On the Spot with Craig Martin

“On the Spot” backs members of Culture on the Edge into a corner to talk about their backgrounds, their ongoing work, and what might be gained by an alternative understanding of how identity works.

craigguitarQ: Craig, the shift that we’re all making at Culture on the Edge – from describing identities that either do or do not complement each other to studying the historically situated identification practices that make it possible to claim an identity – is not all that typical for scholars of religion. Do you agree? And if so, then what did you do your early work on and when (and why) did you start to make this theoretical shift?

A: I find that a lot of scholars claim that there is, of course, no essence to any religious or cultural tradition, but who then go on to talk as if there was. Continue reading “On the Spot with Craig Martin”

“Sacred” and “the Sacred”: False Cognates

sacred“Sacred” is an adjective; “the Sacred” is a noun. In The Ideology of Religious Studies, Tim Fitzgerald discusses the adjectival use:

If by ‘sacred’ we mean those things, ideas, places, people, stories, procedures and principles that empirical groups of people value, deem to be constitutive of their collective identity, or will defend to the death, then it seems likely that we have a relatively meaningful crosscultural concept. (19) Continue reading ““Sacred” and “the Sacred”: False Cognates”