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SUMMARY:Die Entstehung der Disziplin Religionswissnschaft in Asien
DTSTART:20110204T080000Z
DTEND:20110204T170000Z
DTSTAMP:20260502T124523Z
UID:RW-Gesellschafen-de-49@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Flyer\nBackground and Aims\nReligious semantics are shaped not
  just by the actors of the  religious field themselves\, but also to a con
 siderable degree by  non-religious instances. In this regard\, the discipl
 ine of religious  studies has been particularly influential\, shaping both
  the concept of  religion itself as well as other religious concepts. Whil
 e this fact may  sound self-evident\, it has not been generally acknowledg
 ed for  religious studies outside of Europe\, as the assumption has long b
 een  that they are merely more or less successful adaptations of the Europ
 ean  model\, just as is sometimes assumed that the concept of religion was
   simply taken over from the European example. Yet\, both specific cultura
 l  dynamics (makeup of the religious field itself\; conceptual  configurat
 ion of the religious field prior to contact with Western  ideas\, differen
 ces in value attributed to the religious field in both  society and academ
 ia) and political factors (colonial or semi-colonial  status\, role of the
  Christian mission within this colonial permeation)  have to be taken into
  consideration when attempting to account for the  role of religious studi
 es in different non-European countries\, as it  took shape roughly between
  the 1870s and 1930s. Transnational factors  do\, however\, obviously loom
  large and will thus have to be taken into  account\, albeit not as a one-
 way street: Even in the early phase of its  formation in Europe\, knowledg
 e of Asian religions was instrumental for  some of the central notions str
 ucturing the academic field. The workshop  therefore included one paper by
  Arie Molendijk on nineteenth-century  conceptions of Asian religions with
 in the budding discipline of  religious studies in Europe.\nProgram\n9.00
 –9.30    Welcome & Introduction\n9.30–10.30    Arie Molendijk (G
 roningen/Bochum): The Light of Asia – Buddhism as a “World Religion”
 \n10.30–11.00    Coffee Break\n11.00–12.00    Isomae Jun’ichi 
 (Kyoto/Bochum): The Process of the Development of Religious Studies in Jap
 an – The Experience of “Religion”\n12.00–13.30    Lunch Break\n
 13.30–14.30    Şinasi Gündüz (Istanbul): The Basic Trends in the S
 tudies of History of Religion in Turkey (1850–2010)\n14.30–15.00   
  Coffee Break\n15.00–16.00    Christian Meyer (Leipzig): The Emergenc
 e of Religious Studies in Republican China\n16.00–16.30    Coffee Bre
 ak\n16.30–17.30    Jang Sukman (Seoul/Bochum): Religion\, Science and
  Colonialism: Religious Studies in Colonial Korea\n17.30–18.00    Con
 cluding Discussion\nResults\nWhile the early history of the discipline of 
 religious studies (or  “science of religion”) in Europe is one of “g
 radual emancipation from  the patronizing power of theology”\, the situa
 tion in East Asia was very  different. To be sure\, there had been a tradi
 tion of the scientific  study of religions in East Asia conducted within r
 eligious  organizations\, but we find in the modern age less a process of 
  emancipation from an older hegemonic field of study (as theology in  Euro
 pe)\, but rather a  parallel process of adoption of modern\, Western  not
 ions of what is appropriate or even necessary in academia. Crucially\,  th
 e early religious studies scholars both in Europe and in East Asia\,  just
  like theologians\, held a basic belief in the necessity of religion  for 
 humankind\; other than theologians\, however\, they saw this as a  univers
 al property of human beings that could be realized in many forms  and shap
 es. In this sense\, religious studies in China or Japan played a  similar 
 role to that in Europe in that it served to defend the cause of  religion 
 in the face of modernity. Religious studies thus served quite a  similar c
 ause as theology\, but with different\, namely modern\, means.\nIn the lig
 ht of this insight\, it is little surprising that most of  the early expon
 ents of religious studies in East Asia saw in  Christianity and Buddhism t
 he two prime examples of religion in a  value-laden sense. Yet\, research 
 on religious groups or phenomena that  were less adept at articulating the
 mselves was also conducted\, such as  shamanism\, folk religions\, new rel
 igious movements\, folk beliefs\, and  what was then called “superstitio
 ns”. Not infrequently\, however\, this  kind of research was tied to pol
 itical agendas: Ethnographic field work  on popular religions in China con
 tributed to the anti-superstition  campaign in the 1920s\; research result
 s of Japanese anthropologists on  Korean new religions was used by the col
 onial government to suppress  groups\; and in Japan as well\, mainstream r
 eligious studies scholars  supported government crackdowns on groups viewe
 d as pseudo-religions and  detrimental to the nation’s efforts of modern
 ization.\nIn terms of the historical semantics of religion\, religious res
 earch  and the new disciplinary consciousness contributed to a process in 
 which  many religious phenomena were subsumed under the relatively new ter
 m  “religion”. These phenomena were\, however\, often marked by clear 
  hierarchical value assignments such as those following theories of  devel
 opmental stages. In this sense\, religious studies were clearly  complicit
  in the strongly statist actual treatment of religious groups  in China\, 
 Korea\, and Japan up to 1945\, where positive value was accorded  only to 
 large established religions\, while all others were viewed with  suspicion
 . At the very least religious studies reinforced the (new)  categories of 
 religion vs. superstition\, which then became the fundament  of discrimina
 tory religious policies. Thus\, perhaps even more so than  in nineteenth-c
 entury Europe\, religious studies in early  twentieth-century East Asia co
 ntributed to defining the still young  concept of religion\, a contributio
 n that had a crucial impact because of  the way it fed into the making of 
 religious policy of the modernizing  nation states in East Asia.
URL:https://ceres.rub.de/de/events/RW-Gesellschafen-de/
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