Studying ReligionAn Introduction
Russell T. McCutcheon
| Hardback Price £65.00/$100.00 Paperback Price £16.99/$27.95 |     |
Description
While many entry level resources concentrate on providing detailed descriptions of the world’s religions, Studying Religion: An Introduction turns its attention from the data of religion to the analytic skills required of anyone interested in studying the behaviors and institutions that we commonly name as religions. It shifts the focus from describing the exotic or curious religious “Other” to examining scholarly practice itself, and persuades readers that prior attention to their own habits will assist their efforts to study the habits of others.
Although this little book can be used as part of an introductory course (when supplemented by ethnographic materials of the instructor’s choosing), and is accessible to interested readers outside the university, it will also be of use in any course in the study of religion. For, despite the topic under study, the same intellectual skills are required to isolate, name, and examine within a comparative context, those collections of human artifacts that strike students as deserving attention. Studying Religion: An Introduction will therefore assist instructors across the academic study of religion to set the table, as it were, with the descriptive and comparative methods, as well as explanatory theories, on which scholars routinely draw in carrying out their work.
While many entry level resources concentrate on providing detailed descriptions of the world’s religions, Studying Religion: An Introduction turns its attention from the data of religion to the analytic skills required of anyone interested in studying the behaviors and institutions that we commonly name as religions. It shifts the focus from describing the exotic or curious religious “Other” to examining scholarly practice itself, and persuades readers that prior attention to their own habits will assist their efforts to study the habits of others.
Although this little book can be used as part of an introductory course (when supplemented by ethnographic materials of the instructor’s choosing), and is accessible to interested readers outside the university, it will also be of use in any course in the study of religion. For, despite the topic under study, the same intellectual skills are required to isolate, name, and examine within a comparative context, those collections of human artifacts that strike students as deserving attention. Studying Religion: An Introduction will therefore assist instructors across the academic study of religion to set the table, as it were, with the descriptive and comparative methods, as well as explanatory theories, on which scholars routinely draw in carrying out their work.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What is the Study of Religion?
Chapter 1: What’s in a Name?
Chapter 2: The History of “Religion”
Chapter 3: The Essentials of Religion
Chapter 4: The Functions of Religion
Chapter 5: The Public Discourse on Religion
Chapter 6: Religion and the Insider/Outsider Problem
Chapter 7: The Resemblance Among Religions
Chapter 8: Religion and Classification
Afterword: The Necessary Lie: Duplicity in the Disciplines by Jonathan Z. Smith
Definitions
Scholars:
William E. Arnal
Tala Asad
Pascal Boyer
Wendy Doniger
Mary Douglas
Emile Durkheim
Diana Eck
Mircea Eliade
James G Frazer
Sigmund Freud
Clifford Geertz
David Hume
William James
Gerardue van der Leeuw
Bruce Lincoln
Burton L. Mack
Martin Marty
Karl Marx
Tomoko Masuzawa
F. Max Müller
Rudolf Otto
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Ninian Smart
Jonathan Z. Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Herbert Spencer
Rodney Stark
Paul Tillich
Edward Burnett Tylor
Max Weber
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Resources
Specifications
| ISBN-10 (Hardback) | 184553011X |
| ISBN-13 (Hardback) | 9781845530112 |
| Price (Hardback) | £65.00/$100.00 |
| ISBN-10 (Paperback) | 1845530128 |
| ISBN-13 (Paperback) | 9781845530129 |
| Price (Paperback) | £16.99/$27.95 |
| Publication Date | December 2007 |
| Pages | 224 |
| Size | 234 x 156mm |
| Readership | undergraduates and general readers |
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