Discursive Study of Religion: Approaches, Definitions, Implications
In: Method & Theory in the Study of ReligionAbstract
The article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been developed in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rigorous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The article defines the necessary concepts for a discursive study of religion as an hermeneutical discipline that scrutinizes and historicizes the societal organization of knowledge about religion. This discourse on religion—defined here as religion—generates, legitimizes, and maintains meaning structures and societal realities. The discourse-historical analysis of religion is not itself a method but a research perspective. Nevertheless, this perspective implies several steps in designing a research project that the article describes with concrete examples.
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5
See Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007: 3-34; Rheinberger, Hagner and Wahrig-Schmidt 1997. Rheinberger uses the term “infra-experimentality” to indicate the close links between things and acquired knowledge: “Infra-experimentality seeks to understand the game of producing knowledge effects under the hands of the experimenter, in the under-world beneath him. It seeks to grasp and expose those moments—chains of events—in which matter is made to mean and scientific meaning is made to matter. If we looked for a word that could convey the corresponding methodical effort, the choice would be ‘subduction.’ It deals with the interface between the agents of knowing and the objects of their desire” (Rheinberger 2011: 337, italics original).
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Edwards, Ashmore and Potter 1995: 26 (see also Potter and Hepburn 2008: 287-288; Nikander 2008: 413; more generally Parker 1998). I may add the ‘hand-shaking ritual’ as a variant of this ritualized objection: one hour before a roundtable discussion on “Theoretical-Critical Issues in the Study of Religion” at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Gustavo Benavides shook my hand, subsequently asking during the discussion whether this event was “merely” a social construction without any basis in reality. Unfortunately, this episode is not mentioned in Benavides’ response to von Stuckrad 2010b in Benavides 2010: 209-213.
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7
See Sarasin 2003: 8 and 30; Bührmann and Schneider 2008:16; Nikander 2008: 414 (“Specifying DA [= Discourse Analysis] as a method in any traditional way is difficult, if not impossible. Instead, DA is often described as a methodology or as a theoretical perspective rather than a method”); Landwehr 2009: 100; Keller 2011b: 9.
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8
See Fairclough 1992: 37-61. If scholars choose the linguistic and textual orientation, it may be easier to talk of a ‘method,’ but it also means to limit the applicability of discourse theory. Examples for such an understanding of discourse analysis are Schiffrin 1994; Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton 2001; Renkema 2009; Hjelm 2011 (this may be a reason why his chapter is included in the section “Methods” of the Handbook).
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Discursive Study of Religion: Approaches, Definitions, Implications
In: Method & Theory in the Study of ReligionAbstract
The article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been developed in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rigorous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The article defines the necessary concepts for a discursive study of religion as an hermeneutical discipline that scrutinizes and historicizes the societal organization of knowledge about religion. This discourse on religion—defined here as religion—generates, legitimizes, and maintains meaning structures and societal realities. The discourse-historical analysis of religion is not itself a method but a research perspective. Nevertheless, this perspective implies several steps in designing a research project that the article describes with concrete examples.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1443 | 425 | 30 |
| Full Text Views | 522 | 78 | 10 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 406 | 188 | 20 |