L. Jones – Encyclopedia of Religion (14 Volume set, Second edition)

Автор: L. Jones
Название книги: Encyclopedia of Religion (14 Volume set, Second edition)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Философия
Страницы: 740х14
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

To participate in a revision of Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of
Religion, first published in 1987, is an occasion of intense
humility, but also a grand opportunity. Though not without
its critics, the first edition was suitably heralded as the standard
reference work in the field, a truly landmark achievement.
The work of revision has, at nearly every turn, amplified
rather than diminished appreciation for the accomplishment
of those original volumes. Dealing firsthand with the
conceptual and organizational challenges, coupled with the
logistical labors of coordinating the efforts of countless scholars
and editors, redoubles a sense of admiration, respect, and
gratitude for the makers of the original version of this encyclopedia.
If the making of that original set posed innumerable
theoretical, organizational, and practical challenges, the revision
of such a work evokes no fewer questions of balance and
compromise. On the one hand, the building and remodeling
of a work of this wide scope is a preeminently collaborative
enterprise. It is born of a vast community of scholars, together
participating in an immensely collective project; the interactivity
among editors, consultants, and contributors has
indeed provided perhaps the most rewarding aspects of this
project. Yet, on the other hand, such a large and multifaceted
undertaking has a deeply impersonal, even anonymous, quality.
Face-to-face meetings among participants are few, schedules
fast, authors and editors far-spaced. By engaging the talents
of so many people from so many places, large encyclopedias,
and even more so their revisions, perpetuate the pretense
of anonymous, objective, and interchangeable authors;
numerous hands touch every piece, and the target of responsibility
either for credit or for blame is not always easy to
locate.
Such an encyclopedia requires, in one respect, a large
measure of consensus among contributors as to what religion
is and what academic students of religion ought to and ought
not to circumscribe within their view. But, in another
respect, it is a scholarly consensus of a very broad and pliant
sort. Careful reading reveals enormous diversity of perspective
among first-edition contributors, far more than is often
assumed; and for the revision, even among the principal decision
makers, and positively among the contributors, there is
a very wide spectrum of opinions as to the most serviceable
definitions of religion and the most worthy purview for the
field of religious studies.
On the one hand, encyclopedias seem by nature vehicles
of convention, destined to simplify, reify, essentialize, and
provide falsely stabilized views of dynamic historical eras,
religious traditions, doctrines, and practices. Yet, on the other
hand, a large percentage of the contributors to this project
understand their academic calling to be primarily one of disruption
and destabilization; many have explicitly dedicated
their careers to complicating and calling to question conventional
wisdoms about religion and things religious. Thus in
order to capitalize on their talents, contributors were provided
explicit instructions, tidy scope descriptions, and specific
word allotments, but they were also provided a fair measure
of space for improvisation and flexibility. One member of the
editorial board framed the balance this way:
The letters to all contributors should include a general
statement that we wish to respect their judgment in
defining the general contours of each article, and the
scope descriptions are meant only to be suggestive,
although of course we do hope that we will be taken
seriously. Also that we are looking for entries that reflect
the current state of the field and that we are hoping that
each entry will not gloss over problems of evidence or
conceptualization in the current state of the field but
will instead frankly acknowledge such problems and
make them key parts of the entry in a bid to make the
[second edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion] look to
the future and help to shape things to come.
The intellectual challenges are likewise reflected in more
practical tensions and balancing acts. Perhaps most onerously, the recruitment of literally hundreds of qualified scholars,
available and willing to deliver their work in a timely manner,
is no mean task. For some, participation in an encyclopedia
of this stature is a high calling, a fortuitous opportunity
to engage a uniquely wide readership; others, however,
admit far less enthusiasm about undertaking assignments
construed as diversions from their more technical research,
more public service than privilege. Once aboard, contributors
had to balance the standards of accuracy, sophistication,
and scholarly nuance that would satisfy themselves and their
academic peers with the encyclopedia’s incentive to reach a
far more broad, less specialized audience.
The balancing of word counts is likewise a constant concern,
and the space allotted to various topics is, to some real
extent, a telling indicator as to the relative importance of
those topics, at least in the eyes of the editorial board. Yet,
equations of article length and significance, a familiar
assumption among reviewers, are invariably too simple, too
little aware of the practical exigencies of accepted and
declined invitations, met and missed deadlines, obeyed and
ignored editorial recommendations. The most well considered
intentions and the clearest of visions are, not infrequently,
causalities in the stiff competition for the time of
twenty-first century academics. In fact, it is both noteworthy
and deeply disappointing that several dozen additional new
articles were conceived but never successfully assigned, and
also that at least three dozen promised articles had not
arrived by the production deadline, and thus had to be omitted
from the revision. Gaps and asymmetries in coverage
could, therefore, have innumerable explanations.
Be that as it may, perhaps the most vexing acts of balance
and compromise are built into the very notion of “revision”
itself. Neither defense nor attack, revision demands
commingled attitudes of respect for and discontent with the
original. To revise requires, on the one side, that a goodly
portion of the previous work will remain intact; this editorial
board was not afforded a fully fresh point of departure. Yet,
on the other side, the initiative of revising does afford, even
necessitates, changes, reconceptualizations, and wholly new
additions that respond both to recent events and to recent
trends in scholarship. Revision is, by nature and by design, a
balancing and a juxtaposition of old and new elements.
This complex intermingling of first-edition and new
components enriches but also greatly complicates the critical
use and assessment of these volumes. The synoptic outline of
contents, the alphabetical list of entries, and the index provide
usefully comprehensive guides, but to discover all that is
new and different between the second edition and its precedent
can, nonetheless, pose a difficult challenge. The remainder
of this preface works, therefore, to direct attention (1) to
some of the most prominent new elements of this revision;
(2) to the decision-making processes that put those adjustments
in place; and (3) to the conventions in this edition that
can assist in ascertaining the precise status of individual
entries.
ASSESSMENTS, ADJUSTMENTS, AND CONVENTIONS
The initial step in the revision process was a comprehensive
evaluation of every one of the 2,750 first-edition entries. As
though dealing out an enormous deck of cards, each of the
original articles was assigned to suitable members of the
thirteen-person board of associate editors or the slate of some
two dozen consultants. Parity did not apply insofar as a sturdy
few were taxed with assessing hundreds of articles, others
with only a handful. In the subsequent entry-by-entry
review, a relatively small number of articles were completely
jettisoned while the huge remainder was assigned to one of
three categories.
A first category of entries is composed of those approved
to be reprinted with few or no changes. Though roughly
1,800 articles in this set were to remain largely or fully intact,
attempts were made to reach the authors of those
first-edition entries both with an invitation to modify or
update their contribution in ways that they saw fit and with
a request that they augment the bibliography with relevant
sources that had appeared in the interim. Of course, many of
those scholars were no longer active in the profession; others
did not reply; and others declined to make any alterations to
their original articles. Articles that were, therefore, reprinted
essentially unchanged have a designation of “(1987)” following
the author’s name. In numerous instances, however, firstedition
authors did take the occasion to adjust their own articles
in small or large ways. For these articles, the attribution
of authorship is followed by two dates, for example, Eleanor
Zelliot (1987 and 2005). Additionally, where original
authors of articles in this set were unavailable or nonresponsive,
many of the respective bibliographies were nonetheless
supplemented with relevant new sources; this accounts for
those bylines that include the designation “Revised
Bibliography,” which signals that a “New Sources” section is
appended to the bibliography.
A second category of entries comprises those judged to
need significant revision or updating. These articles are perhaps
most properly worthy of the title “revised” insofar as
they both retain a substantial portion of the original work
and introduce substantially new information and/or new
conceptual formulations. This sort of revision took one of
three forms. In some cases, original authors were enlisted to
rework and update their own articles; those articles (not
unlike those in which authors voluntarily revised their original
articles) are consequently attributed to a sole author but
with two dates, for example, Davíd Carrasco (1987 and
2005). In many other cases, the revision was undertaken by
a different scholar, which accounts for those articles that are
attributed to two authors, for example, Robertson Davies
(1987) and Eric Ziolkowski (2005). Irrespective of whether
the modifications were completed by the original author or
by someone else, the revisions are, in some instances, modest,
perhaps addressing recent events or attending to an
important new publication on the topic; but, in other cases,
the adjustments and reconceptualizations are more thoroughgoing. All of the revisions and “updates” of these sorts
do, however, eventuate in entries that are, at once, old and
new.
A third variation on this revision theme—and one of the
more distinctive features of the second edition of
Encyclopedia of Religion—is a consequence of those situations
in which the original article was assessed as a still-valuable
exposition of the topic, worthy of reprinting, but not a treatment
that could any longer be represented as state-of-the-art.
In many of these instances, the first-edition entry provided a
seminal statement on the subject, but was distinctive, or
sometimes idiosyncratic, in ways that precluded revision or
updating per se. Thus, instead of reworking the original, it
was more suitable to retain the integrity of that article by
reprinting it unchanged and then augmenting it with a kind
of supplementary addendum. For instance, Mircea Eliade
wrote the first-edition entry “Sexuality: An Overview,” which
articulates a prominent, still-important exposition of the
topic, but not one that can be regarded as current in a field
of study where there has been enormous activity in the past
two decades. The original entry is, therefore, allowed to stand
with the parenthetical designation “[First Edition]” and then
is complemented by a completely new entry titled “Sexuality:
An Overview [Further Considerations],” which focuses
attention on research and perspectives that have emerged
since the first edition. This pairing of prominent but now
dated first-edition entries with new complementary pieces—
there are roughly fifty of these juxtapositions of old and
new—adds a special texture to the revision; it facilitates a
kind of historical, even archaeological, appreciation of the
unfolding succession of ideas on a topic. But the same editorial
tactic also places a special burden on readers.
Accordingly, as a cautionary note, it would, in principle,
never be suitable to rely on one of these “First Edition” pieces
without reading ahead also to its complimentary, sometimes
quite critical, “Further Considerations” counterpart.
In any case, the initial article-by-article assessment of the
first edition eventuated also in a third category constituted of
those entries for which a topic and title were retained but the
actual article was completely replaced. There are well over
three hundred of these new renditions of already-standing
topics. As a rule, authors of these replacement articles were
invited to employ the original entry as a resource but not
necessarily a model, that is, to compose an essentially new
treatment of the existing topic. Not surprisingly, one can find
instances in which there is considerable continuity between
the original and present articles while, in other cases, the
first-edition article and its new, second-edition iteration
share little beyond the title. That is to say, the great majority
of these so-termed replacement articles are, for all practical
purposes, thoroughly new entries. Consequently, author
attribution for these articles includes a parenthetical date precisely
like other new articles, for example, Mary MacDonald
(2005).
NEW FEATURES AND CONFIGURATIONS
In addition to these various layers of revision and replacement,
the second edition introduces entries on nearly six
hundred topics that did not appear in the first edition. New
topics and titles are added to almost every portion of the revision,
but especially noteworthy are those that appear in related
sets of articles—or so-termed composite entries. Many of
these composite sets, which were also a very prominent feature
of the first edition, provide a means of surveying the
geographical distribution of a large tradition: The
“Buddhism” composite entry, for example, is composed of
articles that treat, in succession, “Buddhism in India,”
“Buddhism in Southeast Asia,” “Buddhism in Central Asia,”
and so on. In many other cases, however, these composite sets
are trained on a broad topic or theme such as “Pilgrimage,”
“Iconography,” “Music,” or “Soul,” which is then addressed
in a cross-culturally comparative fashion. In the main, these
thematically configured composites open with a broad
overview article, which is then followed by a series of articles
that explore that large theme either in different contexts
and/or from different angles of view. And, although every
sort of composite entry enjoys a measure of revision, it is
these thematically linked sets that are subject to the most
venturesome innovation and growth. Several permutations
and outstanding examples deserve quick comment.
In numerous instances, thematic composite entries that
appeared in the original edition were reworked and very substantially
expanded. For example, the first-edition “Afterlife”
composite entry included an overview and only two
area-specific articles, one on Jewish concepts of the afterlife
and another on Chinese concepts. In the new edition, however,
that pair is complemented by completely new entries on
African conceptions of the afterlife, as well as Australian,
Oceanic, Mesoamerican, Christian, Islamic, Greek and
Roman, and Germanic concepts. The first-edition
“Cosmology” composite is similarly expanded with thoroughly
new entries on the cosmologies of Africa, indigenous
Australia, Oceania, indigenous North America and
Mesoamerica, South America, Islam, and finally, so-termed
“Scientific Cosmologies.” Or, to cite just one more such
example of the enhancement of a standing composite entry,
the original cluster of entries under the rubric of “Rites of
Passage,” which had included entries solely on Hindu,
Jewish, and Muslim rites, is fleshed out to include new articles
on African, Oceanic, Mesoamerican, and Neopagan rites
of passage.
Other second-edition composite entries—article sets
that provide some of the most notable new contributions to
the revision—result from cases in which a topic that had
received fairly limited coverage in the first edition becomes
the subject of a much more extensive block of new articles.
For instance, where the original edition had modest-length
and broadly-framed articles devoted to “Healing,”
“Medicine,” and “Diseases and Cures,” the revision explores
those themes far more fully via a composite entry that opens with “Healing and Medicine: An Overview,” which is then
followed by fourteen completely new articles trained on healing
practices in various regions and traditions, for example,
in Africa, in the African diaspora, in the Ancient Near East,
in Judaism, in Islamic texts and traditions, in the popular
healing practices of Middle Eastern cultures, in Greece and
Rome, and so on. A sole first-edition entry on “Ecology” is
supplanted by a full constellation of “Ecology and Religion”
articles that includes eleven new tradition-specific articles on
various ways of conceiving the interrelations between
humans, the earth, and the cosmos, as well as thematic
entries on environmental ethics and on science, religion, and
ecology. “Law and Religion” is also much expanded and fully
reconfigured in a set of thirteen articles that address the topic
in six different regions or traditions and then in relation to
six different sorts of themes, such as law and religion in connection
with literature, with critical theory, with human
rights, with morality, with new religious movements and,
finally, with punishment. And, by the same token, the freestanding
entry on “Politics and Religion” in the first edition
is replaced by a ten-part composite entry that begins with a
broad overview of the topic and then engages intersections of
religion and politics in each of several traditions.
Additional composite entries are completely new insofar
as they have no direct counterpart in the first edition. The
treatment of literature, for instance, an enormous and multifaceted
topic that streams through countless sections of the
encyclopedia, was reconfigured in ways that issued in a completely
new ten-part composite entry on fiction and religion
in various guises. In that case, a lead entry titled “Fiction:
History of the Novel” is complemented by all new entries
that survey connections between religion and the Western
novel, Latin American fiction, Chinese fiction, Japanese fiction,
Southeast Asian fiction, Australian fiction, Oceanic fiction,
African fiction, and Native American fiction. Another
fully new composite entry under the rubric of
“Transculturation and Religion” opens with an overview that
situates “the problem of religion” within the context of the
making of the modern world; subsequent elements of the set
address the role of religion in the formation of, respectively,
modern Canada, the modern Caribbean, modern Japan,
modern India, and modern Oceania. Other innovative new
composite entries, though on somewhat more modest scales,
engage such topics as “Orgy,” “Sociobiology and
Evolutionary Psychology,” and “Humor and Religion.”
Particularly notable among new composite entries is the
twenty-one-part “Gender and Religion,” a wholly new set
that deserves special mention not only as the largest such
grouping in the revision, but also as part of a three-tiered initiative
to engage the abundance of important work that has
appeared in that field since the original version. At one level,
the instructions to authors of every article for this edition,
whether revised or completely new, included an incitement
to consider seriously, and to make explicit, the gendered
dynamics of the religious doctrines, practices, and institutions
under consideration. A second level of revision focused
on individual entries: standing articles like “Women’s
Studies,” “Human Body,” and “Spirit Possession” were revisited,
then replaced or heavily reworked in light of contemporary
approaches to gender and religion. Space was opened
also for numerous new topical entries such as “Beauty,”
“Gynocentrism,” “Lesbianism,” “Men’s Studies in Religion,”
“Patriarchy and Matriarchy,” and “Thealogy”; for several
midsized composite entries on “Feminism,” “Feminist
Theology,” and “Nuns”; and for numerous new biographical
entries on women. Finally, at a third and especially ambitious
level, the completely new “Gender and Religion” composite
entry employs the familiar pattern of an overview article, followed
by a succession of region- or tradition-specific articles;
but this set is unique in its scale of execution.
New religious movements is yet another area of major
growth and reconceptualization. In fact, no segment of the
encyclopedia enjoys quite such extensive enlargement. The
original five-part composite entry is replaced by an elevenpart
set that includes not only a revamped overview and new
or reworked area-specific articles on the United States,
Europe, Japan, and Latin America, but also thematic and
comparative articles on the scriptures of new religious movements
and on new religious movements in relation to
women, to children, to millennialism, and to violence.
Where the first-edition synoptic outline listed a couple dozen
supporting articles under the heading of “New Religions and
Modern Movements,” the revision includes nearly three
times that many. Among the wealth of new topical entries are
“Anticult Movements,” “Brainwashing (Debate),” and
“Deprogramming”; “Neopaganism” and “Wicca”;
“Swedenborgianism,” “Rastafarianism,” “UFO Religions,”
“Heaven’s Gate,” “Aum Shinrikyo¯,” and “Falun Gong.”
Similarly abundant new biographical articles address figures
ranging from Aleister Crowley, Daddy Grace, Matilda Joslyn
Gage, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and L. Ron Hubbard to Jim
Jones and David Koresh, to mention just a few.
An innovative new composite entry under the rubric of
“Study of Religion” is one of several components designed to
engage matters of theory, method, and intellectual history,
concerns that were very important for the first edition and
remained a priority for the second. Where the original edition
had entries focused primarily on the emergence and development
of religious studies in Western Europe and the United
States, this new “Study of Religion” grouping works to survey
ways in which the nature and study of “religion” have been
conceptualized and institutionalized also in Eastern Europe,
Japan, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa,
and South Asia. Also in a methodological realm, most of the
eighteen first-edition “History of Study” entries (e.g.,
“Australian Religions: History of Study”; “Chinese Religion:
History of Study”; “Egyptian Religion: History of Study”;
etc.) were substantially updated or replaced, and entirely new
entries were added to address the history of the study of
African American religions, Baltic religion, Celtic religions, Confucianism, and Germanic religions, along with new
entries on the history of the study of gender and religion, of
Gnosticism, and of new religious movements. Numerous of
the “Methods of Study” entries were revised, and wholly new
offerings include “Ethology of Religion,” “Literature: Critical
Theory and Religious Studies,” “Subaltern Studies,” and a
two-part set on “Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology.”
Of more than one hundred first-edition entries listed in the
synoptic outline under so-called “Scholarly Terms,” very few
were deleted; some are substantially revised (e.g.,
“Conversion,” “Dualism,” and “Tradition”); some prominent
terms are augmented with “Further Considerations” pieces
(e.g., “Mysticism,” “Ritual,” “Religion,” “Sacrifice,” and
“Syncretism”); and many others are replaced with essentially
new entries (e.g., “Charisma,” “Folklore,” “Religious
Experience,” and “Sacred Time”). Completely new offerings
under that heading include “Colonialism and Post-colonialism,”
“Creolization,” “Globalization and Religion,” “Implicit
Religion,” “Invisible Religion,” “Orientalism,” “Spirituality,”
and “World Religions.” And with respect to “Scholars of
Religion,” another area of special distinction for Encyclopedia
of Religion, we retained the policy of separate biographical
entries only for scholars who are deceased, but nonetheless
added more than fifty new names to the list.
The enumeration of important new articles and features
could, as they say, go on and on. In the Judaism section,
nearly all of the principal articles, the main “Judaism: An
Overview” included, are thoroughly rewritten and more than
thirty new topics were added. Among the articles on Islam, a
high percentage both of the large geographical survey entries
and the dozens of shorter supporting articles are revised in
variously minor and major ways, and numerous wholly new
topics have been introduced. The treatment of Buddhism,
including the several composite configurations devoted to
that tradition, received especially thoroughgoing reconceptualizations,
as well as the introduction of more than two dozen
completely new topics, numerous of them focused on Tibet.
North American Indian religions was also a zone of especially
extensive revision and expansion in ways that reflect the
tumultuous changes in that field over the past two decades
and the emergence of a generation of native scholars whose
presence was largely absent from the first edition. The large
lists under “Art and Religion” and, even more, “Science and
Religion” were areas of considerable growth and innovation.
Yes, the enumeration of new and reworked features could go
on and on. It is, to be sure, only via direct engagement of the
entries themselves that one can really begin to appreciate all
that is new and different between the second edition and its
precedent.
In sum, then, it is important to note that the associate
editors and consultants—all of whom deserve enormous credit
for their expertise, insight, and endurance—worked without
any fixed quota as to how much would change and how
much remain the same. This open policy proved a proverbial
mixed blessing—both an ample benefit and what became a
heavy burden insofar as, it is safe to say, the extent of revision
and enlargement far exceeded anyone’s expectation. The final
tally of new and essentially new entries, in fact, exceeds by
fourfold the initial projections, which were only whispered at
the outset of the process. Were there anticipation in the
beginning that this revised second edition would include, as it
does, well over five hundred new topics, nearly one thousand
completely new articles, and 1.5 million more words than the
original Encyclopedia of Religion perhaps fewer would have
agreed to participate in the editorial initiative.
The fortuitous result is, nevertheless, a scholarly
resource too large and layered for anyone to master or even
appreciate fully; no one can attain that vantage that affords a
view of the whole. Instead—and happily—individual readers
will inevitably be drawn to those parts that appeal to their
distinct interests and serve their special purposes. This encyclopedia
is, in an important sense, many encyclopedias, each
of which emerges in dynamic relations with the persons who
read and use it. Moreover, time and again, searching and
serendipity blend so that an entry simply happened upon, an
article or aspect other than that which you are seeking,
evokes the strongest excitement and provides the most satisfying
reward. Even those of us with much invested in this
revision, continue to read, reread, and experience these volumes
with a sense of discovery. It is our sincere hope, moreover,
that this new edition can provide other readers that
same ongoing sense of exploration and evocation of interest.
LINDSAY JONES