| Religious Experience: A Reader Contributor(s): Martin, Craig (Author), McCutcheon, Russell T. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1845530977 ISBN-13: 9781845530976 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $171.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2012 Annotation: Religious Experience: A Reader offers a succinct collection of essays, along with an authoritative general introduction and detailed introductions to each essay, and will be of use in senior undergraduate and graduate classes. After providing background readings on the history and uses of the category "experience," this volume pairs classic and contemporary examples of scholarship that presume religion to be based on experiences that are sociopolitically autonomous and therefore universal. Taking this viewpoint as its data, the anthology then moves readers to examine "experience" as part of a social rhetoric that can be studied in terms of its practical effects and its ability to authorize social identities. The collection therefore moves readers from the seemingly commonsense and widely held notion that "religious experience" corresponds to some universal sentiment (often thought to comprise a key element to human nature) to entertaining that the discourse on religious experience is itself a public technique used in acts of social formation. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Education - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social |
| Dewey: 204.2 |
| LCCN: 2012002500 |
| Series: Critical Categories in the Study of Religion |
| Physical Information: 224 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Many regard religious experience as the essence of religion, arguing that narratives might be created and rituals invented but that these are always secondary to the original experience itself. However, the concept of experience has come under increasing fire from a range of critics and theorists. This Reader presents writings from both those who assume the existence and possible universality of religious experience and those who question the very rhetoric of experience. Bringing together both classic and contemporary writings, the Reader showcases differing disciplinary approaches to the study of religious experience: philosophy, literary and cultural theory, history, psychology, anthropology; feminist theory; as well as writings from within religious studies. The essays are structured into pairs, with each essay separately introduced with information on its historical and intellectual context. The ultimate aim of the Reader is to enable students to explore religious experience as rhetoric created to authorize social identities. The book will be an invaluable introduction to the key ideas and approaches for students of Religion, as well as Sociology and Anthropology. CONTRIBUTORS: Robert Desjarlais, Diana Eck, William James, Craig Martin, Russell T. McCutcheon, Wayne Proudfoot, Robert Sharf, Ann Taves, Charles Taylor, Joachim Wach, Joan Wallach Scott, Raymond Williams |