More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion

ISBN-13: 9780195188547 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 392 str.

Manuel A. Vasquez

Opis

This book challenges the traditional idea that religions can be understood primarily as texts to be interpreted, decoded, or translated. In More Than Belief, Manuel A. Vasquez argues for a new way of studying religions, one that sees them as dynamic material and historical expressions of the practices of embodied individuals who are embedded in social fields and ecological networks. He sketches the outlines of this approach through a focus on body, practices, and space. In order to highlight the centrality of these dimensions of religious experience and performance, Vasquez recovers materialist currents within religious studies that have been consistently ignored or denigrated. Drawing on state-of-the-art work in fields as diverse as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, critical theory, environmental studies, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences, Vasquez offers a groundbreaking new way of looking at religion.

Recenzje

Vasquz provides accessible and astute summaries of theoretical approaches, while articulating a rigorous theory of material religion and offering a coherent methodology for the academic study of its practice.

O autorze

Associate Professor of Religion, University of Florida