Interpreting Religion: Making Sense of Religious Lives

Description

This edited collection harnesses a diversity of interpretivist perspectives to provide a panoramic view of the production, experiences, contexts, and meanings of religion. Experts from the US, UK, India, and China explore religious phenomena using ethnographic, comparative historical, psychosocial, and critical theoretical approaches. Each chapter addresses foundational themes in the study of religion - from identity and discourse to ritual, emotion, and embodiment. Authors examine dynamic intersections of race, gender, history, and the present within the religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Cutting boldly across religious traditions and paradigms, the book investigates areas of harmony and contradiction across different interpretive lenses and achieves a richer understanding of the meanings of religion.

Erin F. Johnston is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. Vikash Singh is Associate Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University.

"Scholars of religion too often speak only to narrow academic circles. But this valuable collection of essays shows that good scholarship is also attentive to how people in the real world interpret their faith." Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University