I was so glad for a book that systematically discarded the American “separation of church and state” paradigm, which despite…
Imagining community
comparative study
The future of enlightenment: Comparison, tradition, temporality
In The Iranian Metaphysicals, Alireza Doostdar describes his work as contributing to “comparative anthropologies of epistemology”—“how people know things and…
In defense of the fragment
Richard Madsen has done me the favor of reading my book carefully and sympathetically. He points out that the complexity…
Looking back while hurtling forward
At a time when the late twentieth century giants of comparative social science—like S.N. Eisenstadt and Robert Bellah—have recently passed away…
Chinese religions in comparative historical perspective
This short essay draws up the principal ideas from a book chapter concerning the historical field of Chinese religions in…
Methods for the study of religion
The Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at the University of Kent in the UK recently launched an online training resource on research methods in…
Comparing the incommensurate
David Buckley's recent post in Notes from the field raises a crucial methodological question. On what basis is comparative work…
Varieties of anti-religious imagination
The publication of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age has fostered an exceptionally vibrant intellectual debate on secularism and on the…