Page 30 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Introduction 13

aesthetics to understand more about sensation and the senses as forms of
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cognition. Accordingly, several of the key words included in the present
volume signal the growing recognition of the body as the matrix of sensuous
cognition. In addition to regrounding research in the body and avoiding
the traditional humanist privileging of mind and rational thought, many of
the writers demonstrate keen interest in the history of media, seeking to
correct the presentist bias in many studies of mass communication and new
media. 19
Finally, the mélange of disciplines, geographies, and media supports the
view that no single discipline has commanded the field of study. Sociology,
anthropology, and history have contributed major methodological guidelines
—quantitative and qualitative research, ethnography, and archival and
artifactual study. However, media studies, cultural studies, feminism,
art history, visual and material culture studies, and religious studies have
brought a host of additional questions and methodological priorities to bear
on the study of religion and media, resulting in a range of interests and
a conversation that is really a set of conversations, including the study of
journalism, mass communication, consumption, visual culture, theology, the
public sphere, globalization, transnationalism, political theory, and cultural
economy. To date, participants have felt no urgency to limit the discourse or
dominate it by discipline, field, or methodology. For many of us, this is a sign
of robust intellectual health.

Key terms and the conceptual field they configure

This book seeks to discern the emerging conceptual framework in the recent
study of media and religion. Rather than looking for fast boundaries or
new foundations in an overlooked or a novel subject matter, the approach
is to describe an intersection where no discipline dominates but several are
engaged in serious conversation with one another. The writers are scholars
from around the world who come to the study from different academic
specialties. Their work over the last decade and more has been influential
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in shaping the field of media and religion. One might add many names to
the list and compile a substantial bibliography. The signs clearly indicate
that the field is expanding and deepening: all of which makes one pause
at the audacity of selecting a mere fifteen words for a list of key terms.
Given the many different emphases in the far-from-unified field of inquiry,
lists of even a few terms would vary considerably. Rather than trying to be
comprehensive or universalizing or equitable, it seemed more important to
look across a large number of inquiries, conferences, and consultations in
search of patterns that might affirm themes, keyed to concepts and their
terms, that have played a recurrent and influential role in the discourse.