Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion

Revisiting Classical Theorists

Richard Newton, Vaia Touna, Vaia Touna, Richard Newton, Vaia Touna, Richard Newton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781350251656
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350251670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

This book introduces students to the so-called classics of the field from the 19th and 20th centuries, whilst challenging readers to apply a critical lens.

Instead of representing scholars and their works as virtually timeless, each contributor provides sufficient background on the classic work in question so that readers not only understand its novelty and place in its own time, but are able to arrive at a critical understanding of whether its approach to studying religion continues to be useful to them today. Scholars discussed include Muller, Durkheim, Freud and Eliade.

Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion: Revisiting Classical Theorists therefore offers a novel way into writing both a history and ethnography of the discipline, helping readers to see how it has changed and inviting them to consider what-if anything-endures and thereby unites these diverse authors into a common field.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface: Taking Notes in the Field of Religious Studies: Critical Methods
• Acknowledgements
• List of field notes
• Introduction: Revisiting the Past …, Again
• 1 Friedrich Max Müller
• 2 William James
• 3 Edward B. Tylor
• 4 Joseph Kitagawa
• 5 James G. Frazer
• 6 Wilfred Cantwell Smith
• 7 Sigmund Freud
• 8 Gerardus van der Leeuw
• 9 Rudolf Otto
• 10 Carl Jung
• 11 Bronislaw Malinowski
• 12 Mircea Eliade
• 13 Max Weber
• Afterword Revisiting Classics and Plotting Futures for the Field of Religious Studies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page