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Spring seminar: Comparison
From Monday, 04. June 2018 -  12:00
To Wednesday, 06. June 2018 - 14:00
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Location : The Artic University of Tromsø (UiT)

Comparison is basic to thinking and categorizing, and accordingly to academic work, whether labelled as comparative or not. Yet comparison has been and remains contested, in the wake of trenching critique from the 1970s and costs and problems with comparative designs. Such critique did not result in the abandonment of comparative approaches; for instance, leading scholars like Bruce Lincoln and Jonathan Smith have throughout their careers worked along comparative tracks. Yet comparison have over the past decades not been foregrounded or widely acknowledged as a method. Nor is there today an established “comparative approach”. In the words of Birgit Meyer – and this claim can be extended to the academic study of religion - “anthropology’s comparative approach” is not simply “there” and ready to be implemented … but is yet to be revived and developed in terms of epistemology, theory, and method” (2017:510).

This PHD-course discusses recent attempts along such lines, with a focus on constructive ways forward and methodological concerns. If compare we must, how can we do it better, more informed, and in ways that avoid pitfalls? How can we learn from past mistakes, without settling for what Bruce Lincoln´s “Thesis on comparison” calls “a parochialism that dares speak nothing beyond the petty and the particular”. What is the analytical pay off of comparison, in regard to critical thinking and knowledge production? What is the comparison involved in our own work, and in the religious worlds we study?

Lectures by Paul Johnson (University of Michigan), Nancy Ammerman (Boston University), Einar Thomassen (University of Bergen) and Helge Årsheim (University of Oslo)

Monday 4/6, Aud. Nedre Lysthus

12.00-12.15 Welcome

12.15-13.45 Paul Johnson:

               Religion and the Problem of Agency

13.45-14.15 Coffee, sandwiches and fruit

14.15-15.45 Einar Thomassen

Comparing Religions, Comparing Monotheisms

15.45-16.15 Coffee

16.15-17.45: Helge Årsheim

From extraterrestrials and incense sticks to turbans, baggy trousers and Jesus jeans: Comparing religions at the European Court of Human Rights

Tuesday 5/6, Aud. Nedre Lysthus

10.00- 11.30: Nancy Ammerman

Understanding Religious Organizations: Methods and Strategies for Comparison

11.30- 13.00 Lunch

13.00 -15.00: Group discussions. A-D: 15 minutes presentation, 30 minutes discussion

15.00-15.30 Coffee break

15.30- 17.30: Group discussions. A-D: 15 minutes presentation, 30 minutes discussion

Wednesday 6/6

9.30-11.30 Group discussions. A-D: 15 minutes presentation, 30 minutes discussion

11.45-12.30 Summary & Goodbye