Decolonizing “the Data” of Religious Studies

A Case against the Worldview Model of Difference

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7161827
AutoresLisa Landoe Hedrick (autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume92
Fascículo2
Páginas203-220
Data de publicação2025-01-28
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfae068
OpenAlexW4402475342
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas59

Challenging the false neutrality of secularism, J. Z. Smith (1988) declared that between “religion” and “religious studies” there is “no difference at all.” The subsequent rise of area studies matched the decline of comparative programs whose underwriting logic faltered under postcolonial scrutiny. This turn toward particularity and data expansion was a way of reckoning with the ethnocentric universalizing of modern social theory. Today, scholars in both religious studies and anthropology worry about how ethnocentrism persists in the very form of “the data.” However, the former have largely misunderstood the contributions of anthropology’s ontological turn—specifically the “radical” variant “perspectivism”—to disciplinary reform. I explain why perspectivists suggest replacing talk of multiple views with talk of multiple worlds to model a genuine alternative to cultural relativism

Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development

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