Acknowledgements

The initial groundwork for this book goes back to late 1990s and early 2000s when I first read the works of Russell T. McCutcheon and Timothy Fitzgerald. At that time, I had not met them in person; their studies were recommended to me by Veikko Anttonen, whose support has been significant since I started my academic career. It was also Veikko who encouraged me to go to the University of Leeds as a visiting research fellow in 2007 after finishing my PhD. Soon thereafter, I started working with Kim Knott, whose intellectual and practical guidance has been extremely valuable also after our project together was finished. During my years in Leeds (2007–2010), I got to know Suzanne Owen, Steven J. Sutcliffe and Timothy Fitzgerald, who have supported and influenced my work in many different ways. For years, Suzanne has been a friend, collaborator at conferences and in publications, and co-author of one chapter of this book. Already in 2007, Steve invited me to Edinburgh to give a paper at a senior seminar, and later in 2012 he hosted me during my visiting fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. He was also co-editor (with Carole Cusack) of a special issue in which one of my (now rewritten and updated) articles was published. It was Steve who introduced me to his students, Christopher R. Cotter and David G. Robertson. One of the essays here is based on the chapter I wrote for their edited volume. I met Tim in 2007, and on several occasions since we have had the pleasure to discuss our views. His activity in Critical Religion also provided me opportunity to publish in one of the volumes he co-edited (with Naomi Goldenberg and Trevor Stack). Among all the scholars who have supported me in this project, I wish to highlight Russell T. McCutcheon, who has continuously pushed me to collect my work together. His scholarship has been influential and inspirational for me, as is clear for any reader of these essays, and I am also grateful for his invitation to visit the University of Alabama and meet his colleagues in 2018. It was his contagious enthusiasm that me made consider what kind of contribution my theoretical and methodological ideas and carefully selected empirical case studies could offer for the study of religion when read as a whole. It is perhaps needless to say that none of these brilliant scholars are in any way responsible for my views, but the reason I say it is because potential disagreements have never risen above our mutual interest in thinking what the study of religion could be and how to do it in practice.

The earliest previously published article rewritten for this collection of essays was published in 2010, but most people do not know that some of the ideas were penned already in 2005 (in Finnish). So, in a sense these essays tie together some of my theoretical and empirical work concerning the category of religion over a period of more than 15 years, although everything has been rewritten and updated and this book includes a good amount of previously unpublished material. I am grateful for the editors of the series and the anonymous reviewers for their very positive attitude towards this project. I would also like to thank the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki for offering me a short sabbatical and providing support for language revision. I am happy to use this occasion to thank my study of religion colleagues at the University of Helsinki and the people close to me, Marjukka Parkkinen, in particular.

The cover image is from a series of lithographic drawings illustrative of “the relation between the human physiognomy and that of the brute creation” (Wellcome collection). These essays do not deal with physiognomy, although the early modern conceptualisations of the category of religion were not completely unrelated to physiognomy, which provided a basis for scientific racism. More significantly, the drawings made under the influence of that once widely accepted approach illustrate marvellously both the fluidity of our categories and the contingent establishing of boundaries between categories. Therefore, this image may prompt questions about why the category of religion should be taken seriously: religion is a fluid, contestable and contested category but also a tool for raising and maintaining boundaries, actively in operation for the benefit of some, including our contemporary societies. Whether the common traits between humans and goats – a widely used symbol among Satanists – bring out further associations about how our discourses erect boundaries between good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable, in the context of the category of religion, I will leave to the reader.

By kind permission of Taylor & Francis and Brill, Chapter 2 has adapted material from “Making Space for Discursive Study in Religious Studies” (Religion 45–1, 2013) and “Discourse on ‘Religion’ in Organizing Social Practices: Theoretical and Practical Considerations” (Frans Wijsen & Kocku von Stuckrad, eds, Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, Leiden: Brill, 2016). By kind permission of Taylor & Francis, Chapter 3 has adapted material from “Religion as a Discursive Technique: The Politics of Classifying Wicca” (Journal of Contemporary Religion 25–3, 2010). By kind permission of Brill, Chapter 5 has adapted material from “The Category of ‘Religion’ in Public Classification: Charity Registration of The Druid Network in England and Wales” (Trevor Stack, Naomi Goldenberg & Timothy Fitzgerald, eds, Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty, Leiden: Brill, 2015). By kind permission of Taylor & Francis, Chapter 6 has adapted material from “The Category of ‘Invented Religion’: A New Opportunity for Studying Discourses on ‘Religion’” (Culture and Religion 14–4, 2013). By kind permission of Taylor & Francis, Chapter 7 has adapted material from “Doing Things with ‘Religion’: Discursive Approach in Rethinking the World Religions Paradigm” (Christopher R. Cotter & David G. Robertson, eds, After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies, London: Routledge, 2016). I want to thank the journal and book editors and anonymous reviewers collectively.