Modernity and the disciplinary formation of religious studies
If we assume there is such a thing as ‘modernity’, is it something that emerged in a unique form out of Europe? And has modernity historically set Europeans apart from the rest of the world?
Simply, is there one (European) modernity, that has been exported across the globe and become localised in numerous non-European contexts — through historical processes of colonialism, education, and globalisation?
Such an idea of modernity is central to the development of much of the study of society, culture, and religion. Just one example (albeit highly influential) is Max Weber’s central question of what was it about European society that made it distinct from all other societies, so as to create the fertile conditions in which capitalism developed.
In contrast to this, can we reverse the question and ask if such a view of modernity is parochial to Europe? To take this further, are there in fact multiple modernities — emerging from both within and outside of Europe? In other words, has the political hegemony of ‘the west’ (European and North American powers) privileged an idea of modernity that has excluded other ideological forms of modernity?
In this sense, the discourse of modernity should be viewed as implicitly racialised. The term states, without saying, an assumption of racial and colonial difference. In being seen as a specifically European creation, modernity therefore becomes a central element of whiteness.
And so, if we follow through on these queries, we need to then ask: how has western scholarship helped to preserve this hegemony of European modernity at the exclusion of other forms?
In her exploration of these issues, Gurminder Bhambra (2007, 2013) points in particular at disciplinary formation in the twentieth century as an important means by which such a Eurocentric understanding of modernity has been maintained and developed.
Thus, in her discussion of ‘The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology’ (2013), Bhambra mentions a significant divergence between the formation of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. To quote her:
The history of modernity as commonly told… rests, as Homi Bhabha argues, on ‘the writing out of the colonial and post-colonial moment’ (1994, p.250; see also Chakrabarty, 2000). The rest of the world is assumed to be external to the world-historical processes selected for consideration and, concretely, colonial connections significant to the processes under discussion are erased, or rendered silent.
This is not an error of individual scholarship, I suggest, but something that is made possible by the very disciplinary structure of knowledge production that separates the modern (sociology) from the traditional and colonial (anthropology) thereby leaving no space for consideration of what could be termed the ‘postcolonial modern’. (Bhambra 2013, p.300).
To paraphrase this, sociology was developed as a means to produce knowledge of modernity, whilst anthropology was formed to separate out the ‘other’, the colonial, and the issues that do not fit easily into the paradigm of modernity.
Of course, this is not an absolute distinction between the two disciplines, but it is an account of the formation of the two separate forms of social science that makes a lot of sense.
Modernity and Religious Studies
This intrigues me not only because of my own disciplinary training within social anthropology — but also because I have spent my teaching career in another discipline, that is religious studies.
The discipline of religious studies is similarly the product of such a process of formation as a discipline. Indeed, this occurred at approximately the same time that anthropology emerged (in the early twentieth century).
There can be no doubt that religious studies has also been formed through its separateness from other disciplines in terms of the association of its subject matter (‘religion’) as separate from modernity. Indeed, one key strand of the formation of anthropology was the focus on anthropology of religion, particularly in colonial contexts.
But the key question here is what in particular is religious studies a separation from? In the case of anthropology of religion, it served as a useful part of the separation of anthropology from sociology that Bhambra remarks on.
More generally, though, the emergence of religious studies in the early twentieth century was through the emergence of ‘comparative religion’, a discipline which was largely phenomenological and philological. My question is whether this new discipline was created through its bifurcation from the (modernist?) discipline of (Christian) theology, or a more wider removal from the modernist project of the humanities?
The disciplinary emphasis in the discipline that was eventually named ‘religious studies’ was primarily on traditional/pre-modern (ie pre-colonial) contexts, and in this respect appears similar to what happened with the removal of the colonial (non-European) into anthropology. In the case of religious studies, this was mainly into the study of texts, most of which were ancient and (by definition) considered as sacred. This process in effect helped to consolidate the European modernist understandings of distinct (world) religious traditions, that is, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.
In a number of respects, therefore, anthropology was a means of separating out the study of the (contemporary) colonial modern, whilst religious studies was a significant part of the study of the colonial pre-modern. In this respect, though, religious studies also sought to define the colonial modern, since in focusing primarily on such pre-modern texts the discipline also articulated (and expected) a normative, textual view on the ‘teachings of’ Hinduism/Buddhism/etc. in the contemporary colonial context.
Thus, in many respects the function of the disciplinary formation of religious studies was similar to anthropology — to take colonial (non-European) modernity(ies) out from those academic disciplines that are focused (and indeed premised) on the uniqueness of ‘modernity’ as a specifically European achievement.
The removal of religion from modernity
The most obvious discipline that stood to benefit from such a move was, as mentioned, theology — in particular, liberal Protestant Christian theology. Emerging rationalist, modernist approaches to such theology could be contrasted not only with pre-modern contexts (such as Catholicism) but also the pre-modern or colonial modern of the subjects of religious studies. This in part suggests a reason for the interest of modernist theologians in non-European religions, since the latter helped to underscore the modernity of the former.
However, other disciplines also interacted with religious studies to maintain the boundary between (western) modernism and the colonial. This includes the study of (English) literature — as clearly referenced by the Macaulay Minute in 1835 (which included the infamous line ‘a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia’).
History also was involved, since the study of Asian religions could thus become an alternative to the study of the pre-colonial histories of Asia. In addition, philosophy also could be built (and maintained) on this basis, with the assumption that ‘oriental’ philosophies of India and China were folded up within their religious traditions, without the (assumed) benefit of the European enlightenment’s separation out of philosophy, which helped to give birth to modernity.
From the traditional to the contemporary
It is interesting to note, though, that the disciplines of both anthropology and religious studies shifted in significant ways in the mid 1960s onward, towards the inclusion of contemporary practices in the postcolonial world.
In the case of religious studies this involved the development of a paradigm based on ‘world religions’ as both a description and analysis of religious differences in the postcolonial world. In anthropology it involved a gradual shift away from the assumption that anthropology could find and describe distinct ‘traditional’ cultures, or at least not without first exploring the complex interactions between the ethnographer (and other non-natives) and the people of the culture under scrutiny.
These shifts in the two disciplines emerged in the wake of the decolonisation of former European-ruled empires. Thus, for example, the process of the dissolution of British imperial rule across Asia and Africa, which took place between the late 1940s and the mid 1960s, from which emerged independent nations. Another process that impacted strongly on the development of religious studies was the migration to Europe of significant numbers of people from these former colonies (before and after decolonisation).
In the case of the latter, religious studies borrowed largely from anthropology for emerging methodologies to study newly formed ‘migrant’ communities that settled in Europe — such as Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims in Britain. Thus, religious studies maintained its gaze on the exotic (the colonialised subject) through the use of methodologies of ethnography that had been developed for the study of colonial subjects within the discipline of anthropology.
In doing so, religious studies found itself (often uneasily) embracing ‘lived’ religions alongside the older models of textual religion. In doing this, however, the discipline largely did so in separation from other disciplinary fields, such as history, politics, area studies etc.
Alongside this, there was also a growth in the 1960s onward of the discipline of the sociology of religion. For the large part, this has tended to focus in particular on Christianity in western (i.e., European and North American) contexts, and thus kept the bifurcation within ‘modernity’ emphasised by Bhambra. Significant exceptions within the sociology of religion that have taken it into the postcolonial world are the successful establishment of the discipline in India and Singapore.
An important exception within the sociology of religion in Europe and North America has been the focus by a number of scholars on ‘new religious movements’ (NRMs), which emerged largely from the 1970s onwards. Here the focus was distinctly on the western contexts — even for ‘new religions’ that emerged from postcolonial, non-western contexts such as India and Korea. And within this study, much of the discussion was focused on key sociological concepts that were in themselves rooted in the assumptions of a unique western modernity (such as questions about how people in America could become involved in such new religiosity, and what new religiosity told us about contemporary western society).
Bringing this together
In conclusion to this, I think there is a case to be made that the development of the discipline of religious studies is doing similar work to that identified by Bhambra within anthropology.
The historical development of a discipline of religious studies has been a means of ‘writing out’ postcolonial modernities from more academically prestigious disciplines that are premised on a singular European model of modernity.
This is, however, a very broad stroke argument, and there is a lot of nuance to be found by looking at this more deeply. For example, what particular work does the idea of religion do, and alongside this what do various theories of religion work within this context? How does ‘religion’ as an idea, and the study of (different) ‘religions’ exclude postcolonial histories?
This is not only about the idea of religion vis-a-vis the secular, although this is an important starting point. It is also, more widely, about religion with respect to modernity and the idea (and history) of the west.
One key issue for me is that the importance of the idea of religion is because it is used in racialised ways. Alongside this, though, the idea of religion is also often used as the antithesis of modernity (e.g., in the work of the ‘new atheists’ such as Richard Dawkins).
This is a long established viewpoint, found in many parts of the academy — although rarely among those within the discipline of religious studies. What this, perhaps suggests is that certain approaches to non-European modernities have been marginalised into the discipline of religious studies, where they can be safely contained (and shown due ‘respect’).
A conclusion here could be, therefore, that the discipline of religious studies is a useful way of keeping postcolonial alternatives to (the assumption of) a singular European modernity at arm’s length within the academy.
Religion Bites is edited by Malory Nye, an academic and writer who teaches at the University of Glasgow. He can be found on Twitter (@malorynye) and on his website, malorynye.com.
He produces two podcasts: Religion Bites and History’s Ink.
Malory Nye is also the author of the books Religion the Basics (2008) and There Shall be an Independent Scotland (2015).
He is the editor of the Routledge journal Culture and Religion.
Main picture credit: Bronislaw Malinowski with natives on Trobriand Islands (Kiriwina) (1917/18), London School of Economics Library Collections
