Guide to the Study of ReligionWilli Braun, Russell McCutcheon What is religion? Can it be defined at all? Or is it too easily defined in far too many ways so as to make a "religion" a drifting signifier or whatever one's pleasure is? Does the study of religion require special, perhaps religious, tools of analysis and explanation? What is the difference between a knowledge of religion derived from practicing it and a knowledge about religion derived from nonreligious modes of inquiry? Sooner or later, any serious student of religion must face these questionsif religious practices are to be investigated in the light of the terms and aims of the social and human sciences in the modern university.The Guide to the Study of Religion provides a map of the key concepts and thought-structures for imagining and studying religion as a class of everyday social practices that lend themselves to no more or less difficult explanation than any other class of social phenomena. |
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References to this book
Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion Russell T. McCutcheon No preview available - 2001 |
Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion Ilkka Pyysiainen,Veikko Anttonen No preview available - 2002 |