Persistent Orientalisms: the concept of religion in international relations

This article sets recent scholarship on religion in international relations (IR) into the context of contemporary debates in religious studies. When this is done, an important internal tension comes to light between conceiving of religion as a ‘sui generis’ phenomenon and acknowledging that ‘religion’ is a constructed, historically contingent category. This article argues that when seen in a geopolitical context, such tensions reveal a number of familiar Orientalist conceits in recent IR theorizing on religion. Thus, the study of religion in IR should take the matter of how ‘religion’ is defined more seriously.