Tell us our story: Understanding 'religion and violence' in multiple contexts of learning

Abstract

This article raises the question about how definitions of religion and violence can be understood as links to the context in which they are formulated. The focus is on the context of academic learning. Understanding a definition as a micro-narrative that reflects the cultural 'archive', the author uses two academic contexts (i.e. Utrecht, The Netherlands and Jakarta, Indonesia) to show how religion and violence are differently understood. These differences are taken as significant information for understanding how the topic of 'religion and violence' is related to cultural understandings of the place of religion in society. The question is raised how 'narrative learning' can help as a strategy to raise awareness about the preconditioning of (academic) definitions of 'religion and violence'.