Entangled Histories: at the Intersection of Religion and Politics in Pre Mod-ern Societies
GB 5/150–152 “Ruhrpott”
The workshop "Entangled Histories: At the Intersection of Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern Societies" is designed to shed light on the different dynamics of interaction between religion and politics in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia, and to explore how these interactions shaped the connections between the societies involved.
The present study builds on the CERES research project INCENTER, which examines rival power centres — such as the Khitan Empire, the Chinese Song dynasty, the Tangut Empire, and local Tibetan principalities — and asks how they used religion, especially Buddhism, to build legitimacy, compete with one another, and forge cross-cultural ties between the 10th and 13th centuries.
The subject of the workshop is closely aligned with CERES’s overarching research priority of examining the social and political efficacy of religion across historical and cultural contexts.
The workshop will facilitate discussion amongst researchers on these dynamics through comparative work on Chinese, Tibetan, and other regional sources – textual, epigraphic, and visual – over a two-day period at CERES on 6th and 7th October. Despite the case studies’ focus on Eastern Central Asia in the pre-modern period, the subject matter addresses issues that persist in their contemporary relevance: the interweaving of religion and politics, the utilisation of religion to legitimise state authority, and inquiries into cultural and religious pluralism. These subjects permeate current political and social discourses, encompassing religious nationalism and disputes concerning religious authority throughout Asia and beyond.
