The event takes place in the Main Building of the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 18) in auditorium number 139 all three days.

Schedule

August 19

10:00-10:30 – Gathering and Coffee

10:30-10:45 – Indrek Peedu (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Opening Remarks

10:45-12:00 – Jeppe Sinding Jensen (Aarhus University, Denmark) – ‘What’s Out There?’: Mapping Deontic Grids in Social Ontologies and Epistemologies: Some Methodological Considerations for the Comparative Study of Religion

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-15:00 –

Domenico Accorinti (IIS Galilei-Pacinotti, Pisa, Italy) – Between Reification and Deconstruction: Looking for a Consensus about the Object of the Study of Religion

Steven Sutcliffe (The Open University, UK) – ‘Less is Better’: The Study of Religion as a ‘Middle-Range’ Enterprise

Steven Engler (Mount Royal University, Canada) – Religion as Semantic Node

Saile Langsepp (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Generalization vs Specification of Terminology – What’s Left in the Dance Between?

Respondent: Roomet Jakapi (University of Tartu, Estonia)

15:00-15:30 – Coffee Break

15:30-17:00 –

Jarken Gadi (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, India) – Negotiating Religion: Reform, Institutional Influences, and Change among the Tribal Community of Galos

Auswyn Winter Japang (St. Anthony’s College, India) – Ka Thung-Syiem Thang-Syiem Sohra: Analysing Niam Ïap and Ritual Relations in a Khasi Chiefdom

Tova Makhani-Belkin (University of Galway, Ireland) – Studying Religion Without an Object: Ethnographic Insights from the Bahá’í Faith

Respondent: Margaret Lyngdoh (University of Tartu, Estonia)

 

August 20

10:00-12:00 –

James L. Cox (University of Edinburgh, UK) – Defining the Object of Study Relationally: The Repatriation of Knowledge Project in Central Australia

Isis Mrugalla-Kalmbacher (University of Tübingen, Germany) – Periscopes and Ontologies: Towards an Engaged Approach to the Study of Religions

Michael Hauhs (University of Bayreuth, Germany) – Bracketing the Modal: The Study of Religion as Perspectival Modelling

Samuel Ramapuram (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) – Beyond Sacred Objects: Kami, Relational Ontology, and the Study of Religion Without an Object in Shinto Ritual Practice

Respondent: Erki Lind (University of Tartu, Estonia)

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-15:00 –

Rafal K. Stepien (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) – On Absent Objects: Religious Studies Without Religions

Evakordor Benson Diengdoh (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Are Rituals Religious or Political?

Abhirup Sarkar (University of Tartu, Estonia) – (Not) Objectifying Invisibility: Against the Search of Epistemic Completeness in the Study of Lived Religions

Respondent: Gregory D. Alles (McDaniel College, USA)

15:00-15:30 – Coffee Break

15:30-17:00 –

Amy Lynn Koehlinger (Oregon State University, USA) – Mystical Experience, Transpersonal Encounter, and Experiences Deemed Religious: Comparing Models of Religion in the Psychedelic Renaissance

Reyhaneh Ghoroghchian (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Unseen Beings, Real Feelings: Jinn and the Object of Religious Studies in Iran

Noam Cohen (Leipzig University, Germany) – The Sigd Holiday: Religious Negotiation and Adaptation among Ethiopian Jews in Israel

Respondent: Mattias Brand (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)

19:00 – Conference Dinner

 

August 21

10:00-12:00 –

Natalia Zawiejska (Jagiellonian University, Poland) – ‘Urban Religion’ and the Study of Religion. Linking Ethnography, Experiment, Concepts and Perspectives

Taja Fortuna (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) – Living and Transmitting the Virgin of Guadalupe’s Cult in Contemporary Guadalajara, Mexico

Ani Margaryan (Soochow University, China) – Material Heuristics and the Soviet-Armenian Intelligentsia: Asian Religious Artifacts as Objects of Secular Synthesis

Respondent: Ain Riistan (University of Tartu, Estonia)

12.00-13:00 – Lunch

13.00-14:00 – Concluding Discussion

 

Overall Topic

This workshop aims to bring together both theoretical reflections as well as specific case studies that analyse the contemporary scholarly understandings of the object of the study of religion and propose viable directions forward. What does it mean to understand something as an object of the study of religion – either in a general sense or in relation to more specific research projects? In recent decades the understanding of religion as the focus of study has become increasingly complex. Past research paradigms have been extensively criticized for their tendency to treat religion as a distinctly separate and discrete entity. These criticisms have led many to question, whether there even is or can be a clear object of study or anything concrete at all that ‘religion’ or any other abstract term could pick out. Research thus has shifted towards approaches that still look for structures, functions and other intertwined characteristics, but at the same time attempt to distance themselves from problematically reifying formulations. In other words: scholarly practice has moved towards thinking of justifiable conceptualizations as analytical terms or heuristic tools that enable the extrapolation, or highlighting of important aspects, in addition to making it possible to call attention to significant similarities, analogies, and differences. Contemporary scholars appear to look for the theoretically justifiable and empirically applicable middle ground between problematically reifying and systematically deconstructionist perspectives. In such a situation it would appear that scholars prefer to stay away from asserting the existence of any concretely defined and delimited object of study, while at the same time still looking to distinguish different interwoven combinations of characteristics, structures and processes as their particular research focus.

All of this raises a whole host of issues about how scholars of religion can justifiably conceive and formulate their object of study. One could ask what kind of a role do conceptualizations of the object of study have in the overall research process? How is the object of study understood in different currently prevalent research paradigms (relational, lived, postcolonial, cognitive, critical or other)? Or is the study of religion now indeed without an object of study? Does study of religion need a clear object of study? Are there any valuable, but thus far overlooked methodological or theoretical perspectives that could help to construe a justifiable middle ground between reification and deconstruction? Or does any past classic scholar of religion deserve a fresh look with regards to these matters? How is the general object of study conceived in empirically specific fieldwork-based, historical or other research projects?  What are the criteria for determining that something is a valid analytic term in the study of religion? What does it mean to call a concept, a theory, an approach, or something else a useful heuristic?

These are but some of the questions one could raise in relation to the overall issue. The matter could be addressed by theoretical reflection on the viable paths forward, methodological reflections on conceptualizations, specific, empirical case studies deriving from fieldwork or historical sources discussing the consequences of theoretical and methodological choices, meta-level analyses of currently prevalent practices and paradigms as well as other perspectives that in one way or another deal with the issue in focus at this workshop.

Abstracts can be downloaded here.