Course Name : Indigenous Religions: The Emergence of Post-Cartesian Ethnographies
Course Code : SPSAG6237
Units : 3

This seminar is concerned with dominant paradigms and methodologies undergirding the study of religion and with misrepresentations of “indigenous religions” in scholarship, as well as discrimination and persecution against followers of indigenous religions in the socio-political arena. It seeks to disrupt those paradigms including “world religions”, “agama” and imperialistic constructions of terminologies such as spirituality, the transcendent, the sacred and so forth. Only in that way will the study of indigenous religions be effective. Ethnographic methodologies as alternatives will be examined, and case studies of post-Cartesian ethnographies crossing the globe (Latin and North America, Africa, Asia, especially Indonesia) will be explored. Other main topics in relation with the case studies include inter-subjective cosmologies and relational epistemology. This class aims to come up with liberating paradigms and methodologies that are effective, operational, and productive for the study of indigenous religions.