Dorrough Smith/Constructing Data, 4. Categorizing Contrariety

Resource added
How to Cite: Soboslai, John. 4. Catagorizing Contrariety: Narrative and Taxonomy in the Construction of Sikhism. Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 48-60 Oct 2019. ISBN 9781781796764.

Full description

In response to the provocative essay by Annette Yoshiko Reed, this paper engages with some of her main ideas and the ways categorization operates as a practice in academic and cultural contexts. First interrogating some philosophical bases for approaching religion as a discrete category, the author proceeds to frame Reed’s approach in the nominalism of David Hume by which general ideas are formed by relations of impressions. After characterizing Reed’s efforts as the analysis of narrative constructions of contiguity, using the case of transnational Sikh groups striving for political recognition in the early to mid-twentieth century as a case study for another nominalist relation: contrariety. By analyzing the ways religion was used in a two-pronged attempt to distinguish Sikhism from its parent ‘religion’ Hinduism, this essay provides a complement to Reed’s model by considering how religious classification is employed in a specific socio-cultural context towards political ends. The author concludes with an encouragement to attend to the ‘why’ of categorization as much as the ‘how’.

  • type
    Image
  • created on
  • file format
    jpeg
  • file size
    65 KB
  • container title
    Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies :Examining the Architecture of the Academy
  • creator
    John Soboslai
  • isbn
    9781781796771 (eBook)
  • publisher
    Equinox Publishing Ltd.
  • publisher place
    Sheffield, United Kingdom
  • rights
    Equinox Publishing Ltd.
  • series title
    NAASR Working Papers
  • volume
  • doi