Constructing ‘Data’ in Religious Studies
Examining the Architecture of the Academy
edited by Leslie Dorrough Smith
Constructing “Data” in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category “data” is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled “Subjects,” “Objects,” “Scholars,” and “Institutions,” with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume’s aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political structures through which scholars identify (and therefore create) data, and second, on the institutions, extensions, and applications of that data.
Constructing “Data” in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category “data” is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled “Subjects,” “Objects,” “Scholars,” and “Institutions,” with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume’s aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political structures through which scholars identify (and therefore create) data, and second, on the institutions, extensions, and applications of that data. The first three sections are spearheaded by a key essay and followed by four responses, all of which consider how the politics of the academy determine the very nature of the things we purport to study. The fourth section considers what these concepts look like as they are applied and further institutionalized in college and university structures, and itself includes four essays on “teaching,” “departments,” “research,” and “labor.” Finally, the epilogue closes the volume with a consideration on the politics of scholarly collegiality, transforming the data-makers (scholars) into data themselves.
Introduction "If I had a Nickel for Every Time": Thinking Critically about Data Leslie Dorrough Smith Part I: Subjects 1. Partitioning "Religion" and its Prehistories: Reflections on Categories, Narratives and the Practice of Religious Studies Annette Yoshiko Reed Part I Responses 2. A More Subtle Violence: The Footnoting of "the Aboriginal Principle of Witnessing" by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Adam Stewart 3. Categorization and its Discontents M Adryael Tong 4. Catagorizing Contrariety: Narrative and Taxonomy in the Construction of Sikhism John Soboslai 5. Interrogating Categories with Ethnography: On the "Five Pillars" of Islam Jennifer Selby Part II: Objects 6. Objects and Objections: Methodological Reflections on the Data for Religious Studies Matthew Baldwin Part II Responses 7. The Red Hot Iron: Religion, Nonreligion and the Material Petra Klug 8. Surprised by History: A Response to Baldwin Holly White 9. Governance and Public Policy as Critical Objects of Investigation in the Study of Religion Peggy Schmeiser 10. Negative Dialektik and the Question Concerning the Relation between Objects and Concepts: A Response to Matthew Baldwin Lucas Wright Part III: Scholars 11. "[T]he Thing itself Always Steals Away": Scholars and the Constitution of their Objects of Study Craig Martin Part III Responses 12. Scholars and the Framing of Objects Vaia Touna 13. Serial Killers and Scholars of Religion Martha Smith Roberts 14. Caffeinated and Half Baked Realities: Religion as the Opium of the Scholar Jason W.M. Ellsworth 15. On the Seminal Adventure of the Trace: A Response to Craig Martin Joel Harrison Part IV: Institutions 16. Labor: Finding the Devil in Indiana Jones: Mythologies of Work and the State of Academic Labor James Dennis LoRusso 17. Teaching: Teaching in the Ideological State of Religious Studies: Notes Towards a Pedagogical Future Richard Newton 18. Departments: Competencies and Curricula: The Role of Academic Departments in Shaping the Study of Religion Rebekka King 19. Research: Religious Studies Research in an Era of Neoliberalization Gregory D. Alles Epilogue The Gatekeeping Rhetoric of Collegiality in the Study of Religion Russell T. McCutcheon, Aaron W. Hughes
- Edited by Leslie Dorrough Smith
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