The Ideology of Religious Studies

by Fitzgerald, Timothy

• ISBN13: 9780195167696
• ISBN10: 0195167694
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In recent years there has been an intensifying debate within the religious studies community about the validity of religion as an analytical category. In this book Fitzgerald sides with those who argue that the concept of religion itself should be abandoned. On the basis of his own research in India and Japan, and through a detailed analysis of the use of religion in a wide range of scholarly texts, the author maintains that the comparative study of religion is really a form of liberal ecumenical theology. By pretending to be a science, religion significantly distorts socio-cultural analysis. He suggest, however, that religious studies can be re-represented in a way which opens up new and productive theoretical connections with anthropology and cultural and literary studies.

Table of Contents

Part I: Religious Studies as an Ideology
1 Religion, Religions, and World Religions: Religious Studies-A Critique	3	(30)
2 Comparative Religion: The Founding Fathers and the Theological Legacy	33	(21)
3 Ninian Smart and the Phenomenology of Religion	54	(18)
4 Religion, Family Resemblances, and the Use Context	72	(26)
5 Religions, Quasi Religions, and Secular Ideologies	98	(23)
Part II: Religion and India
6 Buddhism in India: Ritual, Politics, and Soteriology	121	(13)
7 Hinduism	134	(25)
Part III: Religion and Japan
8 Problems of the Category `Religion' in Japan	159	(22)
9 Constructing a Collective Identity	181	(18)
10 Bowing to the Taxman	199	(22)
Part IV: Problems With the Category 'Culture'
11 Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, and Cultural Anthropology	221	(14)
12 The Critique of 'Culture' in Cultural Anthropology	235	(18)
Notes	253	(8)
General Bibliography	261	(7)
Index	268