The Newsletter 54 Summer 2010

Politics and religion in Asia - comparative frameworks

Kiri Paramore

Scholars working on issues relating to the place of religion in Asia generally share two rather basic problems: ‘religion’ and ‘Asia’. The tendentious nature of both of these categories as they have been used in the history of the modern academy, the Eurocentric origins of their formulations and the political background to their inventions intertwined with the history of 19th century imperial expansion are generally well acknowledged in the field. Research that looks to the relationship between religion and Asia also needs to confront the history through which these two categories have been interrelated and symbiotically manufactured in the modern academy.

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