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Full Description
The essays collected together in Critics Not Caretakers argue that the study of religion must be rethought as an ordinary aspect of social, historical existence, a stance that makes the scholar of religion a critic of cultural and historical practices rather than a caretaker of religious tradition or a font of timeless wisdom and deep meaning.
The book begins with several essays that outline the basis of an alternative, sociorhetorical approach to studying religion, before moving on to a series of discrete dispatches from the ongoing theory wars, each of which uses the work of such writers as Karen Armstrong, Walter Burkert, Benson Saler, and Jacob Neusner as a point of entry into wider theoretical issues of importance to the field's future. The author then examines the socio-political role of this brand of critical scholarship—a role that differs dramatically from the type of sympathetic caretaking generally associated with scholars of religion who feel compelled to "go public." Concluding the work is a consideration of how scholars as teachers can address issues of theory, method, and critical thinking in a variety of undergraduate classrooms—the location where they have always been publicly accountable intellectuals.
The new edition of this still read and, for some, controversial book preserves the original essays but includes a new opening chapter and new introductory commentaries across all of the chapters to demonstrate how little the field has changed since the volume was first published in 2001. Accordingly, the book continues to provide a viable alternative for those wanting to take a more critical approach to the study of religion.
Contents
Foreword to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments to the First Edition
Acknowledgments to the Second Edition
Copyright Permissions
Introduction to the Second Edition
Part I. Background
1. "Not Nearly Critical Enough": Studying Religion as Part of the Humanities
Part II. Redescribing Religion as Something Ordinary
Introduction to Chapter 2
2. More than a Shapeless Beast: Lumbering Through the Academy with the Study of Religion
Introduction to Chapter 3
3. Redescribing "Religion" as Social Formation: Toward a Social Theory of Religion
Part III. Dispatches from the Theory Wars
Introduction to Chapter 4
4. Writing a History of God: "Just the Same Game Wherever You Go"
Introduction to Chapter 5
5. Explaining the Sacred: Theorizing on Religion in the Late Twentieth Century
Introduction to Chapter 6
6. "We're All Stuck Somewhere": Taming Ethnocentrism and Trans-Cultural Understandings
Introduction to Chapter 7
7. The Economics of Spiritual Luxury: The Glittering Lobby and the Parliament of Religions
Introduction to Chapter 8
8. "My Theory of the Brontosaurus...": Postmodernism and "Theory" of Religion
Part IV. Culture Critics and Caretakers
Introduction to Chapters 9 and 10
9. A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual
10. Talking Past Each Other: Public Intellectuals Revisited
Part V. Going Public: Teaching Theory
Introduction to Chapters 11-14
11. Our "Special Promise" as Teachers: Scholars of Religion and the Politics of Tolerance
12. Redescribing "Religion and..." Film: Teaching the Insider/Outsider Problem
13. Methods and Theories in the Classroom: Teaching the Study of Myths and Rituals
14. Theorizing in the Introductory Course: A Survey of Resources
Part VI. This Messy Mix of Historical Human Performance
Afterword to the Second Edition
Bibliography
Index
