Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm | |
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| Born | Jason Ānanda Josephson |
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| Relatives | Felicitas Goodman (grandmother)[3]: 302–304 |
| Awards | Distinguished Book Award,Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2013[4] Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion,American Academy of Religion-– Constructive-Reflective Studies, 2022[5] |
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| Education | MTS,Harvard Divinity School, PhDStanford University |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Thesis | Taming Demons: The Anti-Superstition Campaign and the Invention of Religion in Japan (1853–1920) (2006) |
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| Website | Faculty profile |
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm (néJosephson) is an American academic, philosopher, social scientist, and author. He is currently Professor in the Department of Religion and chair inScience and Technology Studies atWilliams College.[2] He also holds affiliated positions inAsian studies andComparative Literature at Williams College. Storm's research focuses onJapanese religions, Europeanintellectual history from 1600 to the present, and theory in religious studies.[2] His more recent work has discusseddisenchantment andphilosophy of social science.
Storm has written three books and over thirty academic essays in English.[2] He has also published articles in French and Japanese, and translated academic essays and primary sources from Japanese to English. His first book,The Invention of Religion in Japan, earned the 2013 "Distinguished Book Award" from theSociety for the Scientific Study of Religion and was a finalist for theAmerican Academy of Religion's "Best First Book" award in the History of Religions.[4][2] His third book,Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, won the 2022 award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (Constructive-Reflexive Studies) by theAmerican Academy of Religion.[6] Benjamin G. Robinson, a scholar of religion and race, has described Storm's work as "seminal."[7]
Storm earned aMaster of Theological Studies degree fromHarvard Divinity School in 2001. He earned a PhD in Religious Studies fromStanford University in 2006, where he studied Japanese religions underBernard Faure, Carl Bielefeldt, andHelen Hardacre. During this time, he also researchedContinental philosophy, especiallypost-structuralism. He was a visiting student atSt Antony's College, Oxford in the 2004 academic year.[2] Storm's doctoral dissertation was entitled "Taming Demons: The Anti-Superstition Campaign and the Invention of Religion in Japan (1853–1920)".
Much of Storm's early writing on Japanese religions built on his doctoral research. This writing particularly examined how the categories ofreligion,superstition, andscience came to be constructed inMeiji-era Japan. For example, the paper "When Buddhism became a 'Religion'," one of Storm's most cited papers according toGoogle Scholar,[8] examined the categorization of different aspects of traditionalJapanese Buddhism as religion or superstition in the work ofInoue Enryō.[9]
In his 2012 bookThe Invention of Religion in Japan, Storm expanded this argument to examine how Japanese thinkers in the Meiji era adopted Western categories of religion, science, and superstition. Storm examined the origins ofState Shinto in this light.[10]: 133 The book also examined the confluence of Japanese religious thought, political theory, science, and philology in movements such as theKokugaku.[10]: 110–111
Kevin Schilbrack has associatedThe Invention of Religion in Japan with "Critical Religion" or the "critical study of religion", an approach in religious studies that challenges the stability ofreligion as an analytical category.[1]: 93–94 Other thinkers in this movement includeTalal Asad andRussell T. McCutcheon. Within this field,The Invention of Religion in Japan draws on insights from postcolonial theory and has been connected toEdward Said'sOrientalism andRichard King'sOrientalism and Religion.[11]: 82 At the same time, Storm complicates Said's thesis, noting in particular that Japanese scholars adapted the concept of religion to their own ends and contributed to orientalist scholarship to position Japan as a culturally and intellectually dominant force in East Asia, including overKorea during Japan'scolonization of the region.[11][10]: 247
In his book introducing different concepts of religion, Benjamin Schewel claimed that Storm's work inThe Invention of Religion in Japan made "major conceptual contributions" to what Schewel terms the "Construct Narrative" of the definition of religion.[12]
Other ideas developed inThe Invention of Religion in Japan have been applied more broadly in religious studies. For instance, the ideas ofhierarchical inclusion and exclusive similarity, which Storm coined to describe Japanese methods of conceiving religious difference,[10]: 24–39 have been applied in research on South Asian religions.[13]
Storm's 2017 bookThe Myth of Disenchantment challenged the validity of the thesis ofdisenchantment in the social sciences. The book argues that social-scientific data do not support the idea of a widespread loss of belief in magic in the West.[3]: ch. 1 The book distinguishes betweensecularization and disenchantment as theoretical and sociological phenomena and argues that they have not been correlated in European history. According to Storm, these data challenge traditional definitions ofmodernity.[3]: 306–310 Storm argues that disenchantment has come to serve as a myth in the sense of a "regulative ideal" that impacts human behavior and leads people to act as though disenchantment has occurred, even though it has not.[14]
In addition to its sociological critique of the reality of disenchantment,The Myth of Disenchantment offered new intellectual-historical interpretations of sociological theorists commonly associated with disenchantment. The book argued that many of these thinkers, includingMax Weber,James George Frazer, andSigmund Freud, engaged withmysticism and theoccult.[3] For this reason, Storm argues, accounts of disenchantment derived from the work of these figures may need to be revised. InThe Myth of Disenchantment and other academic articles, Storm also argued for a close connection betweenWestern esotericism and the origin of religious studies as a discipline.[15][3]: ch. 4
Around the time ofThe Myth of Disenchantment's publication, Storm discussed the thesis and main arguments of the book in articles foraeon.co andThe Immanent Frame as well as through interviews with magazines and podcasts.[16][17][14]
Storm has written on broader questions ofepistemology and theory in religious studies. Some of his work in this field seeks to extend and generalize concepts developed inThe Invention of Religion in Japan.
Building on ideas in his 2012 book, Storm has developed a trinaristic approach to examining the relationship between secularism, superstition, and religion that he argues is applicable more generally.[18] This trinary contrasts to earlier social-scientific accounts of secularization, which tend to presuppose a binary between religion and secularism. According to Storm, the trinaristic formulation may allow for a more refined theorization of secularism, secularization, and modernity.Brill'sMethod & Theory in the Study of Religion devoted an issue to further discussing and applying Storm's idea in other subfields of religious studies.[19]
Storm has also been a proponent of what he calls "Reflexive Religious Studies," inspired by the "reflexive sociology" ofPierre Bourdieu andLoïc Wacquant, which describes sociology itself in sociological terms. Reflexive Religious Studies addresses the way that "that academic social science produces feedback in culture in such a way that it produces greater coherence in the social sphere that it then studies."[20] More specifically Reflexive Religious Studies "examine[s] those societies in which the category “religion" and its entangled differentiations (e.g., the distinction between religion and the secular) have begun to function as concepts" and it describes how the academic study of religion "actually reverberates in the religious field, revitalizing and even producing religions."[20]
In a 2020 article forMethod & Theory in the Study of Religion, Storm appliedanalyticphilosophy of science to critique attempts to model the methods of religious studies on thenatural sciences.[21] There Storm also discussed his plans to develop a new approach to the social sciences that he termsmetamodernism.[21] This fed into his 2021 monograph,Metamodernism: The Future of Theory.
The Myth of Disenchantment has been favorably reviewed in several academic publications, includingMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft,[22]Fides et Historia,[23] and theJournal of the American Academy of Religion.[24]
Writing inHistory of Religions,Hugh Urban calledThe Myth of Disenchantment "a powerful book that forces us to rethink many of our basic assumptions in the modernhistory of ideas", although he argued that Storm could have more closely examined the relationship between modern enchantment andcapitalism.[25]
The Invention of Religion in Japan was a finalist best first book in the History of Religion at theAmerican Academy of Religion and it won a distinguished book of the year award from theSociety for the Scientific Study of Religion.[26] It has also been favorably reviewed inNumen,[27] theJournal of Japanese Studies,[28]Religious Studies Review,[29] and theJournal for the Scientific Study of Religion,[30] among other academic publications.
A 2019 doctoral dissertation has engaged extensively with the arguments inThe Myth of Disenchantment, recognizing their significance but seeking to more deeply examine the connection between enchantment and Europeancolonialism.[31] Matthew Melvin-Koushki, a scholar ofIslam andIslamic occultism, has also citedThe Myth of Disenchantment to challenge orientalizing accounts of magic in the Islamic world.[32]: 238–239
The 2017 annualAAR-SBL meeting inBoston included an "Author Meets Critics" panel devoted toThe Myth of Disenchantment.[33]
There have been multiple journal round-tables dedicated toMetamodernism: The Future of Theory (2021).[34][35] Writing forReligious Studies Review, philosopher of religion, Kevin Schilbrack referred to it as "a powerhouse intervention in theorizing in the human sciences."[36] It has also been favoribly reviewed inAmerican Literary History,[37]Philosophy Now,[38] and elsewhere. Ultimately,Metamodernism won the prestigious book award for "Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion" (Constructive Reflexive Studies) from theAmerican Academy of Religion with the jury describing it as a "theoretical tour de force."[6]
