The Value of Comparing India and China

Date & Time：16:50-18:30, Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Place： Bld. 14, 4F, Room 407, The University of Tokyo, Komaba
Speaker： Professor Peter van der Veer　

【Summary】
This paper shows the advantages of comparison when studying religion and nationalism in India and China. The location of religion in Indian and Chinese nationalism is very different, but in both cases it plays a significant role. One of the problems in this comparison is the definition of religion. It is proposed here to look at religion as part of a syntagmatic chain of concepts: religion-secularity-magic-spirituality, the components of which have dynamic relations with each other that change over time. The arguments are illustrated by examining practices of the body, including Qi Gong and Yoga.

【About Speaker】
Peter van der Veer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University. He is the author of many books, including Religious Nationalism (California 1994), Imperial Encounters (Princeton 2001), The Modern Spirit of Asia (Princeton 2014), The Value of Comparison (Duke 2016). He is a Member of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current work is on Indian and Chinese religious networks in South-East Asia.

【Discussants】
Professor Tsuyoshi ISHII (University of Tokyo)
Professor Kana TOMIZAWA (University of Tokyo)

Language: English

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