Elements of a Comparative Methodology in the Study of Religion

Abstract

While comparison has been the subject of much theoretical debate in the study of religion, it has rarely been discussed in methodological terms. A large number of comparative studies have been produced in the course of the discipline's history, but the question of how comparison works as a method has rarely been addressed. This essay proposes, in the form of an outline, a methodological frame of comparison that addresses both the general configuration of a comparative study-its goal, mode, scale, and scope-and the comparative process, distinguishing operations of selection, description, juxtaposition, redescription, as well as rectification and theory formation. It argues that identifying and analyzing such elements of a comparative methodology helps, on the one hand, in evaluating existing comparative studies and, on the other, in producing new ones. While the article attempts to present the methodological frame in a concise form and thus offers limited illustrative material, the authors of the other essays in this collection discuss rich historical-empirical cases as they test the frame on their own comparative studies.

Comparison as a Provisional Activity

“…For Wickham, although there are challenges to employing comparison, by using it we can avoid solipsism, which prevents a single culture or tradition from becoming seen as normative. Yet the challenges to doing comparative work make the enterprise of comparing "hagiographies" across cultures daunting, if for no other reason than there is a lack of a universal vocabulary across cultures (Keune 2019) and the risk of decontextualization, essentialization and generalization clearly exists (Freiberger 2018).…”

“…Just as Wickham believes that comparison is essential, he also claims that it is hard (Wickham 2009). This, I believe, is where method comes into play, because, as Freiberger has argued, one must discuss what is problematic about comparison in both theoretical and methodological terms (Freiberger 2018). The method I used in my dissertation is that of Jonathan Z. Smith.…”

Dialogue and Destabilization: An Index for Comparative Global Exemplarity

“…As many scholars have noted (Freiberger 2018;Rondolino 2017), the presumption to compare continues to smack of its colonizing origins, displayed most prominently among the grand comparative enterprises of mid twentieth-century phenomenologists of religion (Eliade 1958;Heiler 1961). The comparative approach in Religious Studies (in addition to the disciplinary genesis itself) is rooted in the efforts of the Euro-American academy to clarify distinctions, and to bring into being discrete "world" religions as objects of study (Asad 1993;McClymond 2018).…”

Comparative Hagiology and/as Manuscript Studies: Method and Materiality

“…2 See, for example, (Brown 1981;Vauchez 1981;Heffernan 1988;Head 1990;Kleinberg 1992Kleinberg , 2008Bartlett 2013). For comparative studies in religion see, for example, (Clooney 2010;Clooney and Stosch 2018;Freiberger 2018Freiberger , 2019Freidenreich 2004); and in general the "Comparative Religion" series from Oxford University Press; see as well the from the place of hagiographic scholarship within studies in religion and literature, more broadly to the difficulties inherent in academic approaches to the sacred. Yet, as Todd French notes in this issue, while the disciplinary restrictions inherent to academic specialization create a difficult terrain for comparative approaches to religious topics, they nevertheless "render collaborative work imperative."…”