“Religious” as a Category: A Comparative Case Study
Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western category of “the religious,” some scholars have proposed simply abandoning it. Meanwhile, other scholars continue to wield it uncritically. In this article I propose a middle way, using premodern China as an ex...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Numen
Year: 2018, Volume: 65, Issue: 4, Pages: 333-376 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
China
/ The Religious
/ Concept of
/ Category
/ Connotation
/ Geschichte Anfänge-1800
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| Further subjects: | B
the religious
categories in the study of religion
analogy
medieval China
anomaly
zhiguai
the religious as the anomalous
Chinese religions
the Western study of religions
the history of the study of religions
cross-cultural comparison
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western category of “the religious,” some scholars have proposed simply abandoning it. Meanwhile, other scholars continue to wield it uncritically. In this article I propose a middle way, using premodern China as an example. Although China had no category exactly matching “the religious” in meaning and scope, it did, I argue, have an analogous category, one that functioned somewhat similarly in a partially analogous discourse that, like the Western category, formed part of an imperial project. More generally, I suggest that we do well to inquire into the extent to which the cultures we study possessed analogues to the categories and concepts in terms of which we characterize them, rather than assume either that they did or that they did not. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5276 |
| Contains: | In: Numen
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341503 |