Church History Church History and and Religious Culture 99 (2019) 331–370 Religious Culture brill.com/chrc Historicizing the Religious Field Adapting Theories of the Religious Field for the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Europe Sita Steckel Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
[email protected] Abstract As historians of religion are currently diagnosing a need to find new shared frameworks and new narratives enabling interdisciplinary and trans-epochal exchange, the article suggests a closer historical engagement with theories of the “religious field”, originally formulated by Pierre Bourdieu on the basis of Max Weber’s work, as this theory has the potential to serve as a meta-language for interdisciplinary communication. The article sets out the most important elements of the theory of the religious field, and evaluates them critically by way of a historicization of important concepts, drawing on recent discussions in sociology and Religious Studies. After discussing the concept of the religious field itself, the article discusses several internal dynamics of the field (as suggested by Bourdieu and by more recent research) as well as several typical dynam- ics between fields. It concludes with suggestions for historical adaptations, including an updated approach to religious plurality and to the different types of religious actors envisaged by Weber and Bourdieu. Keywords religious field – sociology of religion – theory of history – history of religion – Religious Studies – religious plurality – Pierre Bourdieu © sita steckel, 2019 | doi:10.1163/18712428-09903003 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NCDownloaded4.0 License. from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:08:50AM via free access 332 steckel 1 The Quest for Long-Term Frameworks in the Interdisciplinary History of Religion1 Historians of religion in pre-modern Europe—and especially historians of Christianity—are currently participating in a broader historical debate about theoretical frameworks and periodizations.