Peter van der Veer -- Nation and Religion in Asia, April 18, 2019

Peter van der Veer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen and Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University.
This talk is focuses on the differences in the ways Asian nation-states frame the location of religion- Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity- in their societies. While the secular framing of religion is a central part of the formation of nation-states there are obviously great differences between the religious nationalism that characterizes South Asian societies and the radical atheism that characterizes communist societies like China and Vietnam. Comparisons between Asian societies de-essentialize the notion of ‘Asia’ and of ‘Asian exceptionalism’. It also allows one to move forward from the often implicit comparison with Euro-American societies.