D Chidester
Biographic Data
| ID | 11464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Chidester |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Chidester |
| SIGNATURE | CHIDESTER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2957-8669 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Ani̇mi̇zm
Antropolog E. B. Tylor (1832-1917) tarafından icat edilen "animizm" terimi bir din değil din teorisi türünü ifade eder. Tylor, dinin asgari tanımını "ruhsal varlıklara inanç" olarak ileri sürerek dinsel inancın cansız nesnelere yaşam, ruh veya güç atfetme şeklindeki ilkel yanılgıdan kaynaklandığını savunur. Animizm, her ne kadar genellikle akademik din araştırmalarında doğa olaylarının ruh ve gücü olduğunu düşünen yerli halkın inanç sistemlerini …
Already there: Categories, Formations, and Circulations in the Future of the Study of Religion
Like music, the study of religion moves into the future through decoration, development and transformation of what is already there. The future of the study of religion, which is already present in recent research on material religion, lies in the modulation of basic categories, the reconfiguration of contexts as formations, and the tracking of religion-like circulations through many fields. This essay highlights recent publications that exemplif…
Space
After a brief review of theoretical literature on space in the study of religion, this chapter illustrates the production of religious space through examples drawn from Africa and India. Theories of religious space can be divided between those that focus on poetic meaning, political power, or material production. Examples from Africa illustrate how religious space can be based on structural oppositions, such as the indigenous opposition between h…
Oceans
This chapter explores the circulations of religion across vast bodies of water. With special attention to the work of Charles H. Long, who has been a cartographer of oceans in the study of religion, this chapter highlights relations and mediations between land and sea. Returning to the fetish and the cargo and placing these contested material objects within the world produced by oceans, the materiality of religion is situated within changing rela…
Consuming Religion, by KATHRYN Lofton
Going through the last few years of Sociology of Religion, I am struck by the disjuncture between the general run of articles and some of the books—the groundbreaking, game-changing books about religion—that are given attention through published reviews. My impression, perhaps posed too starkly here, is that there is a disconnection between these disruptive books and articles pursuing “normal” science in the sociology of religion, articles that f…
Religion: Material Dynamics
Time
Reviewing theoretical approaches to religious time, this chapter illustrates mythic and ritual productions of time with examples from India and Africa. Classic theories of religious time emphasize either subjective experience, social cohesion, or sacred renewal. Ritual produces regularities—simultaneous, sequential, and hierarchical—that are coordinated by clocks and calendars. Two basic ways of producing religious time, ancestral and mythic, rep…
Sacred
This chapter examines a category, “that which is set apart,” which has been crucial for the Durkheimian tradition in the study of religion. Separated from the ordinary, the everyday, or the profane, the sacred is set apart in such a way that it is central to social formations. Exploring the dynamics of the sacred by viewing Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, which takes us from Christian hair styling to Hindu temple rituals, this chapter shows h…
Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion
Religions of South Africa (Routledge Revivals)
African religion Christian missions Protestant churches independent churches religious pluralism religious legitimation religious liberation
The accidental, ambivalent, and useless sacred
(2014). The accidental, ambivalent, and useless sacred. Material Religion: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 239-240
Colonialism and religion
As critical research on religion, the study of colonialism and religion directs attention to religious creativity within the asymmetrical power relations of contact zones, intercultural relations, and diasporic circulations. Taking the imperial ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as a point of departure, this article recalls how the drama of the colonizing Prospero and the colonized Caliban has been a template for analyzing religion under coloni…
Wild religion: Tracking the sacred in South Africa
Thinking Black
Often invoked as providing the genealogy of the study of religion, British imperial comparative religion entailed a triple mediation in which imperial theorists derived indigenous data through colonial middlemen. Focusing on the circulation of Africana religions in this enterprise, I examine the work of three South African scholars—the Zulu philologist uNemo (1865–1953), the Tswana historian S. M. Molema (1891–1965), and the Zulu dramatist and st…
An Author Meets His Critics
Good teaching is a craft. It requires constant honing. While perfection eludes most of us most of the time, our best days are intellectually generative, meaningful, and often quite fun. I intend this essay as a gesture in that same spirit
Sacred
Darwin's Dogs: Animals, Animism, and the Problem of Religion
Research Article| July 01 2009 DARWIN'S DOGS: Animals, Animism, and the Problem of Religion David Chidester David Chidester Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2009) 92 (1-2): 51–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/41179238 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation David Chidester; DARWIN'S DOGS: Animals, Animism, and the Problem of Religion. Soundings: An Inte…
Unity in Diversity: Religion Education and Public Pedagogy in South Africa
On 12 September 2003, Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, presented to Parliament South Africa's new national policy on religion and education. Breaking with the confessional religious instruction of the past, the policy established a new educational agenda for teaching and learning about religion, religions, and religious diversity in South African schools. Although this policy was the focus of many years of educational debate and religious cont…
Dreaming in the Contact Zone: Zulu Dreams, Visions, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century South Africa
In Primitive Culture (1871), E. B. Tylor supported his theory of religion, animism, by referring to reports about "savage" dreams. Citing Henry Callaway's Religious System of the Amazulu (1868-1870), Tylor invoked the dreams of a Zulu diviner, a "professional seer" who becomes a "house of dreams," as a classic example of animism because "phantoms are continually coming to talk to him in his sleep." In the original account, however, these spirits …
Engaging the wildness of things
Zulu dreamscapes: Senses, Media, and Authentication in Contemporary Neo-Shamanism
Reinterpreting indigenous traditions under globalizing conditions, Zulu neo-shamans have developed new religious discourses and practices for engaging dreams, visions, and extraordinary spiritual experiences. Dreams, which we might assume are immaterial, are interpreted through the senses, electronic media, and material entailments that require embodied practices of sacrificial exchange and ancestral orientation. Accordingly, in Zulu neo-shamanis…
African Christian Communities
Religion Education and the Transformational State in South Africa
In 2003, after more than 10 years of policy debate and public controversy, the South African minister of education announced a new policy for religion and education that distinguished between religious interests, which are best served by religious communities, and educational objectives for teaching and learning about religion, religions, and religious diversity that should be served by the curriculum of public schools. This article locates South…
Atlantic Community, Atlantic World: Anti-Americanism between Europe and Africa
A recent editorial in a South African newspaper made the surprising proposal that U.S. President George W. Bush should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but only on the ironic basis that his administration's military adventures had given war a bad name all over the world. “Not since Adolf Hitler,” the editor Ferial Haffajee observed, “has a world leader done so much to tarnish the reputation of war and warmongering.”1 So, there is one international …
Fake Religion: Ordeals of Authenticity in the Study of Religion
Material Terms for the Study of Religion
Material Terms for the Study of Religion Get access Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Edited by Mark C. Taylor. University of Chicago Press, 1998. 423 pages. Paper, $18.00. David Chidester David Chidester Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape TownRondebosch 7700, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar …
Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse
Word and Light brings religious discourse back to its senses in this provocative examination of the importance of sight and sound to religious symbols, myths, rituals, and traditions. The book examines the unexpected implications of three theses. First, religious symbols, particularly the perceptual symbols of word and light, are grounded in the senses of hearing and seeing. Second, the senses of sight and hearing generate different ranges of sym…
Zulu dreamscapes: Senses, Media, and Authentication in Contemporary Neo-Shamanism
Reinterpreting indigenous traditions under globalizing conditions, Zulu neo-shamans have developed new religious discourses and practices for engaging dreams, visions, and extraordinary spiritual experiences. Dreams, which we might assume are immaterial, are interpreted through the senses, electronic media, and material entailments that require embodied practices of sacrificial exchange and ancestral orientation. Accordingly, in Zulu neo-shamanis…
The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock 'n' Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture
Journal Article The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture Get access David Chidester David Chidester David Chidesler is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7700, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Dreaming in the Contact Zone: Zulu Dreams, Visions, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century South Africa
In Primitive Culture (1871), E. B. Tylor supported his theory of religion, animism, by referring to reports about "savage" dreams. Citing Henry Callaway's Religious System of the Amazulu (1868-1870), Tylor invoked the dreams of a Zulu diviner, a "professional seer" who becomes a "house of dreams," as a classic example of animism because "phantoms are continually coming to talk to him in his sleep." In the original account, however, these spirits …
Haptics of the heart: The sense of touch in American religion and culture
This essay undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in contemporary American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, I consider the usefulness of the work of two theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin, in recovering the sense of touch—the intimate caress, the violent shock—as deep background for tracking basic modes of religious tactility. By paying attention to sensory…
Colonialism and religion
As critical research on religion, the study of colonialism and religion directs attention to religious creativity within the asymmetrical power relations of contact zones, intercultural relations, and diasporic circulations. Taking the imperial ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as a point of departure, this article recalls how the drama of the colonizing Prospero and the colonized Caliban has been a template for analyzing religion under coloni…
Sacred
Rituals of Exclusion and the Jonestown Dead
Journal Article Rituals of Exclusion and the Jonestown Dead Get access David Chidester David Chidester David Chidester is Associate Professor of Religion at University of Cape Town, Private Bag Rondebosch 7700, Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVI, Issue 4, Winter 1988, Pages 681–702, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LVI.4.681 Published: 01 December 1…
Atlantic Community, Atlantic World: Anti-Americanism between Europe and Africa
A recent editorial in a South African newspaper made the surprising proposal that U.S. President George W. Bush should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but only on the ironic basis that his administration's military adventures had given war a bad name all over the world. “Not since Adolf Hitler,” the editor Ferial Haffajee observed, “has a world leader done so much to tarnish the reputation of war and warmongering.”1 So, there is one international …
Anchoring Religion in the World: A Southern African History of Comparative Religion
This essay focuses upon a single object, a shipwrecked anchor that was washed ashore on the eastern Cape coast of southern Africa. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, European travellers, missionaries, and magistrates cited this anchor as evidence of religion among indigenous people in the region. By the end of the century, however, this same anchor was being used by metropolitan theorists as a classic piece of evidence for the origin of …
Stealing the sacred symbols: Biblical interpretation in the peoples temple and the unification church
Perceptions of danger result not only from fear of defilement, but also from competing claims to the ownership of central symbols by forces on the periphery of a society. This article examines two peripheral movements often perceived as dangerous in American society during the 1970s—the Unification Church and the Peoples Temple—by concentrating on their appropriations and interpretations of one central complex of symbols: the Bible. Biblical inte…
Word against Light: Perception and the Conflict of Symbols
Already there: Categories, Formations, and Circulations in the Future of the Study of Religion
Like music, the study of religion moves into the future through decoration, development and transformation of what is already there. The future of the study of religion, which is already present in recent research on material religion, lies in the modulation of basic categories, the reconfiguration of contexts as formations, and the tracking of religion-like circulations through many fields. This essay highlights recent publications that exemplif…
Thinking Black
Often invoked as providing the genealogy of the study of religion, British imperial comparative religion entailed a triple mediation in which imperial theorists derived indigenous data through colonial middlemen. Focusing on the circulation of Africana religions in this enterprise, I examine the work of three South African scholars—the Zulu philologist uNemo (1865–1953), the Tswana historian S. M. Molema (1891–1965), and the Zulu dramatist and st…
Unity in Diversity: Religion Education and Public Pedagogy in South Africa
On 12 September 2003, Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, presented to Parliament South Africa's new national policy on religion and education. Breaking with the confessional religious instruction of the past, the policy established a new educational agenda for teaching and learning about religion, religions, and religious diversity in South African schools. Although this policy was the focus of many years of educational debate and religious cont…
Engaging the wildness of things
Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering
Journal Article Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. By Marita Sturken. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. x, 358 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-520-08653-8. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 0-520-20620-7.) Get access David Chidester David Chidester University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Vo…
The Symbolism of Learning in St. Augustine
There is widespread disagreement as to exactly what Augustine might have meant by his theory of learning, in which Christ, the truth, teaches within. The precise interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of illumination has been the subject of centuries of debate. How is this kind of learning process which Augustine outlines—a process by which the word of God illumines the soul—to be understood? The major schools of thought on this subject have been…
Aesthetic Strategies in Western Religious Thought
Journal Article Aesthetic Strategies in Western Religious Thought Get access David Chidester David Chidester David Chidester (Ph D , Santa Barbara) is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California State University, Northridge He is the author of “The Symbolism of Learning in St Augustine,” Harvard Theological Review (in press) and “Symbolic Synesthesia in the History of Religions,” Epochē Journal of …
Symbolism and the senses in Saint Augustine
Novalis once said that tile function ofpoetry was to make the strange familiar and tile familiar strange, x A similar function can be performed by scholarship in the history of religions. The cross-cultural perspective of the general scientific study ofreligion has opened up the possibility for understanding strange, foreign and unfamiliar religious traditions as meaningful universes of human ~hought and action. The strange becomes familiar by en…
Word against Light: Perception and the Conflict of Symbols
Michel Foucault and the Study of Religion
Rituals of Exclusion and the Jonestown Dead
Journal Article Rituals of Exclusion and the Jonestown Dead Get access David Chidester David Chidester David Chidester is Associate Professor of Religion at University of Cape Town, Private Bag Rondebosch 7700, Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVI, Issue 4, Winter 1988, Pages 681–702, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LVI.4.681 Published: 01 December 1…
Stealing the sacred symbols: Biblical interpretation in the peoples temple and the unification church
Perceptions of danger result not only from fear of defilement, but also from competing claims to the ownership of central symbols by forces on the periphery of a society. This article examines two peripheral movements often perceived as dangerous in American society during the 1970s—the Unification Church and the Peoples Temple—by concentrating on their appropriations and interpretations of one central complex of symbols: the Bible. Biblical inte…
Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History
Journal Article Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History, by John R. Hall and Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, by David Chidester Get access William Sims Bainbridge William Sims Bainbridge Illinois State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 50, Issue 2, Summer 1989, Pages 191–192, https:/…
Saving The Children by Killing Them: Redemptive Sacrifice in the Ideologies of Jim Jones and Ronald Reagan
It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.U.S. Army officer, after the destruction of Ben Tre, Vietnam, 1968I 'd rather see them lay like that than to see them have to die like the Jews did.Resident of Jonestown, GuyanaI would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God.Resident of California, USAWe win when we go down.Jim JonesWin …
Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa
Shots in the Street: Violence and Religion in South Africa
Religions of South Africa
Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse
Word and Light brings religious discourse back to its senses in this provocative examination of the importance of sight and sound to religious symbols, myths, rituals, and traditions. The book examines the unexpected implications of three theses. First, religious symbols, particularly the perceptual symbols of word and light, are grounded in the senses of hearing and seeing. Second, the senses of sight and hearing generate different ranges of sym…
Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa
The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock 'n' Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture
Journal Article The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture Get access David Chidester David Chidester David Chidesler is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7700, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Anchoring Religion in the World: A Southern African History of Comparative Religion
This essay focuses upon a single object, a shipwrecked anchor that was washed ashore on the eastern Cape coast of southern Africa. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, European travellers, missionaries, and magistrates cited this anchor as evidence of religion among indigenous people in the region. By the end of the century, however, this same anchor was being used by metropolitan theorists as a classic piece of evidence for the origin of …
Religion in Africa: Experience and Expression
Christianity in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography
In all its diversity, Christianity has been a powerful force in South African life. From the history of colonial missions, through the development of denominations, to the emergence of African initiated churches, Christianity has assumed a variety of distinctively South African forms. This comprehensive guide offers detailed reviews of over 600 works that have established the importance of Christianity in South African history, society, and relig…
Response: No First or Final Solutions: Strategies, Techniques, and Ivan Strenski's Garden in the Study of Religion
Response: No First or Final Solutions: Strategies, Techniques, and Ivan Strenski's Garden in the Study of Religion Get access David Chidester David Chidester University of Cape Town Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 66, Issue 2, SUMMER 1998, Pages 369–376, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/66.2.369 Published: 01 July 1998
Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering
Journal Article Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. By Marita Sturken. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. x, 358 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-520-08653-8. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 0-520-20620-7.) Get access David Chidester David Chidester University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Vo…
Forum: Interpreting Waco
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Bibliographie Historique du Zaire a l'Epoque Coloniale (1880-1996)
Christianity in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography
Haptics of the heart: The sense of touch in American religion and culture
This essay undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in contemporary American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, I consider the usefulness of the work of two theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin, in recovering the sense of touch—the intimate caress, the violent shock—as deep background for tracking basic modes of religious tactility. By paying attention to sensory…
Material Terms for the Study of Religion
Material Terms for the Study of Religion Get access Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Edited by Mark C. Taylor. University of Chicago Press, 1998. 423 pages. Paper, $18.00. David Chidester David Chidester Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape TownRondebosch 7700, South Africa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar …
Sociology (37 works) · History (33 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · Political science (24 works) · Art (20 works) · Religious studies (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (17 works) · Anthropology (15 works) · Archaeology (15 works)