Tag: Ideology


Sesame Street, Bears, The Mahabharata, and Ideology

Kyle Ashley is a junior from Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Majoring in Religious Studies, his main interests include music, games, sports, and their respective subcultures. Ever wonder why there are so many different versions of the same story? For example, in the version of Goldilocks and The Three Bears that was told to me by my grandmother, Goldilocks is, for all intents and purposes, a home invader, a home invader that steals Baby Bear’s porridge, breaks Baby Bear’s chair, and sleeps […]

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The Sociology of Individuals

My REL 245 course presses on and now we’re about to tackle Craig Martin’s Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie. So I’ve got some weekend reading to do. The course is asking whether the study of religion ought to be founded on the assumption that the public, observable, material elements of religious life are but secondary manifestations of prior immaterial things — usually called beliefs, experiences, feelings, meanings, etc. Calling this common assumption into question is a […]

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A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 1: General Reflections

A few days ago I wrote a brief post on this site, intended to draw attention to a document that had just been circulated publicly by the American Academy of Religion (our main professional organization in the US), entitled “Responsible Research Practices: A Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct for AAR Members.” (Click here to read it or click here to learn a little more about it and to find the names [posted as a PDF here] of the 10-person […]

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The Dialectics of Identification

Yes, our Department is housed on the second floor of Manly Hall. It’s named after the second president of the University of Alabama, Basil Manly Sr (who held the office between 1837 and 1855). In fact, the president’s office was once in this building, on the ground floor (before the Greek Revival-styled President’s Mansion was built in 1841 and then first occupied by Manly himself), as well as dorms for students. And the other day the building got a new […]

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