Mellan kritik och kontinuitet : En filosofisk och diskurskritisk analys av världsreligionsparadigmets fortlevnad

Sammanfattning

The world religions paradigm has long functioned as a foundational framework for comparison within the academic study of religion, particularly in educational and institutionalcontexts. Despite sustained critique highlighting its historical, colonial and epistemological limitations, the paradigm continues to structure both research and teaching. This essay examines to what extent different contemporary reformulations of the world paradigm can beconsidered epistemologically sustainable within religious studies. The study analyzes four influential scholarly works that explicitly defend, revise or rearticulate the paradigm in dialogue with the established criticism. Using a qualitative and theory-testing text analysis,the thesis combines elements of argumentation analysis and conceptual analysis within a genealogical and discourse-critical theoretical framework inspired by Talal Asad, TomokoMasuzawa and J. Z. Smith. The analysis focuses on how broad religious categorization is justified, which definitions of religion and comparability are presupposed as well as how these arguments withstand critical scrutiny. The findings indicate that the world religions paradigm is neither epistemologically defensible in its classical form nor fully abandonable without significant consequences for the comparative ambitions of the scholarship. Instead,the paradigm persists only through continuous reformulation, functioning as a provisional and reflexive analytical tool rather than as a descriptive theory of religion. Its continued use is shown to rely on methodological self-awareness and acknowledgement of its constructed and power-laden nature. The essay concludes that this conditional sustainability has important implications beyond academic theory, particularly for religious education. It suggests that teaching practices should increasingly emphasize how categories such as “religion” and “world religions” are constructed, contested and employed, rather than presenting them as neutral or self-evident. In this way, the study contributes to ongoing discussions on comparison, categorization and reflexivity within both religious studies and didactic applications.