocabulary. There can now be described, with more detail than has hitherto been available, one instance in which the beliefs and practices of contemporary charlatans, pretending to supernatural connections, made an interesting development of meaning for a common word. This instance will be illustrated at length, for the sake of the analogies which it suggests as to possible starting points for studying other words. The discussion seems to indicate that elements in the problem go back to learned tradition and at the same time to primitive Teutonic folk-lore.

Clifford Geertz: An Interfacing of Anthropology and Religious Studies

Horizons ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Anthropology Of Religion ◽  
Symbol Systems ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
Meaning Analysis

AbstractClifford Geertz is acclaimed today to be one of the most important theorists in the anthropology of religion. He has approached the subject-matter of religion from the perspective of a humanist seeking to come to an analytical understanding of the nature of culture as an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in a complex of symbol-systems. This approach, i.e., defining anthropology as a science of meaning-analysis, nurtures the study of culture as a meaning-system. Religion, too, says Geertz, is a cultural system and necessarily conveys meaning. Therefore, both culture and religion are meaning-systems and, we can conclude, both anthropology and theology attempt to analyze systematically these meaning-systems. The interfacing of the disciplines of anthropology (systematics of culture) and theology (systematics of religion) is made possible by the utilization of the category of “meaning” as a hermeneutical key to the understanding of both religion and culture as meaning-systems.

Image, Memory and Ritual: Re-viewing the Antecedents of Writing

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kielt Costello
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Near East ◽  
Information Storage ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Economic Tools ◽  
Developing System

This article addresses the visual culture of the Neolithic Near East, in particular that found on seals and sealings, objects often associated with information storage and administration. It considers the connection between those images and a broader Neolithic cosmology and, finally, the ways that both changed as cities replaced villages. The evidence is a set of imagery carved on small, portable objects such as palettes and seals, as well as their impressions on clay. By and large, seals have been studied as administrative and economic tools, part of a developing system of record-keeping in the millennia preceding the first writing. Their imagery, however, reveals elements of a basic cosmology, suggesting a religious context and meaning that precedes evidence of their use in administrative contexts. I posit that a) there are recurring motifs in the visual culture of the Neolithic Near East; and b) the subject matter of these motifs relates to religious beliefs and practices. I argue that to fully understand early seal use, we must proceed historically rather than ahistorically, first considering the primary association between these objects and cosmological concerns, and then broaden interpretations of later seal use, archive systems and ultimately writing, to consider how the content or meaning of the glyptic imagery may relate to those contexts.

scholarly journals Religious Gerontology: trends and prospects in the realities of an aging society

2016 ◽  
pp. 93-99
Author(s):  
Angelina Angelova
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Aging Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The publication of Angelova A. «Religious Gerontology: trends and prospects in the realities of an aging society» is devoted to the history of the emergence, development and also to the elucidation of the subject matter of the latest interdisciplinary section of religious studies. The main problems of religious gerontology are defined and classified, its perspective theoretical and applied directions are designated. The importance of actively popularizing the findings of western gerontologists on the issues of spirituality, religiosity and aging was underscored. The need for such studies on domestic soil is declared, as it can positively influence the difficult gerontological situation that has established in Ukraine.

scholarly journals Religious diversity

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Lionel Obadia ◽  
Ruth Illman
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Conceptual Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Mixed Systems

The subject matter of this special issue is anything but new: religious diversity has already been widely discussed in theology, philosophy, history and sociology.  (Too) many times, however, diversity has been measured against the yardstick of the changing face of monotheistic models of religion (mainly Christianity). Asian religions have stood at the opposite end of a spectrum of analytical models in religious studies ever since Max Weber’s classic analysis of Asian religions as mixed systems of beliefs per se. This distinction is, nevertheless, rather problematic, and calls for a closer examination of the conceptual status of diversity, and of the forms it assumes in Asian contexts.

Buddhist Wizards (Weizzā/Weikza) of Myanmar

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Patton
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Theravada Buddhism ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Partial Truth ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Interpretive Strategies

Supernatural wizards with magical powers to heal the sick and who inhabit the minds and bodies of men, women, and children, as well as defend religion from the forces of evil: this is not the popular vision of Buddhism. But this is exactly what one finds in the Buddhist country of Myanmar, where the majority of people abide by Theravāda Buddhism—a form of Buddhism generally perceived as staid, lacking religious devotion and elements of the supernatural. Known as “weizzā,” the beliefs and practices associated with this religion have received little scholarly attention, especially when compared with research done on other aspects of Buddhism in Myanmar. Reasons for this are varied, but two stand out. Firstly, because such phenomena have been labeled by scholars and Buddhists alike as “popular” and “syncretic” forms of religion, scholars of Buddhism in Myanmar have tended to focus their research on aspects of Buddhism considered orthodox and normative, such as vipassana and abhidhamma. Secondly, the academic study of religion has been slow to develop new interpretive strategies for studying religious phenomena that do not readily fit existing categories of what constitutes “religion.” These two dilemmas will be confronted by introducing and employing the framework of “lived religion” to examine the religious lives of those who engage the world of Buddhist wizards, as well as the experiences these individuals consider central to their lives—along with the varied rituals that make up their personal religious expressions. The reader is invited to think of religion dynamically, reconsidering the landscape of Myanmar religion in terms of practices linked to specific social contexts. After delineating a genealogy of scholarly approaches to the study of Buddhism-as-lived and the ways in which scholars have constituted the subject of their studies, the article will examine aspects of Myanmar religious life from the perspectives of those whose experiences are often misrepresented or ignored entirely, not only in Western academic works on religion but also in Myanmar historical monographs and other written, oral, and pictorial sources. In addition to increasing our understanding of the lived religious experiences and practices of the weizzā and their devotees, this approach to religious studies also enriches our investigation of the complex interrelationship between these experiences and practices and the wider social world they are enacted in. Acknowledging that any lens we study religion through offers only a partial truth, an improved religious studies approach to the weizzā and similar phenomena can get closer to the truths that people make in their own lives: thus, moving further from the contested boundaries that scholars and practitioners of religion place on religious worlds.

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