Ted A. Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195370638
- eISBN:
- 9780199870738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195370638.003.008
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Chapter 7 offers reflections on the methodology that the book uses. The methodology includes historical and ecumenical study involving the serious probing of historic claims to consensus and the ...
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Chapter 7 offers reflections on the methodology that the book uses. The methodology includes historical and ecumenical study involving the serious probing of historic claims to consensus and the “reception” of those claims in Christian communities. The methodology distinguishes “doctrine” (communal teaching) from “theology” (any critical reflection on religious teachings) and “popular religion” (the actual beliefs of people, whether or not they have been formally affirmed by communities). It concludes with reflections on the difficulty and the possibility of communication and understanding across wide cultural and linguistic boundaries, because cross-cultural understanding is necessary for the claims the book has made.Less
Chapter 7 offers reflections on the methodology that the book uses. The methodology includes historical and ecumenical study involving the serious probing of historic claims to consensus and the “reception” of those claims in Christian communities. The methodology distinguishes “doctrine” (communal teaching) from “theology” (any critical reflection on religious teachings) and “popular religion” (the actual beliefs of people, whether or not they have been formally affirmed by communities). It concludes with reflections on the difficulty and the possibility of communication and understanding across wide cultural and linguistic boundaries, because cross-cultural understanding is necessary for the claims the book has made.
Leigh Jenco
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190263812
- eISBN:
- 9780190263843
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263812.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Theory
Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. ...
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Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. Against those who insist our thinking cannot escape the dominant terms of Euro-American modernity, this book shows how methods for understanding cultural others can take theoretical guidance from those very bodies of thought typically excluded by political and social theory. Examining a Chinese conversation over “Western Learning” from the 1860s to the 1920s, the book argues that we might follow these Chinese thinkers in viewing foreign knowledge as a theoretical resource—as a body of knowledge that formulates methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence that may be generalizable to other places and times. The call of reformers such as Liang Qichao and Yan Fu to bianfa—literally “change the institutions” of Chinese society and politics in order to produce new kinds of Western knowledge—was simultaneously also a call to “change the referents” those institutions sought to emulate, and from which participants might draw their self-understanding. They show that the institutional and cultural contexts supporting the production of knowledge are not prefigured givens that constrain cross-cultural understanding but dynamic platforms for learning that are tractable to concerted efforts over time to transform them. These thinkers point us beyond acknowledgment of cultural difference toward reform of the social, institutional, and disciplinary spaces in which the production of knowledge takes place.Less
Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. Against those who insist our thinking cannot escape the dominant terms of Euro-American modernity, this book shows how methods for understanding cultural others can take theoretical guidance from those very bodies of thought typically excluded by political and social theory. Examining a Chinese conversation over “Western Learning” from the 1860s to the 1920s, the book argues that we might follow these Chinese thinkers in viewing foreign knowledge as a theoretical resource—as a body of knowledge that formulates methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence that may be generalizable to other places and times. The call of reformers such as Liang Qichao and Yan Fu to bianfa—literally “change the institutions” of Chinese society and politics in order to produce new kinds of Western knowledge—was simultaneously also a call to “change the referents” those institutions sought to emulate, and from which participants might draw their self-understanding. They show that the institutional and cultural contexts supporting the production of knowledge are not prefigured givens that constrain cross-cultural understanding but dynamic platforms for learning that are tractable to concerted efforts over time to transform them. These thinkers point us beyond acknowledgment of cultural difference toward reform of the social, institutional, and disciplinary spaces in which the production of knowledge takes place.
Jill M. Bystydzienski
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814799789
- eISBN:
- 9780814723197
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814799789.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This concluding chapter summarizes the major findings of this study and then explores the implications for intercultural understanding and accommodation more generally. Positing a link between ...
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This concluding chapter summarizes the major findings of this study and then explores the implications for intercultural understanding and accommodation more generally. Positing a link between interpersonal and structural levels of social behavior and interaction, this chapter argues that the study of achievement of cross-cultural understanding within couple partnerships offers insights to how successful accommodations may occur between different (potentially hostile and unequal) groups. Effective conflict resolution between groups may take place when each of the parties recognizes the boundaries between that which is and is not negotiable, what each group can retain, and what each needs to relinquish. As the United States becomes increasingly multicultural, conceiving of how differences can be negotiated and accommodated without loss and assimilation is crucial.Less
This concluding chapter summarizes the major findings of this study and then explores the implications for intercultural understanding and accommodation more generally. Positing a link between interpersonal and structural levels of social behavior and interaction, this chapter argues that the study of achievement of cross-cultural understanding within couple partnerships offers insights to how successful accommodations may occur between different (potentially hostile and unequal) groups. Effective conflict resolution between groups may take place when each of the parties recognizes the boundaries between that which is and is not negotiable, what each group can retain, and what each needs to relinquish. As the United States becomes increasingly multicultural, conceiving of how differences can be negotiated and accommodated without loss and assimilation is crucial.
Walter Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198732679
- eISBN:
- 9780191796951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732679.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Most of the great European literary historians and intellectual historians of the past century compose their works in response to Communism, fascism, or both. The concerns of the present are in many ...
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Most of the great European literary historians and intellectual historians of the past century compose their works in response to Communism, fascism, or both. The concerns of the present are in many respects different and accordingly encourage different responses. One option is to investigate the explanatory role of culture, a project that requires the rejection of the standard association of culturalist explanation with conservative politics. A second alternative to the mid-century historians is the recent interest in world literature. Though its conditions of possibility have always included imperialism and international inequality, it does not follow that scholarship on the subject needs to replicate—rather than challenge—the order of things. By attending to language’s formal properties, literary critics might contribute to the advancement of both knowledge and cross-cultural understanding.Less
Most of the great European literary historians and intellectual historians of the past century compose their works in response to Communism, fascism, or both. The concerns of the present are in many respects different and accordingly encourage different responses. One option is to investigate the explanatory role of culture, a project that requires the rejection of the standard association of culturalist explanation with conservative politics. A second alternative to the mid-century historians is the recent interest in world literature. Though its conditions of possibility have always included imperialism and international inequality, it does not follow that scholarship on the subject needs to replicate—rather than challenge—the order of things. By attending to language’s formal properties, literary critics might contribute to the advancement of both knowledge and cross-cultural understanding.
David L. Haberman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190086718
- eISBN:
- 9780190086756
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190086718.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan is based on ethnographic and textual research with two major objectives. First, it is a study of the conceptions of and ...
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Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan is based on ethnographic and textual research with two major objectives. First, it is a study of the conceptions of and worshipful interactions with Mount Govardhan, a sacred mountain located in the Braj region of north-central India that has for centuries been considered an embodied form of Krishna. In this capacity it provides detailed information about the rich religious world associated with Mount Govardhan, much of which has not been available in previous scholarly literature. It is often said in that Mount Govardhan “makes the impossible possible” for devoted worshipers. This investigation includes an examination of the perplexing paradox of an infinite god embodied in finite form, wherein each particular form is non-different from the unlimited. Second, it aims to address the challenge of interpreting something as radically different as the worship of a mountain and its stones for a culture in which this practice is quite alien. This challenge involves exploration of interpretive strategies that aspire to make the incomprehensible understandable, and engages in theoretical considerations of incongruity, inconceivability, and like realms of the impossible. This aspect of the book includes critical consideration of the place and history of the pejorative concept of idolatry (and secondarily, its twin, anthropomorphism) in the comparative study of religions. Accordingly, the second aim aspires to use the worship of Mount Govardhan as a site to explore ways in which scholars engaged in the difficult work of representing other cultures struggle to “make the impossible possible.”Less
Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan is based on ethnographic and textual research with two major objectives. First, it is a study of the conceptions of and worshipful interactions with Mount Govardhan, a sacred mountain located in the Braj region of north-central India that has for centuries been considered an embodied form of Krishna. In this capacity it provides detailed information about the rich religious world associated with Mount Govardhan, much of which has not been available in previous scholarly literature. It is often said in that Mount Govardhan “makes the impossible possible” for devoted worshipers. This investigation includes an examination of the perplexing paradox of an infinite god embodied in finite form, wherein each particular form is non-different from the unlimited. Second, it aims to address the challenge of interpreting something as radically different as the worship of a mountain and its stones for a culture in which this practice is quite alien. This challenge involves exploration of interpretive strategies that aspire to make the incomprehensible understandable, and engages in theoretical considerations of incongruity, inconceivability, and like realms of the impossible. This aspect of the book includes critical consideration of the place and history of the pejorative concept of idolatry (and secondarily, its twin, anthropomorphism) in the comparative study of religions. Accordingly, the second aim aspires to use the worship of Mount Govardhan as a site to explore ways in which scholars engaged in the difficult work of representing other cultures struggle to “make the impossible possible.”
Richard Foley
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- April 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190865122
- eISBN:
- 9780190879174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190865122.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy’s premium on simplicity and generality. Although philosophy overlaps with the sciences, it also leans toward the humanities in the ...
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This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy’s premium on simplicity and generality. Although philosophy overlaps with the sciences, it also leans toward the humanities in the open-ended character of its core issues. Additionally, the author discusses Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s different views on the appeal of stories, and discusses as well how the insights of stories have the same features as those of the humanities in being indexical, prescriptive, and perspectival. The social sciences occupy a midpoint between the natural sciences and humanities, aiming to be descriptive, with high value on collective knowledge. But because they deal with human societies, there are constraints on efforts to minimize indexicality. And, because many issues about human societies cannot be addressed without understanding the viewpoints of individuals in the societies, there are also challenges in minimizing perspectivality and complexity.Less
This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy’s premium on simplicity and generality. Although philosophy overlaps with the sciences, it also leans toward the humanities in the open-ended character of its core issues. Additionally, the author discusses Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s different views on the appeal of stories, and discusses as well how the insights of stories have the same features as those of the humanities in being indexical, prescriptive, and perspectival. The social sciences occupy a midpoint between the natural sciences and humanities, aiming to be descriptive, with high value on collective knowledge. But because they deal with human societies, there are constraints on efforts to minimize indexicality. And, because many issues about human societies cannot be addressed without understanding the viewpoints of individuals in the societies, there are also challenges in minimizing perspectivality and complexity.
