Ubiquity Scorned: Belief's Strange Survivals

Author: Bivins, Jason C.

Source: Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Volume 24, Number 1, 2012 , pp. 55-63(9)

Publisher: BRILL

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Abstract:

Abstract

This paper attempts not to continue the methodological interrogation of “belief“ as a category central to Religious Studies, but to problematize and analyze the ubiquity of such interrogations. Investigations of “belief,“ I argue, are also occasions to explore the discipline's less obvious investments in intellectual and institutional traditions still shackled to the very category under scrutiny. The stand-alone category “religion“ that is so central to political culture and disciplinary formation depends on “belief“ to facilitate recognition. Thus, while Religious Studies now habitually discredits “belief“ as a ubiquitous analytical category, it also partly depends on “belief's“ presences for its disciplinary self-justification.

Keywords: liberalism; belief; methodology; identity; secularism

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006812X632883

Affiliations: 1: Religious Studies Faculty, North Carolina State University 340 Withers Hall, Campus Box 8103, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103 USA, Email: jcbivins@ncsu.edu, URL: http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink

Publication date: 2012-01-01