Theory and Method in the Study of Religion : Twenty Five Years On.
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Theory and Method are two words that cause considerable consternation in the academic study of religion. Although everyone claims to be aware of and to engage them, the fact of the matter is that they remain poorly understood. Some see the terms as irritants that get in the way of data interpretation and translation. Others may invoke them sporadically to appear in vogue but then return quickly and myopically to their material and with little concern for the larger issues that such terms raise. To contribute to these debates, the present volume reproduces select articles from Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR) from the first 25 volumes of the journal, and allows a group of younger scholars to introduce and review them, asking if the issues raised are still relevant to the field. Read the Inaugural Editorial now, please click here .
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List of ContributorsIndex. :
1 online resource (314 pages) :
9789004257573 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Making religion : theory and practice in the discursive study of religion /
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Discursive approaches to the study of religion have received a lot of attention recently. Making Religion brings together leading theorists in the field who explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of the analysis of religious discourse. The volume provides an overview of current debates in the field, extends and improves upon contemporary theories and methodologies, and contributes to the discipline more broadly by flagging the importance of this emerging field of research. The combination of theoretical reflection and practical application of discourse analysis as a tool to study religion opens up new perspectives for future research.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004309180 :
2214-3270 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A new approach to religious orientation : the commitment-reflectivity circumplex /
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The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex (CRC) model of religious orientation is introduced and the results from a series of model testing experiments are reviewed. The CRC model was developed through a series of studies in the United States and Romania and was created in an effort to reduce the theoretical and empirical difficulties associated with the traditional Allportian religious orientation models and measures. Toward this end, the difficulties associated with the Allportian religious orientation models are reviewed, along with how the CRC model attempts to address them. Next, the CRC model is introduced and a list of its predictions are given and compared to those of the Allportian models. The results of 10 model testing studies using multidimensional scaling are then reviewed. In these studies, the CRC model, which posits that all religious orientation can be located along dimensions of commitment (importance) and reflectivity (complexity), is found to be more accurate than the Allportian models in both the U.S. and Romania. Based on these studies, the meaning and interpretation of the Allportian measures are reviewed and new interpretations are suggested. Lastly, the relationships between religious orientation, mental health, personality, ideology, and prejudice are explored. In every area, the CRC model, and the measures based on it, show superior predictive abilities to traditional approaches in both the United States and Romania.
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1 online resource (238 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-231). :
9789401209694 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East : Collected Papers of the International Symposium "Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Ne...
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This volume deals with Islamic sects in the Near East such as the Alevis (Turkey), Druzes (Libanon), Alawis (Syria), Ahl-i Haqq (Iran, Iraq) and Shabak (Iraq), which have in common a syncretistic system of belief with a strong Shi'ite influence, as well as secrecy and endogamy. The contributions in this volume focus on the present situation of these communities, their relation to mainstream Islam, their involvement in national and ethnic politics, aspects of faith and rituals, the relevance of sacred texts, modes of religious and social transformation, and the recent revival of Alevism. In view of the new visibility of these formerly "hidden" sects and their increasing social and political importance, this volume provides important information for all scholars interested in the religious and political situation of the region.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004378988 :
0169-8834 ;
Evolution, cognition, and the history of religion : a new synthesis : festschrift in honour of Armin W. Geertz /
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Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis comprises 41 chapters that push for a new way of conducting the study of religion, thereby, transforming the discipline into a genuine science of religion. The recent resurgence of evolutionary approaches on culture and the increasing acknowledgement in the natural and social sciences of culture's and religion's evolutionary importance calls for a novel epistemological and theoretical framework for studying these two areas. The chapters explore how a new scholarly synthesis, founded on the triadic space constituted by evolution, cognition, cultural and ecological environment, may develop. Different perspectives and themes relating to this overarching topic are taken up with a main focus on either evolution, cognition, and/or the history of religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004385375 :
2214-3270 ;
The Question of Methodological Naturalism.
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The traditions and institutions that we call religions abound with references to the supernatural: ancestral spirits, karma, the afterlife, miracles, revelation, deities, et cetera How are students of religion to approach the behaviors, doctrines, and beliefs that refer to such phenomena, which by their very nature are supposed to defy the methods of empirical research and the theories of historical scholarship? That is the question of methodological naturalism. The Question of Methodological Naturalism offers ten thoughtful engagements with that perennial question for the academic study of religion. Contributors include established senior scholars and newer voices propounding a range of perspectives, resulting in both surprising points of convergence and irreconcilable differences in how our shared discipline should be conceptualized and practiced.
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1 online resource. :
9789004372436
The science of religion : a defence : essays by Donald Wiebe /
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Donald Wiebe, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Trinity College, University of Toronto, has spent much of his academic career arguing for a clear demarcation between Theology and Religious Studies. The Science of Religion: A Defence offers a brilliant overview of Professor Wiebe's contributions on methodology in the academic study of religion, of the development of his thinking over time, and of his intellectual commitment to 'a science of religion'. The work is divided into three parts. The first part identifies pertinent connections between 'religion', 'religious studies', and 'science' and why 'reductionism' in the academic study of religion, when properly applied, can bridge the explanatory gap between the sceptic and the devotee. The second part treats conceptual debates in the academic study of religion, with particular reference to the place of 'belief', 'understanding', and 'meaning' in the modern study of religion. The third part addresses the theological resistance to the scientific study of religion and how that resistance can be overcome. Finally, two new essays are included: a critique on 'The Preconceptions of a Science of Religion' by Anthony J. Palma, and an accompanying reply by Donald Wiebe. The Science of Religion: A Defence is an essential resource for both scholarly and non-scholarly audiences alike, and will be of particular interest to both defenders and critics of a scientific study of religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004385061 :
2214-3270 ;
Die Religionswissenschaft und das Christentum, Eine historische Untersuchung über das Verhältnis von Religionswissenschaft und Theologie.
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What are religious studies? What is theology? And what is their relationship to each other? In the light of such theoretical and methodological questions this historical inquiry asks what characterizes the study of Christianity within comparative religion-as distinguished from that of Christian theology? In the three main sections of the book representative texts from the history of comparative religion-including Schleiermacher and some other theological forerunners in the 19th century-are analyzed from a methodological and a material point of view. On this basis an answer is sought to the following questions: What has been the place of the study of Christianity within this discipline? On which methodological principles has it been based? And what kind of picture of Christianity has it presented?
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1 online resource. :
9789004378834
A modest proposal on method : essaying the study of religion /
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A Modest Proposal on Method further documents methodological and institutional failings in the academic study of religion. This collection of essays-which includes three previously unpublished chapters-identifies the manner in which old problems (like the presumption that our object of study is a special, deeply meaningful case) yet remain in the field. But amidst the critique there are a variety of practical suggestions for how the science of religion can become methodologically even-handed and self-reflexive-the markings of a historically rigorous exercise. Each chapter is introduced and contextualized by a newly written, substantive introduction.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004281417 :
2214-3270 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious experience revisited : expressing the inexpressible? /
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Religious Experience Revisited explores a dilemma which has haunted the study of religion since William James. Is religion rooted in experiences? Is religion rooted in expressions? How are experiences and expressions related? The contributors to this international and interdisciplinary compilation explore the possibilities and the impossibilities of a hermeneutics of religion. Combining theology and philosophy with biblical, cultural, historical and literary studies, they examine how religious experiences and religious expressions have been entangled in the past and in the present. These entanglements call for interdisciplinary conversations in which those who study experiences and those who study expressions can learn from each other in order to carve out important and instructive spaces for the study of religion.
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1 online resource (xi, 281 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004328600 :
1566-208X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Method and theory in the study of religion : working papers from Hannover /
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Since the downfall of the phenomenology of religion as the leading paradigm in the study of religion in the 1960s, theoretical and methodological discussions surrounding the nature and identity of the study of religion as an academic discipline have proliferated. The essays included in this volume approach these debates from a variety of angles. Based on a series of talks held at the University of Hannover over the last few years, the essays are intended to be understood as diagnostic works in progress and thus as working papers, all of which strive to point out important problems and perspectives in the field of theories and methodology and to draw attention to the future of the discipline. Using developments in Hanover as a launch pad, the volume forms the basis for further insights into the direction of the study of religion as a discipline at large.
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1 online resource (ix, 276 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004347878 :
2214-3270 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Sacred and its Scholars, Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data.
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This volume of essays is devoted to a careful examination of the importance of methodology in the study of primary religious data. The essays focus on the \'Sacred\' as an ultimate object of descriptive analysis and critical scrutiny on the part of a select number of North American and European methodologists in the study and teaching of the history of religions and its allied disciplines. The central question to which the contributors respond are these: What is the Sacred? Is it a being or a concept of a being; is it a mental state or an objective reality or something else entirely? Can the Sacred be described as an empirical fact, or as a formal rule for religious inquiry? If the Sacred is a valid category in the study and teaching of religion, then what can be said about the antithesis of the sacred, namely the profane or the secular? This volume probes these questions with great care in order to justify a number of ways the Sacred can be construed as an indispensable notion for the study and teaching of religion.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378957
Taking 'Religion' Seriously: Essays on the Discursive Study of Religion /
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"This book demonstrates through methodological reflections and carefully chosen case studies a new way to conduct the study of religion. It focuses on how social actors negotiate what counts as "religion" and how discourses on religion are part of the way in which contemporary societies organise themselves. The present volume draws on examples from judicial processes, media discourses, and scholarly debates related to Wiccans, Druids, and Jedi knights, among others. By analysing discourses on religion and building on, rather than rejecting, genealogical critiques of religion, Teemu Taira argues that the study of religion can be constructive and socially relevant"--
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004511682
9789004511699