Manufacturing religion : the discourse on sui generis religion and the politics of nostalgia / Russell T. McCutcheon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCutcheon, Russell T., 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion--Study and teaching--Methodology.

Religion.

Religion--Study and teaching.

Physical Description:

iii, 249 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.

Summary:

This provocative book offers a powerful critique of traditional religion scholarship, and particularly the oft-repeated bromide that "religion" is a sui generis phenomenon. McCutcheon skillfully analyzes the ideological basis for and service of this claim, demonstrating that it has been used to render the field's object of study ahistorical, apolitical, fetishized, and sacrosanct. He considers a range of sites in the modern study of religion -- from the work of Mircea Eliade, to the interpretive controversy over his life, the poverty of theory in comparative religion textbooks, and representations of Vietnamese Buddhist suicides in the 1960s -- and uncovers at each point sui generis religion serving as a protective strategy that ultimately authorizes and normativizes a socio-political program. And on a larger geo-political scale, he contends, the study of religion as an ahistorical category participates in a larger system of political domination and economic and cultural imperialism.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Toronto, 1995.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-242) and index.

ISBN:

0195105036

OCLC:

34851405