Download or read book Historicizing Tradition in the Study of Religion written by Steven Engler and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays analyzes ‛tradition’ as a category in the historical and comparative study of religion. The book questions the common assumption that tradition is simply the “passing down” or imitation of prior practices and discourses. It begins from the premise that many traditions are, at least in part, social fabrications, often deliberately serving particular ideological ends. Individual chapters examine a wide variety of historical periods and religions (Congolese, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Cree, Esoteric, Hawaiian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, New Religious Movement, and Shinto). Different sections of the book consider tradition's relation to three sets of issues: legitimation and authority; agency and identity; modernity and the West.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion written by Michael Stausberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Download or read book Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire c 1450 c 1750 written by Tijana Krstić and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres—ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents—developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioğlu; Tijana Krstić; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sünnetçioğlu; Ünver Rüstem; Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbaş; Selim Güngörürler.
Download or read book The World s Religious Traditions written by Frank Whaling and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to make a major contribution to the field of religious studies while at the same time paying tribute to the work of Wilfred Smith. Although the basis of the chapters is provided by Smith's themes of faith and tradition and Smith's approach to the study of religion, this book stands in its own right as a significant addition to both content and method in the global history of religions. First published in 1984, it includes contributions by Geoffrey Parrinder, Annemarie Schimmel, George Rupp, Ninian Smart and others.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion written by Steven Engler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This substantially revised second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion remains the only comprehensive survey in English of methods and methodology in the discipline. Designed for non-specialists and upper undergraduate-/graduate-level students, it discusses the range of methods currently available to stimulate interest in unfamiliar methods and enable students and scholars to evaluate methodological issues in research. The Handbook comprises 39 chapters – 21 of which are new, and the rest revised for this edition. A total of 56 contributors from 10 countries cover a broad range of topics divided into three clear parts: • Methodology • Methods • Techniques The first section addresses general methodological issues: including comparison, research design, research ethics, intersectionality, and theorizing/analysis. The second addresses specific methods: including advanced computational methods, autoethnography, computational text analysis, digital ethnography, discourse analysis, experiments, field research, grounded theory, interviewing, reading images, surveys, and videography. The final section addresses specific techniques: including coding, focus groups, photo elicitation, and survey experiments. Each chapter covers practical issues and challenges, theoretical bases, and their use in the study of religion/s, illustrated by case studies. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion is essential reading for students and researchers in the study of religion/s, as well as for those in related disciplines.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion written by Michael Stausberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Download or read book History and Religion written by Bernd-Christian Otto and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History is one of the most important cultural tools to make sense of one’s situation, to establish identity, define otherness, and explain change. This is the first systematic scholarly study that analyses the complex relationship between history and religion, taking into account religious groups both as producers of historical narratives as well as distinct topics of historiography. Coming from different disciplines, the authors of this volume ask under which conditions and with what consequences religions are historicised. How do religious groups employ historical narratives in the construction of their identities? What are the biases and elisions of current analytical and descriptive frames in the History of Religion? The volume aims at initiating a comparative historiography of religion and combines disciplinary competences of Religious Studies and the History of Religion, Confessional Theologies, History, History of Science, and Literary Studies. By applying literary comparison and historical contextualization to those texts that have been used as central documents for histories of individual religions, their historiographic themes, tools and strategies are analysed. The comparative approach addresses circum-Mediterranean and European as well as Asian religious traditions from the first millennium BCE to the present and deals with topics such as the origins of religious historiography, the practices of writing and the transformation of narratives.
Download or read book Fabrications of the Greek Past Religion Tradition and the Making of Modern Identities written by Vaia Touna and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-06-12 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking seriously critiques of historiography produced in recent decades, Vaia Touna advocates for an alternative approach to the way the past is studied. From Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus, to the notion of voluntary associations in the Greco-Roman world, to the authenticity of traditional villages in Greece, Fabrications of the Greek Past argues that meanings (and thus identities) do not transcend time and space, and neither do they hide deep in the core of material artifacts, awaiting to be discovered by the careful interpreter. Instead, this book demonstrates that meanings are always relative to their present-day context; they are historical products created by social actors through their ever-contemporary acts of identification. ---- "By disturbing the notion of an easily knowable Greek past, Touna makes an invaluable contribution to critical scholarship regarding ancient cultures and to contemporary theory about ideological uses of history." - Naomi Goldenberg, University of Ottawa "From an insider to Greek tradition, expert in its modern appropriations and translations, Fabrications is an important stimulus to metatheory and self-reflexivity in the study of religion, ancient and contemporary." - Gerhard van den Heever, University of South Africa "Vaia Touna expertly dissects modern discourses on the past, arguing that our contemporary interests don't just color our accounts of the past, they constitute them. A fantastic book." - Brent Nongbri, author of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept
Download or read book Studies of Religious History written by Ernest Renan and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Abrahamic Religions written by Aaron W. Hughes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, the term "Abrahamic religions" has been used with exceeding frequency in the academy. We now regularly encounter academic books, conferences, and even positions (including endowed chairs) devoted to the so-called "Abrahamic religions." But what exactly are "Abrahamic religions"? Although many perceive him as the common denominator of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Abraham remains deceptively out of reach. An ahistorical figure, some contend he holds the seeds for historical reconciliation. Touted as symbol of ecumenicism, Abraham can just as easily function as one of division and exclusivity. Like our understanding of Abraham, the category "Abrahamic religions" is vague and nebulous. In Abrahamic Religions, Aaron Hughes examines the creation and dissemination of this term. Usually lost in contemporary discussions is a set of crucial questions: Where does the term "Abrahamic religions" derive? Who created it and for what purposes? What sort of intellectual work is it perceived to perform? Part genealogical and part analytical, this book seeks to raise and answer questions about the appropriateness and usefulness of employing "Abrahamic religions" as a vehicle for understanding and classifying data. In so doing, Abrahamic Religions can be taken as a case study that examines the construction of categories within the academic study of religion, showing how the categories we employ can become more an impediment than an expedient to understanding.
Download or read book The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul written by Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato's doctrine of the soul, its immaterial nature, its parts or faculties, and its fate after death (and before birth) came to have an enormous influence on the great religious traditions that sprang up in late antiquity, beginning with Judaism (in the person of Philo of Alexandria), and continuing with Christianity, from St. Paul on through the Alexandrian and Cappadocian Fathers to Byzantium, and finally with Islamic thinkers from Al-kindi on. This volume, while not aspiring to completeness, attempts to provide insights into how members of each of these traditions adapted Platonist doctrines to their own particular needs, with varying degrees of creativity.
Download or read book Religious Diversity Today written by Jean-Guy A. Goulet and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 1003 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful three-volume set examines faith through the social and cultural perspective of anthropology, sociology, and religious studies, shedding light on the role of religion in the human experience. Why is human suffering and the existence of evil part of the human experience? How does religious doctrine establish one's identity? In what ways does religion interact with and shape the social order? This thought-provoking work ponders these questions and explores the concept of religion from various perspectives: as a tool for self and community-based spiritual awareness, as a set of practices that translates faith into interaction with others, and as a cornerstone of society for those who seek to harness—or hinder—its influence. Written in accessible and inviting language, each volume focuses on a particular dimension of religion. The first book examines religious experience in the modern world and explores suffering in religious faiths, the second volume centers around ritual and pilgrimage, and the last book analyzes the controversial relationship between religion and societies. The content features such thought-provoking topics as death and green burials, sexuality and sex trade, and how and why evil manifests in the human experience.
Download or read book Domus Bolezlai Values and social identity in dynastic traditions of medieval Poland c 966 1138 written by Przemyslaw Wiszewski and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the middle of the 10th century and the middle of the 12th century both the cultural and the national identities of the Poles were formed. They were determined by political decisions made by the rulers from the Piast ruling house and built on a framework consisting of stories focused on the Piasts’ past. In all of this a dynastic tradition supported by the current ruler and his entourage was created and re-created. Tradition was understood as communication, the aim of which was to transmit values which define ways of perceiving the world by those people who accept this tradition as their own – by the Poles. The aim of the work is to seek traces of these traditions and values still alive in Polish culture.
Download or read book Text Context and Performance written by James A. Kapaló and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Past scholarship on the Gagauz people has focused on their ethnic origins and the tension between their Christian faith and Turkish linguistic identity. This study, based on extensive fieldwork in the Republic of Moldova, approaches the problem of this central dichotomy in Gagauz identity through the lens of daily religious practices. This empirical approach reveals how scholarly discourses on ‘folk religion’ guide the local fieldworker’s identification of what are ‘folk’ religious practices and thus actualises 'folk religion' in a given context.The book offers a fresh methodological perspective on ‘folk religion’ as discourse and object of study and is the first monograph in a Western European language on the religion, history and identity of this under-studied European people.
Download or read book Sikh Diaspora written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sikh Diaspora: Theory, Agency, and Experience is a collection of essays offering new insights into the diverse experiences of Sikhs beyond the Punjab. Moving beyond migration history and global in their scope, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological approaches to engage with diaspora theory, agency, space, social relations, and aesthetics. Rich in substantive content, these essays offer critical reflections on the concept of diaspora, and insight into key features of Sikh experience including memory, citizenship, political engagement, architecture, multiculturalism, gender, literature, oral history, kirtan, economics, and marriage.
Download or read book Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion written by International Association for the History of Religions. Congress and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2000 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the adjunct proceedings on methodology from the XVIIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, held in Mexico City in 1995. Taken together, the essays present a thorough and coherent perspective on studying religion as an item of human culture.
Download or read book Mediating Faiths written by Guy Redden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations. Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the very latest social and cultural developments in the environments in which it exists. They raise fundamental questions concerning new media and religious expression, religious youth cultures, the links between spirituality, personal development and consumer culture, and contemporary intersections of religion, identity and politics. Together the chapters demonstrate how belief in the superempirical is negotiated relative to secular concerns in the twenty-first century.
