Disciplinary Conflict in the Study of Religion

"Anthropology, Sociology, and "Lines in the Sand

Bibliographic Data

ID12201816
AuthorsJ V Spickard (0000-0002-4191-7953, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume14
Issue2
Pages141-169
Publication date2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMethod & Theory in the Study of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0943-3058 • E-ISSN: 1570-0682
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/15700680260191743
OpenAlexW1975204426
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited51

This article explores the differences between the anthropological and the sociological approaches to religion as they have developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. Both disciplines are divided between generalizing and particularizing schools—"ethnology" vs "ethnography" to use the anthropologists' preferred terms. Where once the disciplinary affiliation of particularizers/ethnographers determined the content of their studies—anthropologists studying "culture" and sociologists studying "structure"—this division no longer holds. It has been replaced by a division that is simultaneously ethical and epistemological: anthropological ethnography has become post-colonial, while sociological ethnography remains in a largely colonial mode. The article distinguishes these modes and traces their implicit epistemologies to different sets of regulative ideals. Recent anthropology's twin regulative ideals, "truth" and "equality", have led it away from the myth of the anonymous observer to a focus on intercultural dialogue

Colonialism · Cultural anthropology · Discipline · Epistemology · Ethnography · Mythology · Social science · Sociocultural anthropology · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Anthropology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

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