New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 2. Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches

505 Pages·2004·26.25 MB·English

by  Peter Antes

New Approaches to the Study
of Religion, Volume 2:
Textual, Comparative,
Sociological, and Cognitive
Approaches
Edited by
Peter Antes
Armin W. Geertz
Randi R. Warne
Walter de Gruyter
New Approaches
to the Study of Religion
2
≥
Religion and Reason
General Editor
Jacques Waardenburg, Lausanne
Board of Advisers
R.N.Bellah,Berkeley-M.Despland,Montreal-W.Dupre´,Nijmegen
S.N.Eisenstadt,Jerusalem-C.Geertz,Princeton-U.King,Bristol
P.Ricœur,Paris-M.Rodinson,Paris-K.Rudolph,Marburg
L.E.Sullivan,Cambridge(USA)
Volume 43
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
New Approaches
to the Study of Religion
Volume 2:
Textual, Comparative, Sociological,
and Cognitive Approaches
Edited by
Peter Antes, Armin W.Geertz, Randi R.Warne
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
EP Printedonacid-freepaperwhichfallswithin
theguidelinesoftheANSItoensurepermanenceanddurability.
ISBN 3-11-018175-4
LibraryofCongress-Cataloging-in-PublicationData
ACIPcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress.
BibliographicinformationpublishedbyDieDeutscheBibliothek
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed
bibliographicdataisavailableintheInternetat<http://dnb.ddb.de>.
(cid:30) Copyright2004byWalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,D-10785Berlin
Allrightsreserved,includingthoseoftranslationintoforeignlanguages.Nopartofthisbookmay
bereproducedortransmittedinanyformorbyanymeans,electronicormechanical,including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writingfromthepublisher.
PrintedinGermany
Coverdesign:ChristopherSchneider,Berlin
Contents
PETER ANTES, ARMIN W. GEERTZ, and RANDI R. WARNE
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1
Section 4: Textual Approaches
ALAN WILLIA.\1S
New Approaches to the Problem of Translation in the
Study of Religion ........................................................................................................ 13
GORDON D. NEWBY
The Use of Electronic Media in the Study of Sacred Texts .................................. 45
DAWNE MCCANCE
New Approaches: Literary Theory .......................................................................... 59
Section 5: Comparative Approaches
WILLIAM E. PADEN
Comparison in the Study of Religion ...................................................................... 77
LUTHER H MARTIN and ANITA MARIA LEOPOLD
New Approaches to the Study of Syncretism ........................................................ 93
RONALD L. GRIMES
Performance Theory and the Study of Ritual ...................................................... 109
HELGA BARBARA GUNDLACH
New Approaches to the Study of Religious Dance ............................................. 139
ROSALIND IJ. HACKETT
Human Rights: An Important and Challenging New Field
for the Study of Religion ......................................................................................... 165
vi Contents
Section 6: Social Sciences
LILIANE VOYE
A Survey of Advances in the Sociology of Religion (1980-2000) ...................... 195
KAREL DOBBELAERE
Assessing Secularization Theory ............................................................................ 229
ROBERT KISALA
Urbanization and Religion ..................................................................................... 255
STEVEN VERTOVEC
Religion and Diaspora ............................................................................................. 275
ALF G. LINDERMAN
Approaches to the Study of Religion in the Media .............................................. 305
WIl\'NIFRED FALLERS SULLN AN
Beyond "Church and State": Advances in the Study
of Religion and Law ................................................................................................. 321
Section 7: Cognition and Cross-Cultural Psychology
ARMIN W. GEERTZ
Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Religion ................................................... 347
JUSTIN L. BARRETT
The Naturalness of Religious Concepts:
An Emerging Cognitive Science of Religion ........................................................ 401
DAvIDA. WARBURTON
PsychoanalYZing Prehistory: Struggling with the Unrecorded Past ................ 419
PETER ANTES, ARMIN W. GEERTZ, and RAND! R. WARNE
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 457
List of Contributors ................................................................................................. 459
Index of Names ........................................................................................................ 463
Index of Subjects ...................................................................................................... 479
Introduction
by
PETER ANTES, ARMIN W. GEERTZ, and RANDI R. WARNE
It is particularly fitting at the threshold of a new millennium to reflect back on
what has transpired in academic approaches to the study of religion over the
last two decades of the twentieth century. The summary of developments and
achievements in our field presented here follows in the footsteps of two former
publications, namely, Jacques Waardenburg's Classical Approaches to the Study of
Religion, first published in 1973 (paperback edition 1999), and Frank Whaling's
two volume edited work, Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion.
Waardenburg's Classical Approaches provided scholars with a comprehenSive
survey of the academic field of religion from its inception as an academic disci
pline in the nineteenth century up until the end of World War II, and is marked
by a phenomenological and textual emphasis that reflects the concerns that
animated the field during that period. Whaling's Contemporary Approaches,
covering the post World War II period up until the early 1980s, was subdivided
into two volumes: The Humanities (1983) and The Social Sciences (1985), reflecting
a shift of intellectual and scholarly terrain. While the former was comprised of a
selection of texts chosen by the editor from works not initially intended for a
publication on methodology, the latter presented articles on methodology ex
plicitly solicited from various authors by the editor. Our present two volume
publication, published like the preceding volumes in de Cruyter's Religion and
Reason series, is a sequel to both, but as with the latter, all the contributions
have been explicitly written for this publication. New Approaches to the Study of
Religion thus completes the survey of the study of religion in the twentieth
century with a focus on developments characteristic of its last two decades,
the period from 1980 to the present.
Though many people in Western Europe and the Americas experienced a
kind of a millennium fever at the tum of the twenty-first century, historians of
religions know that the periodization of an era is rather arbitrary. A glance at
different religious calendars confirms that neither Muslims nor Jews, Hindus
nor Buddhists shared the tension of the transition from one century to another
and even less so from one millennium to another. It is thus not surprising that
in terms of methodological approaches, the end of a century of our era does not
necessarily mean a turning point in the type of scholarly work being under-
2 Peter Antes, Armin W, Geertz, and Randi R Warne
taken, What can be described here, therefore, is less a retrospective consid
eration of methods used, per se, than a consideration of the promise of new
approaches that are currently being undertaken and need further methodologi
cal consideration,
The present two volume publication maps the methodological terrain in the
scholarly study of religion in seven sections-as outlined below-with volume
one covering regional, critical, and historical approaches; and volume two
covering textual, comparative, sociological, and cognitive approaches.
A Survey of New Approaches in Various
Parts of the World
Academic studies may seem to be universal in their methods and results,
However, a closer look at what is actually being done shows that these studies
are context-related in many respects: linguistically, politically, religiously, and
culturally.
The linguistic setting is of major importance for determining what might be
considered "new," particularly when considered in a world-wide context.
Philippe Aries' History of Childhood may serve as an example to illustrate the
problem. The book was originally published in French in 1960, and launched an
intense debate in the French-speaking world. A German translation was pub
lished in 1975, and led to vigorous debates similar to those undertaken in the
French-speaking world fifteen years before. Within the German context, Aries'
thesis was something new, while the French were astonished to discover that
Aries was still being discussed in this way. What may be new in one context
does not need to be so in another, or-put somewhat differently-academic
debates do not need to be synchronic. Numerous and different levels of
discussion may occur simultaneously in academic debate world-wide. Even
though English is increasingly becoming the common language for academic
publications, the diversity noted above is not well represented in respective
joumals and reviews because of the tendency for editors to work from their
own frames of reference regarding "newness" and the established framework
for debate, rather than documenting the full range of discussion being under
taken globally. It is necessary to highlight these context-related particularities
to assess "new approaches" adequately.
There are also political reasons why academic discussions vary from one
context to the other. This holds particularly true for Eastern Europe. The fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the consequent end of communist rule over most of
the countries in Eastern Europe produced new academic discussions in these
regions. Many scholars were confronted with the methodological approaches of
Western countries for the first time, and approaches that seemed outdated in
the West were both welcome and fascinating in this new environment. For
Introduction 3
example, a strong interest in the phenomenology and psychology of religion
has recently developed in the academic study of religion in Poland, and is,
within that context, a genuine methodological innovation. The waning of
Marxist ideology has also been paralleled by a decline in the currency of the
neo-Marxist worldviews of the so-called Frankfurt School (Theodor W. Adorno,
Max Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas) in the West. The political landscape
clearly shapes the academic enterprise in an important way. What is "new" and
relevant is context-specific, with academic debate having become increasingly
multifaceted so that it is nearly impossible to determine with any finality what
is "new" on a world-wide scale.
However, political conditions alone are insufficient to describe extra
academic influences on the academic debate. ReligiOUS factors can also be deci
sive,l as consideration of research within Muslim contexts gives evidence. The
contributions in this volume make clear that within the Muslim world a
number of different approaches are possible, from a very religious one in the
Arab world to a laicist approach in Turkey.
Linguistic, political, and religiOUS factors are thus without doubt of great
importance for determining what constitutes a "new approach" in the study of
religion in various contexts. However these are all external to the study of
religion as such, and shape its structure in that way. There is, however, an in
trinsic argument for defining newness in the study of religion, one related to
disciplinary barriers. Specifically, a widely approved method in one discipline
may be totally unknown in another. A great deal of courage is often needed to
introduce a method from one discipline into another. Moreover, it may take
years for the new methods of one discipline to be adopted in others. This is
particularly relevant to the study of religions if we consider the classical under
standing of the "History of Religions." In Italy and France, the sociology and
psychology of religion are not considered sub-disciplines of the field, while
they are in German and Spanish contexts. The tum towards the humanities and
the social sciences described in Whaling's Contemporary Approaches to the Study
oj Religion thus was far more easily and widely undertaken in Germany and
Spain than in Italy and France.
The aim of a survey of new approaches in various parts of the world is to
draw the reader's attention to these context-related realities of research in the
study of religion. The goal is not to enumerate all the different studies that have
been undertaken, or to itemize a list of important representative scholars.
Rather, the task at hand is to provide an orientation that will allow the reader to
put all these studies into a proper context, to clarify what is being done, and
why it is being done in the way that it is. Each contribution that follows should
Cf. Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in the Study of Religion, ed. by
Michael Pye, Marburg: diagonal-Verlag, 1989.