The Social Construction of “Religion” and Its Limits: A Critical Reading of Timothy Fitzgerald

Schilbrack, Kevin

doi:10.1163/157006812x634872

Cited by 46 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Nevertheless, it has been cogently argued that such criticism cannot avoid employing some marker for what we would otherwise term “religious” and that the term remains useful if employed strategically. For a recent overview, see King and Hedges (2014), for the wider literature see Fitzgerald (2007), Hedges (2010; 2014), Masuzawa (2005), McCutcheon (1997), and Schilibrack (2012). On some particularly Chinese aspects of doing “religion” see Chau (2013).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burning for a Cause: Four Factors in Successful Political (and Religious) Self-Immolation Examined in Relation to Alleged Falun Gong “Fanatics” in Tiananmen Square

Hedges

2015

Politics and Religion

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This article theorizes the self-immolation of alleged Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square in 2001 in relation to literature on martyrdom, self-immolation, and political protest. It explores the cultural context in relation to Buddhist traditions of self-immolation, Chinese political protest, and other uses of self-immolation as political protest. It will seek to expand the analysis of why these self-immolations may be said to have “failed” as a form of protest, and present a set of four key factors. Issues of legitimation and authority in the events and their representation will be raised, especially the contested nature of whether the self-immolations were “religious,” looking at the different meanings of this term in Chinese and Western contexts. It is argued that both secular and religious self-immolation can be seen as legitimate in the public sphere.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burning for a Cause: Four Factors in Successful Political (and Religious) Self-Immolation Examined in Relation to Alleged Falun Gong “Fanatics” in Tiananmen Square

Hedges

2015

Politics and Religion

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“…3 In contrast to some trends in the Humanities, I consider "religion" to be a legitimate ana lytical category and am thus comfortable talking about, for example, "religious fields." I follow scholars who defend the use of religion as a category and theorize its ontology socially in terms of practices: for instance, Stowers 2008;Schilbrack 2010;. See Stowers' definition: "Religion consists of variously linked social practices (involving arrangements of entities at sites) that carry understandings involving the existence and activity of gods, ancestors, and various normally unseen beings, and that shade off into other anthropomorphic interpretations of the world" (2008:442).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protective Strategies and the Prestige of the “Academic”

Young

2015

Biblical Interpret

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This article examines how Evangelical Christian inerrantist scholars theorize their bibli cal scholarship and its relation to the broader academy, highlighting (1) their self-repre sentation as true academics, and (2) the ways they modulate historical methods to prefer interpretive options that keep the Bible inerrant. Using these characteristics of inerrantist theorizing, the article redescribes their scholarship in terms of the religious studies rubrics of "protective strategies" and "privileging" insider claims. It then exploits this redescription to explore various characteristics of inerrantist religiosity from a Practice Theory vantage point, noting especially inerrantist religiosity's highly intellectualized nature as well as features of its fields of discourse production and consump tion, and their participants, that differentiate them from broader academic fields focused on the Bible. Overall the article thus provides a detailed positive account of inerrantist scholarship and introduces scholars to the utility of this data set for studying contemporary religiosity and religious "protectionism."

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“… 6 I first drew attention to this point in my critique of Timothy Fitzgerald’s nonrealism (Schilbrack 2012). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Social Construction of “Religion” and Its Limits: A Critical Reading of Timothy Fitzgerald

Cited by 46 publications

References 20 publications

Burning for a Cause: Four Factors in Successful Political (and Religious) Self-Immolation Examined in Relation to Alleged Falun Gong “Fanatics” in Tiananmen Square

Burning for a Cause: Four Factors in Successful Political (and Religious) Self-Immolation Examined in Relation to Alleged Falun Gong “Fanatics” in Tiananmen Square

Protective Strategies and the Prestige of the “Academic”

A metaphysics for the study of religion: A critical reading of Russell McCutcheon

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