Nation and Religion
This important new addition to the growing body of literature on nationalism, religion, and religious nationalism is the product of a conference on "Religion and Nationalism in Europe and Asia", held in 1995 at the University of Amsterdam. Princeton University Press is in general hesitant...
Guardado en:
| Autor principal: | |
|---|---|
| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
International Institute of Islamic Thought
2001
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/439567d203ed48e5abdaf80b08a060b5 |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| Sumario: | This important new addition to the growing body of literature on
nationalism, religion, and religious nationalism is the product of a
conference on "Religion and Nationalism in Europe and Asia", held in
1995 at the University of Amsterdam. Princeton University Press is in general hesitant when it comes to publishing edited volumes; it has done
well to make an exception for this one. While many edited collections,
particularly those that grow out of conferences, are at best of inconsistent
quality and at worst entirely lacking in coherence, van der Veer and
Lehmann's Nation and Religion is striking both for the high quality of each
individual essay it contains and for the depth and force of the overall
argument that emerges from the volume as a whole.
That argument is an important and provocative one: that modernity,
contrary both to modernity's own depiction of itself and to much historiography
of the modem period, is not characterized by the eradication of
religion's relevance to politics. On the contrary, the varied chapters in this
book show religion to be a near-ubiquitous feature of the political
landscape and discourse of the so-called "First" and "Third" Worlds alike.
The volume is made up of ten chapters that together deal with the
relationship between religion and politics in the Netherlands, Great Britain,
India, and Japan. The fullest coverage is given to India, which is
approached from different perspectives in four different chapters: van der
Veer's "The Mod State: Religion, Nation, and Empire in Victorian Britain
and British India", Susan Bayly's "Race in Britain and India", Partha
Chatterjee's "On Religious and Linguistic Nationalisms: The Second
Partition of Bengal", and Barbara Metcalf's "Nationalism, Modernity, and
Muslim Identity in India before 1947". This particular focus on India is a
reflection both of van der Veer's own specific interests and training and of
the fact that India - both British imperial and modem national - lends itself
particularly well to analysis concerned with the interplay between religion,
politics, and modem nationalisms.
The British dimension of van der Veer and Bayly's chapters is expanded
by Hugh McLeod in his contribution on "Protestantism and British
National Identity, 1815-1945". The volume also includes two chapters on
the Netherlands (Peter van Rooden's "History, the Nation, and Religion:
The Transformations of the Dutch Religious Past", and Frans Groot's
"Papists and Beggars: National Festivals and Nation Building in the
Netherlands during the Nineteenth Century") and one on Japan (Harry
Harmtunian's "Memory, Mouming, and National Morality: Yasukuni
Shrine and the Reunion of State and Religion in Postwar Japan").
Despite the diversity of time and place reflected in the volume, the essays
read remarkably well together as a whole - the result of a clearly-conceived
and carefully edited project. Additional coherence comes from the ...
|
|---|