It’s not news that, over the years, I’ve critiqued our main professional organization on various occasions. I’ve been a member for a while now, and it seems to me that having a stake in the profession, and in an association that one’s membership dues helps to fund, means that one is free to offer commentary where one thinks things could (and should) be otherwise. Maybe we could even go so far as say it’s an engaged member’s duty. […]
I recently listened to The Religious Studies Project’s latest interview, with Teemu Taira, on the category religion. The way the interview was framed, by Breann Fallon, was “where do we go from here” (as Taira phrases it) — i.e., having understood that the field’s primary organizing concept can itself be examined as an historical artifact, how do we now carry out our work? […]
There’s an interesting article, from July 2006, making the rounds on social media. Published in the bilingual, peer-reviewed quarterly, Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique, it’s entitled: “Editing a Normal Science Journal in Social Science.” It’s abstract reads as follows: Using Thomas Kuhn‘s once well-known notion of normal science (a collective endeavor inasmuch as researchers share the same paradigm), the author, Linton Freeman, argues that work carried out in the sociological sub-field of social networks is more closely aligned […]
My early book was cited near the start of Chris Kavanagh‘s recent online essay, as an example of a work in the study of religion that — despite him agreeing that there is “much that is valid in such critiques” — seems to constitute “academic minutiae” that we should put behind us, so we can just get on with our work. If you’ve not read the piece, you should. Here’s the closing two paragraphs. I’d like to focus on what […]
The other day on Facebook, over at the Religious Studies Project‘s page, two posts went up, within a few hours of each other, that made for an interesting (if unintended) juxtaposition. The first is pictured above (click it to read the article), and the second is pictured below. […]
I recently saw a job ad online for a tenure-track position in science fiction or fantasy studies. Simple question: would a scholar of religion be relevant for this position? Buried somewhere in your answer is a theory of religion — what is it? […]
Do you recall the January 2015 shootings in France, at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and how, in response, people worldwide rallied to the cause of free speech, and its defining place in what many of us call Western culture, and thus the right of the French cartoonists to lampoon pretty much anything? Including the Prophet Mohammad — whether others liked it or not? […]
For sometime I’ve been concerned that the American Academy of Religion would venture into the waters of learning outcomes and assessment. But now one of its committees is working on this and its the topic of a leadership workshop, offered by the Academic Religions committee, at the upcoming annual meeting. […]
Let’s play a game Which one of these quotes is from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, writing just the other day, and which is from William James, the American psychologist of religion, writing well over 100 years ago? […]
The other day I received an email asking where, in my work, I think with the category religion instead of just thinking about it. It’s a common distinction; do we, as scholars, use the word religion, defined however we might define it, to name things in the world that we then describe, compare, interpret, and maybe even explain, or, instead, do we study how social actors use that very word in going about their own daily lives, i.e., examining its […]