Decolonizing the Study of Religion

Abstract

As with many other subject areas within the humanities, the contemporary study of religion is the product of European colonial history and remains firmly embedded in what Anibal Quijano (2007) described as the ‘colonial matrix of power’. This article explores questions about how to respond to these structures of history — in particular what the concept of ‘decolonization’ may mean and how it may be applied within the context of the study of religion. Such decolonization should be approached as not simply an exercise in ‘diversity’ but rather as a challenge to (and potentially a dismantling of) the field of study. Such an approach is relevant not only to those scholars who identify within the disciplinary boundaries of the ‘study of religion’ (or religious studies), but much wider to the broad academic study of (what is thought of as) ‘religion’ within humanities and social sciences. This article is, in short, an attempt to map out some of the key points about such a decolonization, in terms of curriculum and research practice, on the disciplinary level and within the wider institutional structures of the academy.