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Volume Editors:
Martin Radermacher, and
This book includes a collection of articles by leading researchers on the topic of religious contact in the study of religion. Resulting from the final conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions"–one of the largest research initiatives in the interdisciplinary study of religion worldwide in recent years (2008-2020)—this book encapsulates the twofold aim of this conference: first, to "step back" and reflect upon the merits and challenges of studying religious dynamics as a result of intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contact, and second "to look beyond" and pave ways for future approaches to study religion as a social phenomenon.
Volume Editors:
Martin Radermacher, and
This book includes a collection of articles by leading researchers on the topic of religious contact in the study of religion. Resulting from the final conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions"–one of the largest research initiatives in the interdisciplinary study of religion worldwide in recent years (2008-2020)—this book encapsulates the twofold aim of this conference: first, to "step back" and reflect upon the merits and challenges of studying religious dynamics as a result of intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contact, and second "to look beyond" and pave ways for future approaches to study religion as a social phenomenon.
Author:
Abstract
Within the last two decades we have witnessed an explosive growth in born digital data as well as analogue material transformed into digital formats. This development calls for a computational reorientation within the Humanities in general and within the Studies of Religion specifically. In this paper I will offer a sketch of trends in the Digital Humanities, zooming in on the ones most likely to find their way into the research of mainstream scholars of religion primarily dealing with literary, textual objects: Distant reading strategies falling under the category of text mining.
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Abstract
Digital Religion Studies is an approach to the study of religion that focuses on the how religious belief and practices, from established offline institutions and communities, intersect with expressions of spirituality and religiosity found online or other in technologically-mediated contexts. This chapter provides an overview of the development of Digital Religion Studies by considering how scholars have framed the relationship between religion and technology. This leads to an overview of the themes and perspectives engaged within the study of digital religion over the last two decades. By surveying and evaluating these approaches, the chapter shows Digital Religion studies offers a promising area of inquiry of what constitutes religion in a digital, network society.
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Abstract
This paper examines how digital religion serves theoretically to examine the connection between the abstract and the material, two concepts that underline the understandings of digital media and religion. By making the abstract materially present, digital religion allows users to deal with the disconnect between the sacred and the profane, by using profane technologies towards sacred goals. This is further examined through the exploration of practices as they relate to gender and religiosity. I suggest that by focusing on practice, or more concretely, discourse of practice, digital religion researchers can contribute to Religious Studies what was difficult to do before: a non-binary, comprehensive and wholesome look at the flow of religious ideas, practices, rituals, communities, and identities.
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Abstract
In numerous contemporary sources, God is described or pictured as a communication partner of human beings. Although the historian must refrain from asking whether this communication is possible per se, he or she can (and should) contribute to a historicization of divine-human communication. This article aims to contribute to this explanation by examining historical aspects of divine-human communication in medieval Christianity. It is the article’s basic methodological axiom that irritation represents an observation opportunity for such an approach: wherever communication with God was contested, disputed or even fought over, the form of communication in question became the object of communication itself – and can thus be observed from the perspective of cultural studies.
Abstract
This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with general conceptual and theoretical considerations that have driven the Käte Hambuger Kolleg ‘Dynamics in the History of Religion’ over the 12 years of its existence between 2008 and 2020. First, we outline the KHK’s general understanding of the key term ‘religion’. Second, we sketch how we understand religious studies as a multidisciplinary field that brings together numerous scholars from different backgrounds in terms of theoretical and methodological orientation, including historical, cultural and philological expertise. Third, we describe how we aim to study ‘contact’ as a central driving force in the dynamics of religious history via the methodological approach of comparison.
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Abstract
A scientific study of religion depends, in part, on understanding the German origin of that study, of Religionswissenschaft. And, it depends crucially on understanding “religion” as a theoretical object of such a study. Following a brief discussion of these two issues, various approaches for a scientific study of religion are surveyed, beginning with that of the cognitive sciences, currently the most robust approach for that study. The conclusion considers the future of scientific approaches to the study of religion, both by professional societies and by individual scholars with a pessimistic view of the former and a more optimistic but still guarded view of the latter.
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First, the paper recalls some of the main tools that have been used in the work of the KHK. These include the concept of contact, which helps avoid essentialization and reification; a comparative approach, which is not simply applied by scholars, but which religious traditions themselves perform when they encounter each other; and correspondences between object and metalanguage. Second, the paper deals with the distinction between semantics and social structures. Third, the paper summarizes again the four dimensions that underpinned the KHK’s work program, namely knowledge, experience, action, and materiality. Reflections on the emergence of a global religious field conclude the contribution.
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Abstract
Why is it rewarding to analyse religion from a material angle and which future research directions emerge? This chapter firstly conceptualizes materiality in dialogue with incentives offered by new materialism and, secondly, assesses which forms of material religion have so far received too little attention. Thirdly, inspired by Feuerbach’s gastro-philosophy, I argue that food is an existential material form through which humans are enveloped into a grounded exchange with the world. Finally, introducing a collection of “hungry” legba-figures in the Übersee-Museum Bremen, Germany, I call attention to feeding spirits as a prime religious practice. Religion should be rethought from the stomach.