He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune: Big Data, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Demise of the Historical Study of Religions

Abstract

The recent digital turn has had an unprecedented impact on the identity of the academic disciplines that study religions. Expectedly, this shift has brought about a dramatic change in the power dynamics between the main research actors and funders. In particular, historians and humanist scholars have taken the brunt, mostly replaced by data scientists, software engineers, statisticians, psychologists, anthropologists, and biologists alike. Consequently, multimillion-dollar projects aimed at testing historical hypotheses and massive agent-based simulations have been implemented on shaky methodological and epistemological grounds. Concurrently, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, private religious bodies have increasingly replaced public funding, raising important but still unaddressed moral questions about transparency, independence, and potential conflicts of interests. The present article explores the ethically troubling relationship between the boom of Big Data and computational approaches to the study of religions past and present and the infiltration of religious philanthrocapitalism in contemporary neoliberal academia.