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"Chidester, David"
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World Religions in the World
The classification of ‘world religions’ is highly problematic because of its arbitrary construction, its exclusion of indigenous religions, and its easy availability for ideological manipulation. The imperial edifice of ‘world religions’ has been dismantled in recent scholarship in the study of religion. Yet, the notion of ‘world religions’ has been enthusiastically embraced by advocates of inclusive citizenship in democratic societies and by advocates of indigenous empowerment in postcolonial societies. This brief essay reviews the terms of engagement for critically reflecting on the various deployments of ‘world religions’ as a prelude to thinking about religion in the world.
Journal Article
Nelson Mandela : in his own words
A collection of speeches by the South African leader includes pieces that marked such moments in his life as his imprisonment and release, his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, and his election as South Africa's first black president.
BOOK
David Chidester Publications (1982-2018)
The church of baseball, the fetish of Coca-Cola, and the potlatch of Rock 'n' Roll: Theoretical models for the study of religion in American popular culture. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council and New Africa Education. 2002. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council and New Africa Education. 2001. South African faith communities and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The church of baseball, the fetish of Coca-Cola, and the potlatch of Rock 'n' Roll: Theoretical models for the study of religion in American popular culture. Viewpoints: The Journal of the Wisconsin Institute, a Consortium for the Study of War, Peace, and Global Cooperation 1: 2-15.
Journal Article
Wild religion
Wild Religion is a wild ride through recent South African history from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the football World Cup in 2010. In the context of South Africa's political journey and religious diversity, David Chidester explores African indigenous religious heritage with a difference. As the spiritual dimension of an African Renaissance, indigenous religion has been recovered in South Africa as a national resource. Wild Religion analyzes indigenous rituals of purification on Robben Island, rituals of healing and reconciliation at the new national shrine, Freedom Park, and rituals of animal sacrifice at the World Cup. Not always in the national interest, indigenous religion also appears in the wild religious creativity of prison gangs, the global spirituality of neo-shamans, the ceremonial display of Zulu virgins, the ancient Egyptian theosophy in South Africa's Parliament, and the new traditionalism of South Africa's President Jacob Zuma. Arguing that the sacred is produced through the religious work of intensive interpretation, formal ritualization, and intense contestation, Chidester develops innovative insights for understanding the meaning and power of religion in a changing society. For anyone interested in religion, Wild Religion uncovers surprising dynamics of sacred space, violence, fundamentalism, heritage, media, sex, sovereignty, and the political economy of the sacred.
eBook
Thinking Black
Often invoked as providing the genealogy of the study of religion, British imperial comparative religion entailed a triple mediation in which imperial theorists derived indigenous data through colonial middlemen. Focusing on the circulation of Africana religions in this enterprise, I examine the work of three South African scholars—the Zulu philologist uNemo (1865–1953), the Tswana historian S. M. Molema (1891–1965), and the Zulu dramatist and student of anthropology H. I. E. Dhlomo (1903–1956)—who intervened in imperial comparative religion by reversing the flow in knowledge production. While uNemo unsettled F. Max Müller's confidence in quoting colonial experts in South Africa, Molema and Dhlomo turned imperial theorists into informants for advancing their own intellectual projects in the historical and anthropological analysis of African religion in South Africa. For the study of Africana religions, this discussion highlights the dynamics of circulation in producing knowledge about religion and religions.
Journal Article
Empire of religion : imperialism and comparative religion
How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project.
In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediations—imperial, colonial, and indigenous—in which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Müller's dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan's fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Bois's studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.
eBook
Wild Religion
Wild Religion is a wild ride through recent South African history from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the football World Cup in 2010. In the context of South Africa's political journey and religious diversity, David Chidester explores African indigenous religious heritage with a difference. As the spiritual dimension of an African Renaissance, indigenous religion has been recovered in South Africa as a national resource. Wild Religion analyzes indigenous rituals of purification on Robben Island, rituals of healing and reconciliation at the new national shrine, Freedom Park, and rituals of animal sacrifice at the World Cup. Not always in the national interest, indigenous religion also appears in the wild religious creativity of prison gangs, the global spirituality of neo-shamans, the ceremonial display of Zulu virgins, the ancient Egyptian theosophy in South Africa's Parliament, and the new traditionalism of South Africa's President Jacob Zuma. Arguing that the sacred is produced through the religious work of intensive interpretation, formal ritualization, and intense contestation, Chidester develops innovative insights for understanding the meaning and power of religion in a changing society. For anyone interested in religion, Wild Religion uncovers surprising dynamics of sacred space, violence, fundamentalism, heritage, media, sex, sovereignty, and the political economy of the sacred.
eBook
Postgraduates Producing Knowledge
Introducing this special issue, “Postgraduates Producing Knowledge”, the editor provides background. The articles in this issue arose out of an ongoing experiment in knowledge production in a postgraduate course on theory and method in the study of religion in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town. Although the articles in this issue are of interest in their own right, the process of their publication reveals important features of the production, authentication, and circulation of knowledge in the academic study of religion and religions.
Journal Article