| authors |
_1 |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| 55131 |
Creator |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| authors |
_1 |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| 59166 |
Creator |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| authors |
_1 |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| 53909 |
Creator |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| authors |
_1 |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| 55130 |
Creator |
f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
jobTitle |
Honorary Associate |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
research overview |
<p>The recent research I carried out at the OU explored the role of magic in the lives
of people who define themselves as non-religious. This fieldwork, part of the‘Understanding
Unbelief’ project, has provided me with a new perspective on the ways in which
people navigate the relationship between enchantment and rationalisation. Perceived
in their ideal forms, rationalisation and magic might seem to oppose one another.
In this project, however, rather than placing these forces in sterile opposition,
I am interested in how rationalisation– the dominant epistemological force of
modernity– in certain cases provides the conditions of doubt, opacity, and unknowability
that allows magic to become manifest in the everyday mundane. The trajectory of rationalisation
means that there is nothing unknowable in the world, and yet, from the position of
any given person, there is no knowable whole. It remains out of reach.</p><p><br />My
current work in the area of Religious Studies is as a contributor the Religion and
Extinction network, and expands my interest in the deep time of geological formation.
I want to confront the ethical implications of living in an age of mass extinction,
and to address the urgent question of how we should act in the face of ecological
crisis. What are the particular characteristics of the current mass extinction (the
present one we are now facing/ are part of/ implicated in), and those mass extinctions
that went before? In trying to understand our moral responsibility for mass death,
why does human agency matter in particular, and what if anything is different from
the previous‘big 5’ events? In taking a deep-time perspective, we open
up the possibility of a non-anthropocentric ethic that decentres human exceptionalism
and the sense that our species is the only thing that matters– yet here, this
could also have the effect of‘normalising’ unfolding mass death by rendering
it merely a recurring feature of earth’s history.</p> |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
hasMembership |
faculty-of-arts&social-sciences |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
biography |
<p>I am an anthropologist by training. I now teach at the University of St Andrews,
but retain my connection with Religious Studies through the department here at the
Open University. I work across three ethnographic fieldsites: Orkney and East Anglia
in the UK, and Tuv aimag in Mongolia, and my interests span environmental change and
religious life.</p> |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
type |
Person |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
label |
Dr Richard Denis Gerard Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
account |
rdgi2 |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
familyName |
Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
familyName |
Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
Given name |
Richard D. G. |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
Given name |
Richard D.G. |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
Given name |
Richard D. G. |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
sha1sum of a personal mailbox URI name |
e8a7930bc467b7ec59cbd77725d5a369b11f3180 |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
name |
Richard Denis Gerard Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
name |
Richard D. G. Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
name |
Richard D.G. Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
name |
Richard D. G. Irvine |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
title |
Dr |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
work info homepage |
rdgi2 |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
Description |
<p>I am an anthropologist by training. I now teach at the University of St Andrews,
but retain my connection with Religious Studies through the department here at the
Open University. I work across three ethnographic fieldsites: Orkney and East Anglia
in the UK, and Tuv aimag in Mongolia, and my interests span environmental change and
religious life.</p> |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
in dataset |
oro |
| f885ff5943fda90df76ebbef4241e6ce |
in dataset |
profiles |