The Politics of Religion-Making
Hofstra University
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
October 4,5 and 6, 2007
organized by
Markus Dressler & Arvind-Pal S. Mandair
Conference Theme and Original CFP: This conference aims to create a venue for discussing the politics of past and contemporary religion-making. Broadly conceived, the term ‘religion-making’ refers to the ways in which religions are formulated and institutionalized in line with the globalizing concept of ‘world-religion(s)’. The genealogy of religion (e.g. Talal Asad) and world-religion (Tomoko Masuzawa) in the European West has by now been fairly well studied and put into its respective discursive contexts. Some important scholarship has been devoted to how the term ‘religion’ has been successfully translated into non-Western contexts during the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, through the accession of indigenous non-Western elites to Western-style objectifications of religion as well as its dialectic other, the secular. While theory is thus still overcoming religion, on the empirical ground the religion/secular paradigm still is blooming, and due to lack of political leverage in the world of globalization there is little reason to assume that theoretical deconstructions of religion will gain political relevance.
Through this conference we would like to bring together critical reflection on the state and future of the concepts religion and world-religion, as well as innovative reflections on how to think the post-religious/post-secular study of ‘religion,’ with empirical research that is interested in practical local appropriations of the world-religion discourse.
While theoretical discourses for deconstructing ‘religion(s)’ have become increasingly sophisticated, there has as yet been relatively little application of such discourses to the practical and historical workings of religion at the local, national or global level. And vice versa, established empiricist scholarship (mostly by social and political scientists) has remained relatively disengaged from recent developments concerning the category of religion. The aim of this conference is to initiate a productive critical engagement between theoretically-oriented and empirically-grounded approaches in the study of religion in order to better understand the politics underlying the various projects of ‘religion-making’.
We encourage theoretically thoughtful empirical papers that touch upon (but are not limited to) the following questions/aspects:
- How exactly did the concept of “religion” and ‘world religions” achieve universal validity in particular non-Western localities?
- How does the continuing globalization and appropriation of ‘religion’ affect religious claims of authenticity and inclusivism?
- In what ways have discursively marginalized communities adopted locally valid concepts of religion as means of religio-political emancipation
- How does religion continue to function in the contemporary global economy of ideas and commodities?
- Relevance to Multiculturalism ?
Conference Program
Keynote Speakers:
Talal Asad (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
José Casanova (The New School)
Hent de Vries (Johns Hopkins University)
Tomoko Masuzawa (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
This conference aims to create a forum for discussing the historical and contemporary politics of religion-making. Broadly conceived, the term “religion-making” refers to the ways in which religion(s) is/are conceptualized, embodied, and institutionalized within the matrix of a globalized world-religion discourse.
Conference Schedule
Thursday, Oct.4
3-3:30 Welcome & Introduction
3:30-4:30 Opening Address: Talal Asad
5-7:00 Panel 1: Religion and Secularism
Terrorism as Religion: Reflections on the Identity Crisis of Secularism
David R. Loy (Xavier University, Cincinnati)
Of Conversions and Cartoons: Islamism, Secular Discipline, and the Remaking of Religion
Brian Goldstone (Duke University)
Circuits of Secularity, or Visualizing Religion in Himachal Pradesh
Mark Elmore (NYU)
Secularism and Other Political Rituals: Religion, Power & the Sacred in the Post-Colonial Indian State
Khurram Hussain (Yale University)
Discussant: Angela Zito (NYU)
Friday, Oct.5
9:00-11:15 Panel 2 The Makings of Religion
Ethno-Religious Identity among Modern Syriac Christians
Adam Becker (NYU)
The Rhetoric of Defining Confucianism as “a Religion”: Its Challenge and Significance
Yon Chen (Vanderbilt University)
Secularism and Sectarianism in Colonial India
Teena Purohit (Columbia University)
Comparative Religion, Competing Universalisms, and the Rise of ‘Mysticism’ as a Modern Religious Category in America and Iran
Rosemary Hicks (Columbia University)
The Politics of Spirituality: Liberalizing the Definition of Religion
Kerry Mitchell (Charleston College)
Discussant: Balbinder Bhogal (York University)
11:30-12:30 Keynote: José Casanova
12:30 -1:30 pm lunch break
1:30 -3:45 pm Panel 3: Religion and Law
Public Laws, Private Religions: The Secularization of Hindu Dharma in Colonial India
Robert A. Yelle (University of Memphis)
Apache Revelation: Making Religion in the Legal Sphere
Gregory Johnson (UC Bolder)
Gender, the Common Good and Public Islam in Morocco
Souad Eddouada (Iben Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco)
Making Religion through Secular Legal Tools: The Case of Republican Turkey
İştar Gözaydın (Istanbul Technical University)
The Impact of Legal Discourse on Turkish Alevi Religion Making
Markus Dressler (Hofstra University)
Discussant: Ruth Mas (UC Bolder)
3:45 – 4:15 pm coffee break
4:15-6:30 Panel 4 Religion, Ideology, Genealogy
Forcing Religion. John Locke and Tolerance
Elizabeth Pritchard (Bowdoin College)
A Turn Not Taken: Hegel in the History of the Study of Religion
Thomas A. Lewis (Harvard University)
British Christianity and the Religious Imagination: Politics of Religious Formation in Nineteenth-Century India
Mitch Numark (University of Oklahoma)
Empire or Global Fiduciary?
Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
The Parallax of Religion. Ideology and Theology
Clayton Crocket (University of Central Arkansas, Conway)
Discussant: Richard King (Vanderbilt University)
7:00 – 8:00 pm Keynote: Tomoko Masuzawa
Saturday, Oct.6
9-10pm Keynote: Hent de Vries
10-10:30 coffee break
10:30- 12:45 Panel 5: Contesting Religion
Islamic practice in French secular public spheres: ethical self-discipline and identity politics?
Jeanette S. Jouili (ISIM, Leiden)
Contesting Conceptions of the Religious/Secular Paradigm in the Making and Re-Making of Bangladesh
Sufia Mendez Uddin (University of Vermont)
’Religion/Secular’ Dichotomy in Modern Japan: On the Articulation of the ‘Indigenous’
Jun’ichi Isomae (Japan Women’s University)
Monks, Schools, Moral and Manners: Burmese Buddhist Engagements with a Colonial Category of Religion
Alicia Turner (University of Chicago)
“Under the Sail of Religion:” Religion-Making in the Unification Church
Benjamin E. Zeller (UNC Chapel Hill)
Discussant: Robert H. Sharf (UC Berkeley)
12:45-1:45 lunch
1:45- 3:45 Round table/ final discussion
Chair: Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)