The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology

Dubuisson, Daniel

ISBN 10: 0801887569 / ISBN 13: 9780801887567

Edité par Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007

A propos de cet article

Used/World Religion This book is in very good condition. The cover is clean and the pages are crisp. There is minimal high lighting through a chapter. The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of "religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

N° de réf. du vendeur dub07

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology
• Éditeur: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Date de parution: 2007
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0801887569
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780801887567
• Reliure: Couverture souple
• État de l'article: Assez bon
• Dimensions: 15,24 L x 22,86 H x 1,5 P (centimètres) 15,24 centimètres de largeur par 22,86 centimètres de hauteur par 1,5 centimètres de profondeur
• Poids: 399 grammes

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

In this book, anthropologist and historian of religion Daniel Dubuisson contests Mircea Eliade's theory of the existence of a universal Homo Religiosus and argues that "religion" as a discrete concept is a Western construct, an invention of nineteenth-century scholars who created it as a field of scientific study. Before that time, there was little attempt to step outside religious experience and objectify it. In fact, the difference between "secular" and "religious" as understood in the West is meaningless in many non-Western cultures.

While Dubuisson still regards the study of beliefs and belief-systems as legitimate, he argues that the word "religion" is too fraught with ideology and too Western in its associated meanings to be useful. Instead, he proposes the term "cosmographic formation," which would speak to a more universal human response to the congeries of experience we call Being, the Sacred, or God. Challenging readers to examine notions of what religion is, this book is sure to generate disagreement and controversy. The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of "religion" as it is understood in the West but also offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

À propos des auteurs

Daniel Dubuisson is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, in Lille and author of many books in French and English, including Twentieth Century Mythologies and Impostures et pseudo-science: L'oeuvre de Mircea Eliade.

William Sayers has translated Jacques Stiker's A History of Disability and Adam Rayski's The Choice of the Jews under Vichy: Between Submission and Resistance.