With the rise of atheism as a cause célèbre in the last decade or more, media and others have offered many interpretations for the apparent growth of nonbelief, ranging from the apocalyptic to the utopian. Many cite the Internet as a major contributing factor to this growth; undoubtedly new media have provided atheism with greater visibility. In this article it is argued that atheism as an Internet phenomenon ought to be understood less as the manifestation of a social fact and more as the discursive constitution of one or more publics in Michael Warner’s sense of the term. To this end, the article draws attention to a body of data that has received limited attention in scholarship to date, namely the blogs of some notable atheists. These are limited to blogs originating in the United States, and especially those by authors who identify as ‘progressive’. Thus, the conclusions drawn are not imagined to apply outside that context, nor are the sources employed considered to be representative of American atheism. But these limitations present no bar to the analysis of the particular discursive practices of the authors in question. Following Warner, virtual atheism as a public or publics has little capacity for agency: even if its growth as a social fact is true, and even as it develops agendas for social change, it is neither discursively or substantively robust enough to challenge any aspect of the contemporary neo-liberal order.
The critique of dominant discourses in the study of religion now stands at the forefront of discussions about theory and method. But we have come to a point where this challenge to orthodoxy ''has assumed an increasingly rigid and canonical shape.'' Ironically, this has resulted in the ossification of the object of critique, ''the modern conception of religion.'' The consequence has been multiple reiterations of the claim that there was no such thing as religion before moderns invented it, and the surveillance of scholarship of the ancient world to purge it of the use of religion as a descriptive category. Brent Nongbri's Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept is an example of this process and it is used in this article as a case study that examines the anatomy of the rise of a new normativity. The article challenges both Nongbri's essentialized dichotomy between ancient and modern and his near canonization of recent theory (especially that of Asad) in the study of religion. Instead, it is proposed that fostering critical awareness within the discipline is achieved by moving beyond today's deconstructivist trends.Ré sumé : La critique du discours dominant dans l'étude de la religion est maintenant au premier ordre des discussions sur la théorie et la méthode en sciences religieuses. Mais nous en sommes maintenant à un point où le défi à l'orthodoxie « a pris une forme plus rigide voire canonique ». Ironiquement, cela aboutit à une ossification de l'objet de la critique, « la conception moderne de la religion ». Il y a, en conséquence des répétitions multiples de l'affirmation selon laquelle le concept de religion n'existait pas avant son invention moderne. Il en résulte également une activité de surveillance des études sur le monde ancien afin d'éliminer l'utilisation descriptive de la catégorie de la religion. On considère l'oeuvre de Brent Nongbri « Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept »
Religion and state, more specifically religion and law, and religion and education are sub-fields that have received considerable scholarly attention. The interstices between these fields have been much less scrutinized, although it is within these spaces where the particular normativities produced and managed by state, law, and religion can be critically assessed, and where the nature of their interaction can be evaluated. We examine the intersecting normativities of religion with the secular public sphere, with education, and with the law, and their discursive fields with respect to the Programme d’Éthique et culture religieuse (ECR) of the Québec Ministry of Education. The distinct interests associated with these discursive fields meet at bases of common concern: religious pluralism, accommodation, and social cohesion. A common discourse emerges here that is informed by what critics identify as the World Religions Paradigm (WRP). Rather than examine the ECR simply with respect to its dependence on the WRP, we show how the discourses of the general public, education, and law in Québec and Canada meet to reinforce the WRP to produce a singular normativity that determines the shape of public discourses and representations of religion. In its effort to manage religious freedom and promote multiculturalism, the state (legislatively, legally, and educationally) generates the concrete terms by which citizens are to enact both. The logic of the overlapping normativities in the management of religious freedom and promotion of religious pluralism by the state creates the concrete terms by which religious identity and citizenship are defined.
This book is one of nineteen (at the date of publication) in a diverse series of dictionaries covering topics, ''A to Z,'' such as religious traditions like Shinto, the Korean, the Cold and Vietnam wars, Feminism, and the Holocaust. This dictionary of Shinto contains entries on the major concepts, practices, personalities and sacred places of Shinto in a good deal of detail. At first glance, one might wonder about the worth of such volumes in an age of easy access to basic kinds of information via the internet. But after a few random internet searches it becomes apparent that the meaning of some important Shinto terms cannot be adequately learned from online sources. Hence, this volume will make a useful addition to any reference collection, particularly since Shinto is too often the poor cousin to Zen Buddhism in many libraries' Japanese religion holdings. The book also includes, besides the requisite guide to the transliteration and pronunciation of Japanese words, a 17-page chronology of Japanese history from prehistory to the present, and a 23-page introduction to the religion of Shinto, both useful to students and teachers unfamiliar with that history and the tradition.
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