AN ENGAGED STUDY OF RELIGION: : ACTIVISM, CRITICAL RELIGION AND POTENTIAL OF RADICAL RELIGIOUS STUDIES CURRICULA

Natalia Zawiejska; Lech Trzcionkowski

doi:10.23858/ethp.2023.44.3370

Published: 2023-12-19

Vol. 44 (2023)

AN ENGAGED STUDY OF RELIGION:

Natalia Zawiejska , Lech Trzcionkowski

Ethnologia Polona

Section: Main topic of the issue

https://doi.org/10.23858/ethp.2023.44.3370

Abstract

The activist approach remains a neglected area in the study of religion(s). By activist, we mean a socially engaged yet non-confessional stance that focuses on the scholar dealing with the relationship between religion and the public sphere. While other disciplines are incorporating the socio-political and socially transformative potential of academic knowledge production into their curricula, the field of the study of religion(s) is lagging behind. The (dis)engagement and rejection of activist approaches in the study of religion seems to be determined by paradigms of knowledge production, the dominance of understanding and explanatory approaches, the programmatic socio-political neutrality of the religious studies scholar imposed by the discipline, and claims to the specificity and uniqueness of the object of study. However, as we attempt to show, several modes of engagement can be identified that lie between the scholar’s attitudes of engagement and programmatic neutrality in the study of religion(s), namely translating, deconstructing, meditating and transforming. We propose that these modes should be included in the spectrum of approaches that straddle the critical and activist study of religion. We argue for the radical mode of engagement as a further step in developing the link between research and activism in the study of religion. In doing so, we focus on the scholar(s) of religion as an authority figure, an agent of power distribution, capable of proposing reformulations, accompanying negotiations, and supporting processes of reordering the contemporary post-secular public sphere. This article is an invitation to discuss the activist approach within the scientific study of religion. We also hope to stimulate debate on more radical forms of the activist approach, which we would call “the radical study of religion(s)”.

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Zawiejska, N., & Trzcionkowski, L. (2023). AN ENGAGED STUDY OF RELIGION: : ACTIVISM, CRITICAL RELIGION AND POTENTIAL OF RADICAL RELIGIOUS STUDIES CURRICULA. Ethnologia Polona, 44. https://doi.org/10.23858/ethp.2023.44.3370

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Archiwum Osiatyńskiego. 2021. “‘Tęcza, symbol dumy osób lgbt nie niesie poniżających treści’ – uzasadnienie wyroku slowo w slowo.” 2 March 2021. https://archiwumosiatynskiego.pl/wpis-w-debacie/tecza-symbol-dumy-osob-lgbt-nie-niesieponizajacych-tresci-uzasadnienie-wyroku-slowo-w-slowo/ (accessed 02.01.2023)
Google Scholar

Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam and Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Google Scholar

Banek, Kazimierz and Piotr Czarnecki. 2013. “Ekspertyza w kwestii: Czy w świetle przedstawionych dokumentów można uznać Kościół Latającego Potwora Spaghetti za wspólnotę religijną, o której mowa w art. 2 ust. 1 Ustawy z dnia 17 Maja 1989 r. o gwarancjach wolności sumienia i wyznania (Dz. U z 2005 r. Nr 231., poz.1965, z późn. zm.).” Polski Kościół Latającego Potwora Spagetti, 1 February 2013. https://www.klps.pl/downloads/klps_ekspertyza.pdf (accessed 01.11.2023)
Google Scholar

Bronk, Andrzej. 2003. Podstawy nauk o religii. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe.
Google Scholar

Bubík, Tomáš, and Henryk Hoffmann, eds. 2015. Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Opened: The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Google Scholar

Eliade, Mircea. 1961. “History of Religions and a New Humanism.” History of Religions 1 (1): 1–8.
Google Scholar

Goldstein, Warren S. 2020. “What Makes Critical Religion Critical? A Response to Russell McCutcheon.” Critical Research on Religion 8 (1): 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050303220911149
Google Scholar

Graff, Agnieszka, and Elżbieta Korolczuk. 2022. Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Grottanelli, Cristiano, and Bruce Lincoln. 1998. “A Brief Note on the (Future) Research in the History of Religions.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 10 (3): 311–325.
Google Scholar

Habermas, Jürgen. 2006. “Religion in the Public Sphere.” Philosophy 14 (1): 1–25.
Google Scholar

Habermas, Jürgen. 2008. “Notes on Post-Secular Society.” New Perspectives Quarterly 25(4): 17–29.
Google Scholar

Haiven, Max, and Alex Khasnabish. 2010. “What is Radial Imagination? A Special Issue.” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 4 (2): i–xxxvii.
Google Scholar

Haiven, Max, and Alex Khasnabish. 2014. The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity. London: Zed Books.
Google Scholar

Hale, Charles. R. 2006. “Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 21 (1): 96–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2006.21.1.96
Google Scholar

Hoffmann, Henryk. 2004. Dzieje Polskich Badań Religioznawczych, 1873-1939. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
Google Scholar

Jensen, Tim. 2006. „The Cartoon Crisis Revisited: A Danish Perspective.” Real Instituto Elcano. http://biblioteca.ribei.org/id/eprint/1086/1/ARI-65-2006-I.pdf
Google Scholar

Kippenberg, Hans G. 2002. Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar

Kirsch, Stuart. 2002. “Anthropology and Advocacy: A Case Study of the Campaign against the Ok Tedi Mine.” Critique of Anthropology 22 (2): 175–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/03075X02022002851
Google Scholar

Lafont, Cristina. 2013. “Religion and the Public Sphere. What are the Deliberative Obligations of Democratic Citizenship?’.” In Habermas and Religion, edited by Craig Clahoun, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 401–434. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Google Scholar

Lincoln, Bruce. 1996. “Theses on Method.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 8 (3): 225–27. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006896X00323
Google Scholar

Mapril, José, Blanes, Ruy, Giumbelli, Emerson and Erin K. Wilson, eds. 2017. Secularisms in a Postsecular Age? Religiosities and Subjectivities in Comparative Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Google Scholar

Mahmood, Saba. 2009. “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” Critical Inquiry 35 (4): 836–862.
Google Scholar

Mahmood, Saba. 2010. “Can Secularism be Other-wise?.” In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age edited by Warner Van Antwerpen and Craig Calhoun, 282–299. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar

McCutcheon, Russell. T. 2003. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

McCutcheon, Russell. 2019. Studying Religion. An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Mencwel, Andrzej. 2006. Wyobraźnia antropologiczna: próby i studia. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Google Scholar

Miller, Daniel D. 2022. “Reflection on Critical Religious Studies and Engaged Scholarship.” 2022 NAASR Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
Google Scholar

Mills, C. Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Molendijk, Arie L. 2005. The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Google Scholar

Molendijk, Arie L., and Peter Pels, eds. 1998. Religion in the Making: The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Google Scholar

Redakcja IPP. 2021. „TYLKO U NAS! Prof. Bartoś kontra prof. Przybył-Sadowska w procesie pastora Chojeckiego.” Idź Pod Prąd TV, 24 May 2021. https://idzpodprad.pl/aktualnosci/tylko-u-nas-prof-bartos-kontra-prof-przybyl-sadowska-w-procesie-pastora-chojeckiego/ (accessed 23.05.2023)
Google Scholar

Smith, Jonathan Z. 2001. “A Twice-Told Tale: The History of the History of Religions’ History.” Numen 48 (2): 131–146.
Google Scholar

Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar

Stausberg, Michael. 2016. “History.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion, edited by Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler, 775–803. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Strenski, Ivan. 2015. Understanding Theories of Religion: an Introduction. Chichester and Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Szyjewski, Andrzej. 2021. „Powstanie i Zmiany Programu Studiów Magisterskich Religioznawczych w Instytucie Religioznawstwa UJ.” In Ile z Nauki, Ile z Ideologii? Religioznawstwo w PRL edited by Łucja Marek and Rafał Łętocha. Kraków: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu.
Google Scholar

Tsypylma Darieva, and Jeanne Kormina. 2023. “Religious activism in Eastern Europe and beyond.” Religion, State and Society, 51 (1): 2–10, https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2023.2187656
Google Scholar

Tyloch, Witold, ed. 1984. Current Progress in the Methodology of the Science of Religions. Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers.
Google Scholar

Warren, Kay B. 2006. “Perils and Promises of Engaged Anthropology: Historical Transitions and Ethnographic Dilemma.” In Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism edited by Victoria Stanford and Asale Angel-Ajani, 213–27. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Google Scholar

Wilkinson, Iain, and Arthur Kleinman. 2016. A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering. Oakland: University of California Press.
Google Scholar

Willow, Anna J., and Kelly A. Yotebieng. 2022. “Introduction. Doing Good Anthropology.” In Anthropology and Activism: New Contexts, New Conversations edited by Willow, Anna J., and Kelly A. Yotebieng, 1–18. London and New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar