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Portrait

Talal Asad

Talal Asad, Jonathan Boyarin, Nadia Fadil, Hussein Ali Agrama, Donovan O. Schaefer, and Ananda Abeysekara

Autobiographical Reflections on Anthropology and Religion Talal Asad It is not easy for me to think about the development of my ideas as an anthropologist, partly because it is rooted in a fractured biography, and partly because I am aware

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The Other Secular Modern

An Empirical Critique of Asad

Steve Bruce

Talal Asad explains the marginalization of religion in liberal democracies by invoking the modern state's desire to control. This paper argues that, in the Anglophone world, self-conscious secularism played little or no part in the secularization of public life. The expansion of the secular sphere was primarily an unintended consequence of actions by religious impositionists. Far from leading the promotion of the secular, the state had to be pressed by the demands of religious minorities to reduce the powers of established religion. The state provision of secular social services was usually a reaction to the inability of competing religious organizations to continue their provision. As this review of church–state relations in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand shows, the reduction in the social power of religion owed more to the failure of Christians to agree than to a deliberately secularizing state.

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The Anthropology of Secularity beyond Secularism

Ashley B. Lebner

This article begins by exploring why secular studies may be stagnating in anthropology. Contrary to recent arguments, I maintain that rather than widening the definition of secularism to address this, we should shift our focus, if only slightly. While secularism remains a worthy object, foregrounding it risks tying the field to issues of governance. I therefore suggest avoiding language that privileges it. Moreover, in returning to Talal Asad's 'secular', it becomes evident that care should be taken with the notion of 'secularism' to begin with, even if he did not emphasize this analytically. Conceiving of secularism as a transcendent political power, as Asad does, is not only a critique of a secularist narrative, but also a secularist truism itself that can potentially cloud ethnography if applied too readily. A way forward lies in carefully attending to secular concepts, as Asad suggests, and in exploring a version of secularity inspired by the work of Charles Taylor.

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Introduction

The Personal and the Political

Simon Coleman and Sondra L. Hausner

, institutional, political, and personal factors behind research that has helped us to revive and reconstruct our field. The subject of this year's Portrait, Talal Asad, has famously addressed questions about the category of religion in unusually productive and

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Nomadic Intellectuals

Asian Stars in Atlanticland

Michael Roberts

‘Hybridity’ and ‘globalization.’ Magic words. They can generate academic conferences. Salman Rushdie, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Arjun Appadurai, Gyan Prakash, Lata Mani, Gouri Vishwanathan, Akhil Gupta, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Amitav Ghosh, Talal Asad, Pal Ahluwahlia. Magic names for the most part. Draw cards for conferences.

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Book Reviews

Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories of a City Fiona Smyth

Gerald MacLean (ed.), Re-Orienting the Renaissance. Cultural Exchanges with the East Clifford Edmund Bosworth, An Intrepid Scot. William Lithgow of Lanark’s Travels in the Ottoman Lands, North Africa and Central Europe, 1609–21 Alex Drace-Francis

Daniel Carey (ed.), Asian Travel in the Renaissance John E. Wills, Jr.

Gerald M. MacLean, The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Debbie Lisle, The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing Benjamin J. Muller

Bassam Tayara, Le Japon et les Arabes. La vision du Monde Arabe au Japon, des époques anciennes jusqu’au tournant de Meiji Elisabeth Allès

Alain Roussillon, Identité et Modernité – Les voyageurs égyptiens au Japon Bassam Tayara

Benoit de L’Estoile, Federico Neiburg, and Lygia Sigaud (eds.), Empires, Nations, and Natives: Anthropology and State-Making Talal Asad

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Introduction

On Concepts, Conversations, and (In)Commensurabilities in Studying Religion

Simon Coleman and Sondra L. Hausner

questions of power occasionally to the surface—for instance, with reference to how Talal Asad (the subject of our 2020 Portrait) depicted Clifford Geertz's approach to religion, or how concepts are embedded within relations of force—they come to the fore in

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Introduction

An Anthropology of Nonreligion?

Mascha Schulz and Stefan Binder

academic debates as well as changing global power dynamics. The articles problematized the secularization thesis and engaged with theoretical debates inspired by the seminal publications of Talal Asad (especially 2003) and anthropologists who pursued

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Introduction

The Social Life of Contentious Concepts

Ronald S. Stade

(2002) and Quentin Skinner (1969) , 2 cultural studies scholars like Raymond Williams (1983) , anthropologists like David Parkin (1978) and Talal Asad (2003) , and sociologists like Margaret Somers (1995) . The most systematic and ambitious

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Book Reviews

Michael Connors Jackman and Adeel Khan

Islamic law. I suggest that this introduction would benefit from closer attention to a complex understanding of ‘Islamic law’ as done by Talal Asad (2003) and Wael Hallaq (2014) . In the volume, the first few chapters are legal-historical. Anmmar