{"id":13670,"date":"2022-10-24T13:18:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T10:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.cas.bg\/?post_type=tribe_events&#038;p=13670"},"modified":"2023-05-09T16:27:37","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:27:37","slug":"seminar-religion-and-culture-lecture-by-prof-dale-f-eickelman","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/event\/seminar-religion-and-culture-lecture-by-prof-dale-f-eickelman\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion Series &#8220;Religion and Culture&#8221;: Lecture by Prof. Dale F. Eickelman"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><p><em>Please note: this event is by invitation-only!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Center for the Study of Religion (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski) and the Centre for Advanced Study are pleased to announce the next seminar of the series<\/p>\n<h2>Religion and Culture<\/h2>\n<p>On Tuesday, 25 October 2022, the opening session will be convened at the Conference Hall in CAS with the following program:<\/p>\n<p>17:00 &#8211; 17:15h: <strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Prof. Simeon Evstatiev<\/strong> (Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Prof. Diana Mishkova<\/strong> (Director of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>17:15 &#8211; 18:00h: <strong>Keynote presentation<\/strong> by <strong>Prof. Dale F. Eickelman<\/strong> (Dartmouth College, USA):<\/p>\n<h4>&#8220;<em>Center and Periphery in Religion and Society&#8221;<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>18:00 &#8211; 18:30h: <strong>Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span id=\"page92R_mcid53\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Synopsis:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page92R_mcid54\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Like many key concepts for understanding religion and society, the idea of center and periphery<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">looks \u201ceasy\u201d because the words are in clear and easy to translate. It\u2019s only in exploring what is<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">central and peripheral that we link high-level concepts with the specifics of histories and<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">societies. For some Muslims, one might say that the \u201ccenter\u201d is Mecca, with the annual<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">pilgrimage, praying toward Mecca, and if possible undertaking the pilgrimage. Is Mecca the <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">center for Islam more than Karbala, Najaf, or Qum? Or is the genuine pilgrimage just one of <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">the heart?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page1R_mcid0\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">From the mid-twentieth century to its end, many sociologists and political scientists<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">predicated the success of \u201cdevelopment\u201d upon secularization, finding the idea of center and<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">periphery as key to understanding national and state authority. The prevailing orthodoxy of the<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">social sciences from the 1950s through the 1970s was \u201cmodernization theory,\u201d a notion that we<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">place in brackets to suggest that this \u201ctheory\u201d is an historically bounded phenomenon whose<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">time has come and gone. It presupposed that a prerequisite of political development was the<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">integration of outlying regions to national and international political and economic networks<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">through common educational, economic, and communications systems. In the study of<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">religions, did dichotomies such as \u201cgreat\u201d and \u201clittle\u201d traditions solve much other than a<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">convenient way to organize lectures? Does the notion of \u201ccentral\u201d versus \u201coutlying\u201d lands<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">advance or cloud how global religions work?<\/span><\/span><span id=\"page1R_mcid1\" class=\"markedContent\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page1R_mcid1\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">The first difficulty with such organizing schemes is that they suppose only one<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">hierarchical center rather than multiple ones.<\/span><\/span><span id=\"page1R_mcid2\" class=\"markedContent\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page1R_mcid2\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">We can also conceive of forms of integration that do not presuppose such an order, or<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">multiple linkages among various ethnic, kinship-based, regional, and religious communities<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">which do not arrange themselves into an agreed ranking or that do not allow for the emergence<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">of one. The relations and even alliances among these groups often shift, frequently in ways that<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">thwart bureaucracies and hierarchies.<\/span><\/span><span id=\"page1R_mcid3\" class=\"markedContent\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page1R_mcid3\" class=\"markedContent\"><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Many societies and religious organizations are too large and too differentiated for those<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">at the supposed center to have adequate knowledge about the rest of society. There is also a<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">tension between the centers to dominate the periphery, and for the struggle of multiple centers<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">to retain their autonomy.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"page1R_mcid4\" class=\"markedContent\"><\/span><span id=\"page1R_mcid4\" class=\"markedContent\">F<span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">inally, there has often been the almost unquestioned assumption that written texts are<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">more central than oral traditions or other cultural forms of authority. Yet the significance of <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">texts derives not from their inherent centrality but from the contingent political, social, and<\/span> <span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">economic circumstances of those interpreting them.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please note: this event is by invitation-only! The Center for the Study of Religion (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski) and the Centre for Advanced Study are pleased to announce the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/13670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/13670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13670"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=13670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}