Lexington Books Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion (Religion and Race)

Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion emphasizes the inexorable influence that social identities exert in shaping methodological choices within the academic study of religion, as witnessed in sui generis appeals to particularity and reliance on (or rejection of) identity-based standpoints. Can data speak back, and if so, would scholars have ears to listen? With a refreshing hip hop sensibility, Miller and Driscoll argue that what cultural theorist Jean-François Bayart refers to as a "battle for identity" forces a necessary confrontation with the (impact of) social identities (and, their histories) haunting our fields of study. These complex categorical specters make it nearly impossible to untether the categories of identity that we come to study from the identity of categories shaping our methodological lenses. Treating method as an identity-revealing technique of distance-making between the "proper" scholar and the less-than-scholarly advocate for religion, Miller and Driscoll examine a variety of discursive milieus of vagueness (consider for instance "essentialism," "origins," "authenticity") at work in the contemporary discussion of "critical" methods that lack the necessary specificity for doing the heavy-lifting of analytically handling the asymmetrical dimensions of power part and parcel to social identification. Through interdisciplinary discussions that draw on thinkers including Charles H Long, Bruce Lincoln, Russell T. McCutcheon, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Laurel C. Schneider, William D. Hart, Tomoko Masuzawa, Anthony B. Pinn, bell hooks, Roderick Ferguson, John L. Jackson, Jasbir Puar, and Jean-François Bayart, among others, Method as Identity intentionally blurs the lines classifying "proper" scholarly approach and proper "objects" of study. With an intentional effort to challenge the de facto disciplinary segregation marking the field and study of religion today, Method as Identity will be of interest to scholars involved in discussions about theory and method for the study of religion, and especially researchers working at the intersections of identity, difference, and classification-and the politics thereof. Review Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion, by Christopher M. Driscoll and Monica R. Miller, challenges the idea that religion can be studied through methods that are independent of the identities of the scholars working in the field. While it impressively sums up historical developments in the field of religious studies, it is a book that is immensely relevant in the current day and naturally encourages self-reflection and awareness as a response from the reader.--Reading Religion Some scholars of religion object when religious identities are brought into the academy. They hold that academic work requires a method that maintains a distance from the people one studies. In this incisive book, Christopher Driscoll and Monica Miller push back against this narrative. Rejecting the claim that there is a method free of identity politics, and rejecting the ideology whereby a European, 'white' world became modern by painting others as anti-modern, tribal, and religious, Driscoll and Miller offer a very welcome interrogation of those approaches that call themselves the critical study of religion.--Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University The study of religion needs this book. With an eye toward institutional decolonization and conversational revitalization, Driscoll and Miller ask us to reflect on the lies we tell when we talk about proper discipline and right method. Departments of religious studies should read this book and ask themselves what they can do to forge better interpretive futures from the bad normative assumptions of our academic past.--Kathryn Lofton, Yale University For years I've been asking myself why scholars using critical, cog sci, or Foucauldian approaches t