concerning his own theological and political allegiances. Noteworthy collective
volumes include Curators of the Buddha(1995), edited by Donald Lopez, and
The Academic Study of Religion during the Cold War, edited by Dalibor
Papou‰ek, Luther Martin, and Iva Dole®alová (2001). Given that, as we shall
see, religion can be considered as a form of applied aesthetics, it is no surprise
that the study of religion has itself oscillated between analysis and aesthetics,
a tension explored in Daniel Gold’s Aesthetics and Analysis in Writing on
Religion(2003).
Just as the exercise of disciplinary reflexivity reflects a desire for a totalizing
view—one that encompasses as much one’s object of study as oneself studying
or, as some claim, even constituting that object—the publication of two editions
of The Encyclopedia of Religionwithin eighteen years (1987 and 2005), as
well as of several guides, companions, and collections of critical terms to the
study of religion, seems to betray a nostalgia for the age of the summa. Four
of these works, most of whose contributors are based in North America, are
Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark Taylor (1998); Guide to
the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon (2000);
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John Hinnells
(2005); and The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by
Robert Segal (2006). This abundance is all for the better, as it is difficult for
the educated reader to know where to start in order to gain some perspective
on this most contentious of subjects—and no less difficult for the scholar, given
the relentless pressure to master ever smaller pieces of the puzzle that is
religion. Several valuable reviews can be used to determine which of these
volumes one may want to read. Likewise, no attempt will be made to discuss
The Encyclopedia of Religion, as a proper discussion of this vast publication,
if possible at all, would take up this entire essay.
If, when examining work that deals with ‘religion’, one is forced to address
the controversies about the very validity of that category, when discussing the
anthropology of religion, one cannot avoid confronting the issue of boundaries.
(Once fashionable claims about the ‘end of man’ can be safely disregarded
now.) Where does one, for example, discuss Roy Rappaport’s early work—
under the rubric of New Guinea ethnographies, ecology of religion or theory
of ritual? Where does one place, literally, Stephen Lansing’s Priests and
Programmers(1991), next to the books on Bali or next to those devoted to
ritual or to the ecology of religion? As any survey requires a certain order,
however subjective, I will proceed to mention some of the most influential work
produced by scholars trained as anthropologists. For years, in addition to
referring to founding fathers such as Durkheim, North American scholars of
religion read and quoted the anthropological trinity of Clifford Geertz, Mary
Douglas, and Victor Turner. Geertz produced a symbol-based definition of
religion, which despite its shortcomings regarding issues of power—pointed
out by Talal Asad, Aletta Biersack, and Vincent Pecora, among others—is still
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