Constructing Data in Religious Studies
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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.
Published: Oct 8, 2019
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This exemplary edited volume takes J.Z. Smith’s famous dictum, “there is no data for religion” as an insight to be elaborated and applied rather than a contention to be debated, and proceeds to interrogate how, why, and for whom religious “data” are created through scholarly identification, as well as the theoretical and institutional implications of the construction and deconstruction of religion.
Constructing “Data” is dedicated to J.Z. Smith, who passed away a month after the NAASR papers were given, and models the productive theoretical and methodological insights that can emerge when scholars of religion heed his advice to take their own self-consciousness as their primary expertise.
Religious Studies Review