A Contextual Genealogical Approach to Study the Religious

Abstract

Abstract The paper seeks to fill the gap in the literature that on the one hand adopts productively a Foucauldian genealogical approach to analyze religious phenomena yet on the other hand offers only minimum details, or no account, of methodological criteria and analytical procedures. Drawing retrospectively on the methodological experiences and insights of the author’s previous genealogical exercises, and the findings of some of the works above, the paper develops a contextual genealogical approach to study the religious in colonial and post-colonial settings with a Christian background. Based on a critical adoption of Nietzschean and Foucauldian tenets and six strategic analytical axes, the approach is presented as an open and flexible context-oriented methodological alternative for the necessarily constant rethinking of the religious in the present.