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SUMMARY:The Formation of the Discipline of Religious Studies in Asia
DTSTART:20110204T080000Z
DTEND:20110204T170000Z
DTSTAMP:20260418T174911Z
UID:RW-Gesellschafen-en-49@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Flyer\nBackground and Aims\nReligious semantics are shaped not
  just by the actors of the religious field themselves\, but also to a cons
 iderable degree by non-religious instances. In this regard\, the disciplin
 e of religious studies has been particularly influential\, shaping both th
 e concept of religion itself as well as other religious concepts. While th
 is fact may sound self-evident\, it has not been generally acknowledged fo
 r religious studies outside of Europe\, as the assumption has long been th
 at they are merely more or less successful adaptations of the European mod
 el\, just as is sometimes assumed that the concept of religion was simply 
 taken over from the European example. Yet\, both specific cultural dynamic
 s (makeup of the religious field itself\; conceptual configuration of the 
 religious field prior to contact with Western ideas\, differences in value
  attributed to the religious field in both society and academia) and polit
 ical factors (colonial or semi-colonial status\, role of the Christian mis
 sion within this colonial permeation) have to be taken into consideration 
 when attempting to account for the role of religious studies in different 
 non-European countries\, as it took shape roughly between the 1870s and 19
 30s. Transnational factors do\, however\, obviously loom large and will th
 us have to be taken into account\, albeit not as a one-way street: Even in
  the early phase of its formation in Europe\, knowledge of Asian religions
  was instrumental for some of the central notions structuring the academic
  field. The workshop therefore included one paper by Arie Molendijk on nin
 eteenth-century conceptions of Asian religions within the budding discipli
 ne of religious studies in Europe.\nProgram\n9.00–9.30    Welcome & I
 ntroduction\n9.30–10.30    Arie Molendijk (Groningen/Bochum): The Lig
 ht of Asia – Buddhism as a “World Religion”\n10.30–11.00    Cof
 fee Break\n11.00–12.00    Isomae Jun’ichi (Kyoto/Bochum): The Proce
 ss of the Development of Religious Studies in Japan – The Experience of 
 “Religion”\n12.00–13.30    Lunch Break\n13.30–14.30    Şina
 si Gündüz (Istanbul): The Basic Trends in the Studies of History of Reli
 gion in Turkey (1850–2010)\n14.30–15.00    Coffee Break\n15.00–16
 .00    Christian Meyer (Leipzig): The Emergence of Religious Studies in
  Republican China\n16.00–16.30    Coffee Break\n16.30–17.30    J
 ang Sukman (Seoul/Bochum): Religion\, Science and Colonialism: Religious S
 tudies in Colonial Korea\n17.30–18.00    Concluding Discussion\nResul
 ts\nWhile the early history of the discipline of religious studies (or “
 science of religion”) in Europe is one of “gradual emancipation from t
 he patronizing power of theology”\, the situation in East Asia was very 
 different. To be sure\, there had been a tradition of the scientific study
  of religions in East Asia conducted within religious organizations\, but 
 we find in the modern age less a process of emancipation from an older heg
 emonic field of study (as theology in Europe)\, but rather a  parallel pr
 ocess of adoption of modern\, Western notions of what is appropriate or ev
 en necessary in academia. Crucially\, the early religious studies scholars
  both in Europe and in East Asia\, just like theologians\, held a basic be
 lief in the necessity of religion for humankind\; other than theologians\,
  however\, they saw this as a universal property of human beings that coul
 d be realized in many forms and shapes. In this sense\, religious studies 
 in China or Japan played a similar role to that in Europe in that it serve
 d to defend the cause of religion in the face of modernity. Religious stud
 ies thus served quite a similar cause as theology\, but with different\, n
 amely modern\, means.\nIn the light of this insight\, it is little surpris
 ing that most of the early exponents of religious studies in East Asia saw
  in Christianity and Buddhism the two prime examples of religion in a valu
 e-laden sense. Yet\, research on religious groups or phenomena that were l
 ess adept at articulating themselves was also conducted\, such as shamanis
 m\, folk religions\, new religious movements\, folk beliefs\, and what was
  then called “superstitions”. Not infrequently\, however\, this kind o
 f research was tied to political agendas: Ethnographic field work on popul
 ar religions in China contributed to the anti-superstition campaign in the
  1920s\; research results of Japanese anthropologists on Korean new religi
 ons was used by the colonial government to suppress groups\; and in Japan 
 as well\, mainstream religious studies scholars supported government crack
 downs on groups viewed as pseudo-religions and detrimental to the nation
 ’s efforts of modernization.\nIn terms of the historical semantics of re
 ligion\, religious research and the new disciplinary consciousness contrib
 uted to a process in which many religious phenomena were subsumed under th
 e relatively new term “religion”. These phenomena were\, however\, oft
 en marked by clear hierarchical value assignments such as those following 
 theories of developmental stages. In this sense\, religious studies were c
 learly complicit in the strongly statist actual treatment of religious gro
 ups in China\, Korea\, and Japan up to 1945\, where positive value was acc
 orded only to large established religions\, while all others were viewed w
 ith suspicion. At the very least religious studies reinforced the (new) ca
 tegories of religion vs. superstition\, which then became the fundament of
  discriminatory religious policies. Thus\, perhaps even more so than in ni
 neteenth-century Europe\, religious studies in early twentieth-century Eas
 t Asia contributed to defining the still young concept of religion\, a con
 tribution that had a crucial impact because of the way it fed into the mak
 ing of religious policy of the modernizing nation states in East Asia.
URL:https://khk.ceres.rub.de/en/events/RW-Gesellschafen-en/
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