Texte traduit en anglais par Paul Rollier (CNRS-CéSor)

International conference

Doing and undoing academic approaches to religion (REFLEX)

October 12^th to 14^th 2022 – Campus Condorcet

(Paris-Aubervilliers/France)

This international conference aims to bring together researchers around the issue of “religion” to reflect on the practice and development of the social sciences: the disciplinary status of academic approaches to religion, the institutions within which they are embedded, the global circulation of these discourses, and their social function.  

Perhaps more than ever in recent decades, the issue of religion arises across all areas of social life, from the private sphere to public forums, as well as within academic discourses dedicated to its analysis. This “renewal” in the study of religion challenges the founding paradigms of the social sciences and invites us to rethink the ways in which “religion”, as an object of study, continuously shapes our disciplines. To address these questions, we propose to establish a dialogue between researchers of diverse disciplines and institutional, cultural and socio-political contexts, with a view to provide detailed insights grounded in the longue durée and in comparative perspective.

We propose to approach religion trough three major themes: 1. Spaces and places of knowledge production; 2. Translations and circulations of concepts, categories and objects; 3. Ethics, politics and the city. 

Spaces and places of knowledge production

The relations between the different contexts of knowledge must be apprehended with respect to their spaces and places of production. What are the institutions and environments within which the social sciences of religion are produced? In which academic sector are they produced? Does the diversity of national academic environments give rise to distinct ways of framing social research on religion?

In certain contexts, places on the border or even outside the academic field have been able to stand in for, or to replace academic institutions. For instance, anthropology museums have sometimes generated the production and teaching of social sciences (as was the case of certain Brazilian or Mexican museums). In other contexts, the production of social sciences on religion emerges out of religious schools, divinity schools or theological institutes, as is the case of some institutions in Sweden, Senegal, Morocco or the United States. In societies under the ideological domination of authoritarian states, the relatively emancipated production of social sciences on religion sometimes stems from heterogeneous and non-institutional sites, as in contemporary Iran, or as was the case in communist countries. But what about today? Where, precisely, are the social sciences of religion produced across academic traditions? What position do they occupy in the institutional landscape?

A synchronic and diachronic comparison of the geographical spaces of knowledge production on “religion” and “the religious” (from Europe and the Americas to Africa and Asia) will enable us to account for the diversity and richness of these places of knowledge production throughout the world.

This panel will examine how the peculiarities of academic and national contexts shape the production of knowledge on “religion”.

Translations and circulations of concepts, categories and objects

A transversal theme for this conference will be the translation and circulation of concepts and categories used in defining and conceiving of “the religious”. These processes of translation and circulation are here understood both as an object of analysis in itself, and as a reflexive assessment of researchers’ own logic of movement and translation practices. While the first panel focuses on the formation of distinct research traditions, this second panel addresses more specifically the porosity and relationships between these different spaces.

First, this entails examining the translation of “emic” categories of “the religious” into purportedly scientific ones, and its possible feedback effects onto categories internal to “the religious”. Here we investigate how protagonists talk about and conceive of their own religious experience, and how researchers translate this experience into the discourse of the social sciences. We will also question the relevance of calling upon scientific categories translated from one specific religious world to understand phenomena external to it: can we speak of “conversion” or even “religion” in relation to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Afro-Brazilian “religions”?

Secondly, this panel will investigate the translation of concepts drawn from the social sciences of religion, with respect to their historical development and to the creation of their object. How can categories such as “conversion”, “sacred scripture”, or “religious authority” be translated from one language and analytical tradition to another? Drawing on experiences of translation or the constitution of common lexicons, this panel aims to reflect on the categories developed within the social sciences in relation to languages, and therefore to their sites of development.

Finally, we question the relevance of efforts to translate the category “religion”. Since the 1990s, postcolonial critiques have challenged “religion” and “the secular” as universal categories of analysis. For the anthropologist Talal Asad, for instance, the very idea of “religion” or “the religious” has been produced by the West, and as such does not (necessarily or identically) apply to other contexts, from Islam and Judaism’s “discursive traditions” to African or Afro-diasporic customary “religions”. More specifically, this panel explores how this critical re-evaluation of the category of religion has traveled and adapted to various geographical, linguistic and academic contexts. Far from being homogeneous, postcolonial critique is seized locally in ways that are shaped as much by the effect of globalization as by the “diasporization” of paradigms and categories.

Ethics, politics and the city   

We here examine the porosity and connections that can exist between knowledge production and politics. In France, for example, the legitimacy of research hinges to a certain extent on the (perhaps misleading) idea of its acquired autonomy from religion and politics. Beyond the French case, this autonomy must be examined critically, first with respect to the distinct history of the social sciences of religion in specific social and political contexts, and secondly with respect to the political constraints that weigh on the production of knowledge today. Multifarious theoretical strands emerged out of heterogenous legacies, tied to the specificity of each object and national research context, but also to diverse ideological positions. In this context, we propose to examine more particularly the growing demand for expertise and its impact on the way researchers frame their inquiries.

The study of religion was and remains an instrument to better understand social facts, and more specifically to critically apprehend social norms and rules, and in so doing the very foundations of society. For this reason, it is well-equipped to detect the transformations of social order. Thus, “specialists” in the study of religion, both within and outside academic circles, are sometimes called upon to offer their analysis in short order, in contrast to the patient approach required by their object of study. How does the division of labor between academic research and expertise relate to specific social settings? Where do we situate research ethics within this dual context? How do these questions emerge, and how pertinent are they with respect to the diverse cultural and religious contexts in which the social sciences are produced? These questions are contingent upon their degree of independence from the state, and consequently upon the kind of political and religious authority that the state wields over them. When such independence is established, the strategy of the state consists in directing research funding towards its own thematic priorities. Otherwise, the social sciences devise tactics to extend their autonomy.

Teaser :

https://youtu.be/FMSH6ZP3KOA