Chryssides & Gregg/Insider/Outsider Debate, 3. The Death Pangs

The chapter explores how the insider/outsider dichotomy in the study of religions has become increasingly untenable as ‘objectivity’ was increasingly challenged by post-modernist theory, the advent of reflexivity and the collapse of primordial theories of identity construction as they were supplanted by newer understandings. On route, the author argues that the study of religion is uniquely placed to revolutionise both scientific methodological paradigms and the ethics of research that currently prevail in the social sciences.