Things
Religion and the Question of Materiality
ISBN13: 9780823239450ISBN10: 0823239454
Hardback,
496 pages
Jul 2012,
Not Yet Published
Price:
$90.00 (06)A Fordham University Press Publication
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Description
That relation has long been conceived in antagonistic terms, privileging spirit above matter, belief above ritual and objects, meaning above form, and "inward" contemplation above "outward" action. After all, wasn't the opposition between spirituality and materiality the defining characteristic of religion, understood as geared to a transcendental beyond that was immaterial by definition? Grounded in the rise of religion as a modern category, with Protestantism as its main exponent, this conceptualization devalues religious things as lacking serious empirical, let alone theoretical, interest. The resurgence of public religion in our time has exposed the limitations of this attitude.Taking materiality seriously, this volume uses as a starting point the insight that religion necessarily requires some kind of incarnation, through which the beyond to which it refers becomes accessible. Conjoining rather than separating spirit and matter, incarnation (whether understood as "the world becoming flesh" or in a broader sense) places at center stage the question of how the realm of the transcendental, spiritual, or invisible is rendered tangible in the world.
How do things matter in religious discourse and practice? How are we to account for the value or devaluation, the appraisal or contestation, of things within particular religious perspectives? How are we to rematerialize our scholarly approaches to religion? These are the key questions addressed by this multidisciplinary volume. Focusing on different kinds of things that matter for religion, including sacred artifacts, images, bodily fluids, sites, and electronic media, it offers a wide-ranging set of multidisciplinary studies that combine detailed analysis and critical reflection.
Features
- "Material religion" is one of the most quickly developing fields in religious studies.
- Birgit Meyer is one of the most vivid voices today in the study of material religion.
- A worthy successor to Hent de Vries, ed., Religion: Beyond the Concept, the first volume in the Future of the Religious Past series and now widely used for reference and teaching.
Product Details
496 pages; 20 b/w illustrations; 7 1/8 x 9 1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-8232-3945-0ISBN10: 0-8232-3945-4About the Author(s)
Dick Houtman is Professor of Cultural Sociology at the Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His two most recent books are Religions of Modernity: Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital (edited with Stef Aupers) and Farewell to the Leftist Working Class (with Peter Achterberg and Anton Derks).
Birgit Meyer is professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her recent publications include Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana and Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (edited with Peter Geschiere).
