RT Article
T1 Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies
JF Religions
VO 8
IS 12
SP 1
OP 15
A1 Cooper, Travis Warren
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2017
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1586318225
AB Jonathan Z. Smith contends that a taxonomic agenda underlies the study of religion. Before Smith, structuralist scholars saw it as their task to uncover the roots of human taxonomic arrangements that present themselves as natural. Drawing somewhat anachronistically on Smith's taxonomic model, I argue that underlying investigative categories posed by structural anthropologists are operative strategies of subjective value and valuation. I employ Smith to amend structuralist classificatory paradigms and to speak to questions of normativity, values, and concealed agendas in the contemporary study of religion. Smith's comparative program serves as a fertile territory of encounter between divergent religious studies subfields. In short, I argue that although the normative turn in religious studies has generally succeeded in deconstructing appeals to scholarly objectivity, it faces challenges along other parameters.
K1 Jonathan Z. Smith
K1 Categories
K1 normativity and values
K1 Social Anthropology
K1 Structuralism
K1 Taxonomy
K1 the study of religion
DO 10.3390/rel8120270