A Peer Reviewed Blog
An ad seen on a table in the book display at the American Academy of Religion meeting in Baltimore:
If we’re defined by our other, then I’d say that this is what Culture on the Edge is not? For we instead start with the assumption that claims that something can’t be seen can themselves be seen and heard and felt, etc., etc. Continue reading “Seeing Things Unseen”
There’s been lots of buzz, over the past decade or so, about material religion or embodied religion, as if this apparent emphasis on the empirical, the contingent, the historical, somehow gets us out of what many now see as the old rut of studying disembodied beliefs alone. Continue reading “Eliade Has Not Left the Building”
Not long ago I posted about a paired example (one scholar in India and one in North America), each debunking what they both called other people’s superstitions. Apart from being curious as to why one of those critics met a tragic fate (the topic of my earlier post), I also find interesting the way in which the side they both share — what shall we call them: Modernists? Rationalists? Empiricists? Scientists? Secularists? — portrays those on the other; for “they,” as indicated just above, are superstitious people who rely on archaic beliefs in black magic, hocus pocus, faith (in fact, it is often called blind faith) whereas “we” boldly rely on our own cool-headed rationality and cold hard facts.
But is it as simple as that? Continue reading “Blind Confidence”
Have you seen this beer new commercial? Continue reading “A Character Study”
I ended a recent post by writing:
That our various attempts to explain, and thereby exert control over the world (including each other), don’t always complement one another is something that can’t go unnoticed, of course; but instead of just professional disagreements it sometimes has rather profound consequences. Exploring that, however, is best left for another time.
Now seems to be that time: to explore the “sometimes” of that sentence. Continue reading “Sometimes When We Touch…”