Religion, Language, and Power

by Green; Nile

• ISBN13: 9780415963688
• ISBN10: 0415963680
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Religion, Language and Power shows that the language of 'religion' is far from neutral, and that the packaging and naming of what English speakers call 'religious' groups or identities is imbued with the play of power. Religious Studies has all too often served to amplify voices from other centers of power, whether scripturalist or otherwise normative and dominant. This book's de-centering of English classifications goes beyond the remit of most postcolonial studies in that it explores the classifications used in a range of languages - including Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek and English - to achieve a comparative survey of the roles of language and power in the making of 'religion' . In contextualizing these uses of language, the ten contributors explore how labels are either imposed or emerge interactively through discursive struggles between dominant and marginal groups. In dealing with the interplay of religion, language and power, there is no other book with the breadth of this volume.

Table of Contents

Religion, Language, and Power: An Introductory Essay	p. 1
Exporting 'Religion'
Dialogues on Religion and Violence at the Parliament of the World's Religions	p. 27
The Making of 'Religion' in Modern China	p. 42
Reclaiming Mysticism: Anti-Orientalism and the Construction of 'Islamic Sufism' in Postcolonial Egypt	p. 57
Execrating and Excluding the Other
Insider/Outsider Labelling and the Struggle for Power in Early Judaism	p. 83
Who Are the Others? Three Moments in Sanskrit-Based Practice	p. 101
The Continuum of 'Sacred Language' From High to Low Speech in the Middle Iranian (Pahlavi) Zoroastrian Tradition	p. 123
Articulating Anglicanism: The Church of England and the Language of the 'Other' in the Eighteenth Century	p. 143
Struggling for the Self
Christianos: Defining the Self in the Acts of the Apostles	p. 167
Attributing and Rejecting the Label 'Hindu' in North India	p. 186
Idiom, Genre, and the Politics of Self-Description on the Peripheries of Persian	p. 202
Contributors	p. 221
Index	p. 225
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