Table Of ContentMaking Religion
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Supplements to Method & Theory
in the Study of Religion
Aaron W. Hughes (University of Rochester)
Russell McCutcheon (University of Alabama)
Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen)
VOLUME 4
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smtr
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Making Religion
Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion
Edited by
Frans Wijsen
Kocku von Stuckrad
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: Molten Gold being poured into statue moulds to make religious imagery, in this case
Buddha statues. ©joloei, iStock/Getty Images.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wijsen, Frans Jozef Servaas, 1956- editor. | von Stuckrad, Kocku
editor.
Title: Making religion : theory and practice in the discursive study of
religion / edited by Frans Wijsen and Kocku von Stuckrad.
Description: Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Supplements to method & theory
in the study of religion, ISSN 2214-3270 ; 4 | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP
data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015046003 (print) | LCCN 2015044037 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004309180 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004309166 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Religion--Methodology.
Classification: LCC BL41 (print) | LCC BL41 .M283 2016 (ebook) | DDC
200.72--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044037
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction
Kocku von Stuckrad and Frans Wijsen
PART 1
Theoretical Reflections
1 Theory and Method in Critical Discursive Study of Religion: An
Outline 15
Titus Hjelm
2 No Danger! The Current Re-evaluation of Religion and Luhmann’s
Concept of Risk 35
Stephanie Garling
3 The Matter of Meaning and the Meaning of Matter: Explorations for
the Material and Discursive Study of Religion 51
George Ioannides
4 Slippery and Saucy Discourse: Grappling with the Intersection of
‘Alternate Epistemologies’ and Discourse Analysis 74
Jay Johnston
5 Distinctions of Religion: The Search for Equivalents of ‘Religion’ and
the Challenge of Theorizing a ‘Global Discourse of Religion’ 97
Adrian Hermann
6 Discourse on ‘Religion’ in Organizing Social Practices: Theoretical and
Practical Considerations 125
Teemu Taira
7 Towards a Praxeology of Religious Life: Modes of Observation 147
Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer, Leif Hagen Seibert, Adrián Tovar Simoncic
and Jens Köhrsen
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vi Contents
PART 2
Contexts and Cases
8 Towards a Praxeology of Religious Life: Tools of Observation 175
Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer, Leif Hagen Seibert, Adrián Tovar Simoncic
and Jens Köhrsen
9 Religion and Science in Transformation: On Discourse Communities,
the Double-Bind of Discourse Research, and Theoretical
Controversies 203
Kocku von Stuckrad
10 Indonesian Muslim or World Citizen? Religious Identity in the Dutch
Integration Discourse 225
Frans Wijsen
11 Exploring the Spread of Marketization Discourse in the Nordic Folk
Church Context 239
Marcus Moberg
12 Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in
Japan 260
Mitsutoshi Horii
13 Whose Religion, What Freedom? Discursive Constructions of Religion
in the Work of un Special Rapporteurs on the Freedom of Religion or
Belief 287
Helge Årsheim
PART 3
Response
14 The Complex Discursivity of Religion 319
Reiner Keller
Index 329
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List of Contributors
Helge Årsheim
University of Oslo
Stephanie Garling
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Adrian Hermann
University of Hamburg
Titus Hjelm
University College London
Mitsutoshi Horii
Shumei University, Japan
George Ioannides
University of Sydney
Jay Johnston
University of Sydney
Reiner Keller
University of Augsburg
Jens Köhrsen
Bielefeld University
Marcus Moberg
Abo Akademi University
Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer
Bielefeld University
Leif Hagen Seibert
Bielefeld University
Adrián Tovar Simoncic
Bielefeld University
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viii List of Contributors
Kocku von Stuckrad
University of Groningen
Teemu Taira
University of Helsinki
Frans Wijsen
Radboud University Nijmegen
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Introduction
Kocku von Stuckrad and Frans Wijsen
Discursive approaches to the study of religion have gained momentum in
recent years. Closely linked to developments in linguistics, historiography,
and sociology, discourse research has slowly but steadily become an
accepted way of addressing theoretical and methodological issues in the
study of religion. It is time to take stock of the state of the art in the discur-
sive study of religion, to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and to
explore new directions for future research—hence this book. All of the
authors included in Making Religion have contributed to the emergence of
the field of discourse research in the study of religion from their respective
points of view. They have discussed these themes in various contexts, espe-
cially at the 2010 iahr Conference in Toronto, and most recently at the
2014 Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Religions
in Groningen. Many of the chapters in the present volume emerged from
that conference.
Although recognized today by many scholars as a legitimate approach to the
study of religion, discourse research needs to continue to elaborate on the impli-
cations of its theoretical framework and engage in further discussions with other
approaches to the study of religion. Additionally, the study of religious discourse
needs to open up even more to ongoing discussions in discourse research more
broadly, particularly in sociology, historiography, and anthropology.
Some of the challenges related to discursive approaches to the study of reli-
gion stem from the diverse—and sometimes vague—definitions of the concept
itself. The term ‘discourse’ has a long history of ever-changing meanings. In
French and English usage in the sixteenth century, the term indicated units of
text involving reasoned argumentation, something we would today call an ‘essay’.
A good example of this usage is René Descartes’ 1637 Discours de la méthode
(“Discourse on Method”). When we talk of ‘discourse’ today, however, the con-
cept is inseparably bound to the usage established by French structuralism,
in particular Michel Foucault (1926–1984), in the second half of the twentieth
century. Another major contribution to contemporary discourse research
came from linguistic analysis, in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975)
among others, which was interested in the intertextual dimensions of texts, their
invisible or implicit conversations with other texts and connotations, and the
embedding of texts in a larger social structure. These approaches argue that
texts and concepts gain their meaning only in reference and relation to other
texts as well as to social practices and rules. In the light of such an understanding,
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/9789004309�80_00�
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2 von Stuckrad
discourse research explores and analyzes the rules and dynamics of attributing
meaning to texts and concepts and of establishing shared knowledge (explicit
or tacit) in a discourse community; it also addresses the strategies and pro-
cesses of legitimization, stabilization, and social organization of meaning and
knowledge.
Within the larger framework of discourse research, many forms of discourse
analysis are possible (see Maingueneau 1991: 15, who distinguishes seven in the
French academic discussion; see also Bublitz 2003; Mills 2004: 1–25). Different
forms of discourse analysis may need to apply different methods, but what
they have in common is the fact that ‘doing’ a discourse analysis is always an
attribution of meaning that is itself part of the discourse (Wrana 2014; see also
Moberg 2013: 12, referring to Taylor 2001: 39). In other words, analyzing dis-
course is itself a discursive practice that needs to be reflected upon from a
meta-discursive perspective (see von Stuckrad’s notion of the ‘double-bind’ of
discourse research in Chapter 9 of the present volume).
In the study of religion, the first conceptualizations of discursive approaches
date back to the 1980s (Kippenberg 1983; Lincoln 1989; see also Kippenberg
1992; Lincoln 2005 [1996]), but for a long time these suggestions were not
picked up in a more general way as the foundation of a serious referential
framework for a (self-)critical study of religion. The academic study of religion
has only sporadically taken account of the rich discussion in neighboring dis-
ciplines (sociology and historiography in particular) regarding the usefulness
of discursive analyses. However, more recent publications indicate that there
is a growing interest in the application of discourse analysis to the study of
religion (Heather 2000; Brown 2009; Hjelm 2011; Wijsen 2013a, 2013b; Moberg
2013; von Stuckrad 2013, 2014; Neubert 2014). As a discipline concerned with
diachronic and synchronic, historical and comparative approaches to the topic
of ‘religion’, the meaning of which changes significantly in different periods
and contexts, this book shows that the study of religion can profit greatly from
contributions to discourse theory, ranging from critical discourse analysis
(cda), to HabitusAnalysis (see Heinrich W. Schäfer et al. in Chapters 7 and 8 of
this volume), to what Reiner Keller has called the sociology of knowledge
approach to discourse (skad; see Keller 2011).
Making Religion: Overview of the Volume
The chapters in the present volume reflect the lively, ongoing debate about the
various forms of discourse analysis and their implications for the study of
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