Introduction: Methodical Aspects of Comparison
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
Much ink has been spilled over the significance, the risks and benefits, and even the very possibility of comparison in the study of religion, but few scholars have reflected on how comparison actually works. Which methodical components should a comparative study include? Which problems does the comparativist encounter in deploying the comparative method? How is the design of the method related to the outcome of the study and to its value for the study of religion? The essays in this special issue begin to tackle these questions through analyses of concrete comparative studies. The special issue has an unusual format which requires an explanation. The essays emerged from a panel on methodical aspects of comparison at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta in 2015. The panelists—who are also the authors of the present essays—were experienced comparativists in their respective fields: Francis X. Clooney (Harvard University), David M. Freidenreich (Colby College), Barbara A. Holdrege (University of California, Santa Barbara), and Jens Kreinath (Wichita State University). Kathryn McClymond (Georgia State University) served as a respondent at the panel session but contributed her own full essay here. These comparativists were invited to analyze and reflect upon their own comparative work along the lines of a basic methodological framework that I had outlined. Originally this was meant to be more of a specialists’ roundtable, an opportunity for experienced comparativists to exchange ideas about the ways they employ the comparative method. Surprisingly, to me at least, the panel session was very well attended (with an audience of ca. 50 members), and afterwards some audience members requested that the contributions be published. Apparently this discussion struck a chord.
Authors and Affiliations
Oliver Freiberger
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25945
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9030077
- Views 323
- Downloads 9
Discourses on Religious Violence in Premodern Japan
This article asks what religious violence is and why it is relevant. It questions common assumptions by focusing on how monastic violence unfolded in premodern Japan. It argues that there was nothing that set this part...
Mind, Body and Spirit in Basket Divination: An Integrative Way of Knowing
The statements of researchers on the topic of basket divination and the statements of basket diviners in northwest Zambia, Africa, do not fully agree. While researchers rightly stress the importance of observation, ana...
Globalization and Religion in Historical Perspective: A Paradoxical Relationship
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expresse...
Cold War Transgressions: Christian Realism, Conservative Socialism, and the Longer 1960s
This essay examines the convergence of the Protestant left and traditionalist right during the 1950s. Reinhold Niebuhr and the World Council of Churches challenged Cold War liberalism from within. As they did, they ant...
Glocalization and the Marketing of Christianity in Early Modern Southeast Asia
The expansion of European commercial interests into Southeast Asia during the early modern period was commonly justified by the biblical injunction to spread Christian teachings, and by the “civilizing” influences it w...