Conceptualizing Religion

Conceptualizing Religion
Author: Benson Saler
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2000
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781571812193

How might we transform a folk category - in this case religion - into a analytical category suitable for cross-cultural research? In this volume, the author addresses that question. He critically explores various approaches to the problem of conceptualizing religion, particularly with respect to certain disciplinary interests of anthropologists. He argues that the concept of family resemblances, as that concept has been refined and extended in prototype theory in the contemporary cognitive sciences, is the most plausible analytical strategy for resolving the central problem of the book. In the solution proposed, religion is conceptualized as an affair of "more or less" rather than a matter of "yes or no," and no sharp line is drawn between religion and non-religion.

Law, Religion, and Freedom

Law, Religion, and Freedom
Author: W. Cole Durham Jr
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-08
Genre: Freedom of religion
ISBN: 9780367704469

This book examines major conceptual challenges confronting freedom of religion or belief in contemporary settings. It will be a valuable resource for students, academics, and policy-makers with an interest in law, religion, and human rights.

Theories of Religion

Theories of Religion
Author: Seth Daniel Kunin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780813539652

This book provides a comprehensive selection of readings that relate to and explore the definition of religion. The texts come from a wide range of approaches, unified both by the questions they are addressing and their broadly social scientific perspective. The disciplines covered include anthropology, phenomenology, psychology and sociology. The editors have also included some key texts relating to the feminist approach to and critique of religion. The first section of the book includes some of the foundational texts, such as materials by Marx, Freud, and Durkheim. The remaining sections look at more recent discussions of the issues from the different disciplinary perspectives. Each reading is introduced by a biographical sketch of the author. The book also includes introductory discussions to each section that both raise the key issues developed in a particular discipline and address the disciplinary approaches from a more critical stance. Theories of Religion: A Reader is an invaluable critical resource, accessible to a broad audience as well as students of theology and religious studies.

Understanding Religion

Understanding Religion
Author: Benson Saler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2009
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110218658

Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

Conceptualizing the World

Conceptualizing the World
Author: Helge Jordheim
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2018-12-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789200377

What is—and what was—“the world”? Though often treated as interchangeable with the ongoing and inexorable progress of globalization, concepts of “world,” “globe,” or “earth” instead suggest something limited and absolute. This innovative and interdisciplinary volume concerns itself with this central paradox: that the complex, heterogeneous, and purportedly transhistorical dynamics of globalization have given rise to the idea and reality of a finite—and thus vulnerable—world. Through studies of illuminating historical moments that range from antiquity to the era of Google Earth, each contribution helps to trace the emergence of the world in multitudinous representations, practices, and human experiences.

Confucianism as Religion

Confucianism as Religion
Author: Yong Chen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012-11-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004243739

On the Rhetoric of Defining Confucianism as a Religion tackles the perennially controversial question of whether Confucianism is a religion and proposes a holistic and contextual approach to the issue.

Inherited Land

Inherited Land
Author: Whitney A. Bauman
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2011-08-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608999890

"Religion and ecology" has arrived. What was once a niche interest for a few academics concerned with environmental issues and a few environmentalists interested in religion has become an established academic field with classic texts, graduate programs, regular meetings at academic conferences, and growing interest from other academics and the mass media. Theologians, ethicists, sociologists, and other scholars are engaged in a broad dialogue about the ways religious studies can help understand and address environmental problems, including the sorts of methodological, terminological, and substantive debates that characterize any academic discourse.This book recognizes the field that has taken shape, reflects on the ways it is changing, and anticipates its development in the future. The essays offer analyses and reflections from emerging scholars of religion and ecology, each addressing her or his own specialty in light of two questions: (1) What have we inherited from the work that has come before us? and (2) What inquiries, concerns, and conversation partners should be central to the next generation of scholarship?The aim of this volume is not to lay out a single and clear path forward for the field. Rather, the authors critically reflect on the field from within, outline some of the major issues we face in the academy, and offer perspectives that will nurture continued dialogue.

Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion

Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion
Author: William E. Arnal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317543955

Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion presents a provocative critique of the unwillingness of modern scholars to publically distinguish research into comparative religion from confessional studies written within denominationally-affiliated institutions. The book offers the 19th Century founders of the study of religion as a bracing corrective to contemporary timidity. The issue was analysed and documented by Wiebe a quarter of a century ago. Here, marking Wiebe's work, a wide range of contributors reassess the methodology and ambition of contemporary religious research. The book argues that conceptualizing religion as part of the world of human action and experience is the first requirement of the study of religion.

Conceptualizing Iranian Anthropology

Conceptualizing Iranian Anthropology
Author: Shahnaz R. Nadjmabadi
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1845457951

During recent years, attempts have been made to move beyond the Eurocentric perspective that characterized the social sciences, especially anthropology, for over 150 years. A debate on the “anthropology of anthropology” was needed, one that would consider other forms of knowledge, modalities of writing, and political and intellectual practices. This volume undertakes that challenge: it is the result of discussions held at the first organized encounter between Iranian, American, and European anthropologists since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It is considered an important first step in overcoming the dichotomy between “peripheral anthropologies” versus “central anthropologies.” The contributors examine, from a critical perspective, the historical, cultural, and political field in which anthropological research emerged in Iran at the beginning of the twentieth century and in which it continues to develop today.