ISBN
978-1529211627Imprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529211610Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529211641Imprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529211641Imprint
Bristol University Press
Interpreting Religion
This edited collection harnesses a diversity of interpretivist perspectives to provide a panoramic view of the production, experiences, contexts, and meanings of religion.
Scholars from the US, South Asia and Europe explore religious phenomena using ethnographic, comparative historical, psychosocial, and critical theoretical approaches. Each chapter addresses foundational themes in the study of religion – from identity, discourse and power to ritual, emotion, and embodiment. Authors examine dynamic intersections of race, gender, history, and the present within the religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as among the non-religious.
Cutting boldly across religious traditions and paradigms, the book investigates areas of harmony and contradiction across different interpretive lenses to achieve a richer understanding of the meanings of religion.
"Scholars of religion too often speak only to narrow academic circles. But this valuable collection of essays shows that good scholarship is also attentive to how people in the real world interpret their faith." Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
Erin F. Johnston is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University.
Vikash Singh is Associate Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University.
Introduction: Interpretive Approaches in the Study of Religion ~ Erin F. Johnston
1. Making Sense of Queer Christian Lives ~ Jodi O'Brien
2. Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Religion, Spirituality and Ritual among Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors ~ Janet Jacobs
3. Doing It: Ethnography, Embodiment, and the Interpretation of Religion ~ Daniel Winchester
4. Mind the Gap: What Ethnographic Silences Can Teach Us ~ Rebecca Kneale Gould
5. The Public Sphere and Presentations of the Collective Self: Being Shia in Modern India ~ Aseem Hasnain
6. Meaning and Power: Toward a Critical Discursive Sociology of Religion ~ Titus Hjelm
7. The Religion of White Male Ethnonationalism in a Multicultural Reality ~ George Lundskow
8. Totalitarianism as Religion ~ Yong Wang
9. The Heritage Spectrum: A More Inclusive Typology for the Age of Global Buddhism ~ Jessica Marie Falcone
10. Interpreting Nonreligion ~ Evan Stewart
Afterword: Approaching Religions – Some Refl ections on Meaning, Identity, and Power ~ Vikash Singh
