Closing the Gaps-Some Notes on the Making of Perspectives
[Article]
Jeppe Sinding Jensen
Leiden
Brill
This special issue revolves around two main problems that need disentangling: the emic-etic debate and the insider-outsider problem. As the appointed discussant to the workshop in which this issue's papers were first presented, I noted the emergence of some related and recurring problems on which I further elaborate in this article. These problems can be summed up as differences in methods and theories in various disciplines that create "gaps" between their results. Moreover, there are problems concerning matters of scale, type-token relations, questions about the relations between the public and private character of religion, the seemingly inevitable ambiguities of relativism and, finally, the various modes of discourse on religion\s.