1st Edition
The Discipline of Religion Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric
By Russell T. McCutcheon
Copyright 2003
342 Pages
by
Routledge
352 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The Discipline of Religion is a lively critical journey through religious studies today, looking at its recent growth as an academic discipline, and its contemporary political and social meanings. Focusing on the differences between religious belief and academic religious discourse, Russell T. McCutcheon argues that the invention of religion as a discipline blurs the distinction between... Read more
Introduction PART I Genealogy of credibility 1 Form, content, and the treasury of devices 2 God’s people defending their ivory towers: reassessing the study of religion’s emergence in the U.S. 3 Autonomy, unity, and crisis: rhetoric and the invention of a discipline 4 Classification and the dog’s breakfast: the American Academy of Religion’s research interest survey PART II Techniques of dominance 5 The good, the bad, and the ugly: looking past the violence of cults and fanatics 6 Alienation, apprenticeship, and the crisis of academic labor 7 “Like small bumps on the back of the neck … ”: the problem of evil as something ordinary 8 The jargon of authenticity and the study of religion PART III Reworking the residue from our imperfect past 9 Methods, theories, and the terrors of history: closing the Eliadean era with some dignity 10 The perfect past and the irony of narrative: Bruce Lincoln’s Theorizing Myth 11 “Religion” and the citizen’s unrequited desires: chips from the religion industry’s workshop 12 “Religion” and the governable self, Afterword
Biography
RUSSELL T. MCCUTCHEON is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is author of Manufacturing Religion (1997) and Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (2001), editor of The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion (1999), and co-editor with Willi Braun of Guide to the Study of Religion (2000).
' ... as a contribution to meta-theory The Discipline of Religion is a well-argued and thought-provoking book.' - Numen
