for psychology; Karl Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber, and
Émile Durkheim for sociology; Gerardus van der Leeuw and
Mircea Eliade for phenomenology. Work in the related field
of anthropology has received similar treatment, although the
“great thinkers” there may be somewhat more recent
(Bronislaw Malinowski, E. E. Evans-Pritchard [1902–1973],
Claude Lévi-Strauss [b. 1908], Clifford Geertz [b. 1926]).
In addition to knowing the ideas of these “great think-
ers” and their epigones, the common expectation today is
that scholars of religion will also know the languages of the
people whose religions they study. Such expectations provide
a clue to the methods that scholars of religions actually em-
ploy. Work in the field tends to depend upon textual analy-
sis, ethnographical observation, or both, combined with a
generous amount of theorizing to set the context for the ap-
plication of these methods. It less frequently analyzes non-
verbal artifacts with the methods of archaeology, art history,
and musicology, a tendency some attribute to a residual Prot-
estantism. Such a modus operandi assures that scholars are
attuned to the richness of their data. It also means, however,
that work in the field tends to consist of anecdotal observa-
tions coupled, in the best instances, with sophisticated rea-
soning. Scholars of religions have had relatively little interest
in the formulation of generalizations based on a statistical
analysis of data. They tend to regard such generalizations as
overlooking complexity and to relegate them to the “social
scientific” study of religion, located in other academic de-
partments, professional associations, and journals.
Trends. Readers looking for specific topics that interest
scholars in the academic study of religion probably do best
to consult the topical outline of this encyclopedia, but it may
be helpful here to note some broader trends. One is the in-
creasing specialization that has taken place over the last one
hundred years. The demand that scholars possess sophisticat-
ed linguistic and cultural knowledge, coupled with the in-
crease in the number of people who have such knowledge for
different languages and cultures, has resulted in specializa-
tion by areas, such as South Asian religions, Islam, and Bud-
dhism, along with subdivisions of these larger groups, like
Vedic studies, contemporary Islam, and Japanese Buddhism.
Other kinds of specialized groupings—women and religion,
religion and literature—exist, although they often straddle
the divide between the academic study of religion and theol-
ogy. Specializations defined by applying specific methods to
theoretical issues, as in, for example, the distinction between
physical and organic chemistry, are much less common.
A second trend has been an emerging tension between
two broad orientations within the field, critical theory and
science. The former is the more established, growing out of
the field’s traditional interpretive interests and relying heavi-
ly on the French “philosophers of 1968,” such as Jacques De-
rrida (1930–2004) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984), as
well as postcolonial thought, most notably, perhaps, the
thought of Edward Said (1935–2003). These scholars have
focused on the conditions in which knowledge is produced,
critiquing claims to objectivity and universal validity. They
embrace a wide variety of positions, but among common
tendencies we might note the following: the conviction that
knowledge is a culturally limited social construction; an em-
phasis on the inevitable distortions of translation tending to
an assertion of incommensurability between languages, cul-
tures, and communities; the interrogation of the cultural
rootedness of the categories and methods of scholarship; the
deconstruction of general groupings in favor of particularity
and difference; an interest in the corporeal and material as
opposed to the ideational that presupposes at the same time
as it critiques a Cartesian dualism or Platonic idealism; a
preference for the marginal, variously defined by race, gen-
der, class, and other categories as well; the identification of
political, economic, and social domination as the actual if
unstated goal of social science and scholarly endeavors more
broadly; an insistence upon plurivocity and an experimenta-
tion with nontraditional, non-monographic literary forms;
and—despite the generalizations implicit in some of the pre-
ceding characteristics—a rejection of the possibility of for-
mulating adequate generalizations about cultural materials.
More recently, voices have arisen claiming to produce
just the sorts of knowledge that the critical theorists find un-
tenable. This trend has been strongest, perhaps, among those
who claim to have found in cognitive science a ground for
universals that transcend the limitations of social construc-
tion. (Cognitive science itself arose as an alternative to behav-
iorism in psychology and philosophy.) When those who
favor science do not simply dogmatically insist upon science
as the most compelling form of contemporary knowledge,
they may emphasize considerations like the following to jus-
tify their approach: the large amount of shared mental con-
tent which the intersubjective communication that we ap-
pear to observe presupposes; the evolutionary demands that
require communication and commensurability for the sur-
vival of the species; the ability of controlled, cross-cultural
experimentation to establish adequate generalizations about
universal mental structures; the need to postulate these struc-
tures in order to explain various human abilities, such as the
learning of language; the tendency of critical-theoretical ac-
counts to overlook commonalities and overstate differences
and so make generalizations seem implausible; the apparent
logical fallacies, such as the genetic fallacy of rejecting catego-
ries on the basis of their prior history, and self-contradictions
within the critical theorists’ approach; and the tendency of
critical theorists to exempt their own scholarly efforts from
the scathing criticisms that they direct at others. At present
the lines between critical theory and science are sharply
drawn, and it is impossible to predict what the future of this
tension might be.Finally, one might note a growing awareness of the
global character of the academic study of religion, as wit-
nessed in part by the entries that follow. The International
Association of the History of Religions now boasts affiliates
in such diverse places as Cuba, Indonesia, Nigeria, and New8766 STUDY OF RELIGION: AN OVERVIEW