Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion

<p> Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the 2020s have been consistently framed as a time crisis. Rather than take this at face value asking how religious people may handle a crisis or what religion can offer people who feel they are in crisis this volume asks what happens when we classify something as a crisis and what is at stake in linking these crises to religion. Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion highlights how these terms and categories though seemingly self-evident serve particular social and political ends.</p><p></p><p>After an opening section that explores the deployment of crisis rhetoric in various aspects of higher education this volume structures the critical approach to the category of crisis through four distinct sections: Language Lexicon Locus and Locution. The section on language examines the various rhetorical and theoretical frameworks for crisis. The third section Lexicon considers the question of method in the study of religion interrogating the ways in which perceived crises mark shifts in how we do our work. The section on locus takes up the concept of data for religion and crisis analyzing examples of how the construction of crisis can force moments of decision adaptation and reaction. Examples compare instances from North America Brazil Mexico and Russia. The final section Locution brings together senior scholars to assess recent approaches to the role of religion in crisis and offers alternatives to that framework in the field of religious studies. The volume concludes with an epilogue reflecting on how scholars themselves theorize (or choose not to theorize) crises in regard to their own lives.</p><p></p><p>This volume focusing on discourses of crisis during a time that is constantly mediated as in crisis shows us ways of doing religious studies that are up to the challenge of reflecting on the problems strategies and political structures through which we construct our social worlds.</p>