| Summary: | Mapping Religious Studies requires a look at the intersections with other disciplines that study religious phenomena. This includes area studies such as Southeast European Studies. »Crypto-Christianity«, »folk religion« and »syncretism« are common terms in Southeast European studies to describe phenomena in the areal religious history. According to the disciplines’ self-understanding, religious and area studies are interdisciplinary cultural studies that cooperate with each other. Thus, for a better understanding of religious phenomena, these studies are assumed to take definitions, perspectives and critiques of other disciplines into account in order to exchange knowledge of religious phenomena, and to share research methods with each other. Religious and area studies differ in terms of their tasks: While Religious Studies set up theories, area studies are claimed to be the corrective factor, testing theories of other disciplines. My paper presents how area studies – using the example of Southeast European studies – adopt terms, concepts and theories from Religious Studies when researching religious phenomena, and how the lack of communication between these two research fields neglects potentials. The paper shows the advantages as well as the necessity of interdisciplinary cooperation. Even if cultural studies cannot find a universally valid basis for the study of religion, I argue for a permanent dialogue between the creation and verification of theories and concepts on religion and religious phenomena.
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