Interpreting Religion

Making Sense of Religious Lives

Erin Johnston, Vikash Singh

• Publisher: Bristol University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781529211641
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited collection harnesses a diversity of interpretivist perspectives to provide a panoramic view of the production, experiences, contexts, and meanings of religion. Scholars from the US, South Asia and Europe explore religious phenomena using ethnographic, comparative historical, psychosocial, and critical theoretical approaches. Each chapter addresses foundational themes in the study of religion – from identity, discourse and power to ritual, emotion, and embodiment. Authors examine dynamic intersections of race, gender, history, and the present within the religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as among the non-religious. Cutting boldly across religious traditions and paradigms, the book investigates areas of harmony and contradiction across different interpretive lenses to achieve a richer understanding of the meanings of religion.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Editors’ Preface: Interpretive Lenses in Sociology – On the Multidimensional Foundations of Meaning in Social Life
• Introduction: Interpretive Approaches in the Study of Religion
• 1 Making Sense of Queer Christian Lives
• 2 The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Religion, Spirituality, and Ritual among Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors
• 3 Doing It: Ethnography, Embodiment, and the Interpretation of Religion
• 4 Mind the Gap: What Ethnographic Silences Can Teach Us
• 5 The Public Sphere and Presentations of the Collective Self: Being Shia in Modern India
• 6 The Power of Meaning: Toward a Critical Discursive Sociology of Religion
• 7 The Religion of White Male Ethnonationalism in a Multicultural Reality
• 8 Totalitarianism as Religion
• 9 The Heritage Spectrum: A More Inclusive Typology for the Age of Global Buddhism
• 10 Interpreting Nonreligion
• Afterword: Approaching Religions – Some Reflections on Meaning, Identity, and Power
• Index