Asad, Smith, and Masuzawa in particular offer as alternatives paying more attention to reflexivity, disciplinary history, and the relation between power and knowledge. What Smith, Asad, Geertz, and Masuzawa share in common is a sense of the inadequacy of the classical approaches. What might be an appropriate and useful way to talk about something like “religion” across times, locales, and disciplines? This is a question shared by classical approaches to the study of religion like those of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Max Müller, and more recent scholars like Clifford Geertz, Talal Asad, Tomoko Masuzawa, and Jonathan Z. A longer paper that grew out of this essay can be found here.
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