Genealogies of religion : discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam / Talal Asad.

Author/creator Asad, Talal author.
Format Book
PublicationBaltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©1993.
Description335 pages ; 24 cm
Supplemental ContentPublisher description
Supplemental ContentTable of contents
Subjects

Portion of title Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam
Contents Genealogies -- The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category -- Toward a Genealogy of the Concept of Ritual -- Archaisms -- Pain and Truth in Medieval Christian Ritual -- On Discipline and Humility in Medieval Christian Monasticism -- Translations -- The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology -- The Limits of Religious Criticism in the Middle East: Notes on Islamic Public Argument -- Polemics -- Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair -- Ethnography, Literature, and Politics: Some Readings and Uses of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
Review "In Genealogies of Religion Asad explores how religion as a historical category emerged in the West and has come to be applied by scholars, journalists, and politicians as a universal concept. The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation - from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign - is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invoked to explain and justify the liberal politics and world-view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions. He argues that "religion" is a construction of European modernity, a construction that authorizes - for Westerners and non-Westerners alike - particular forms of "history making." Asad examines aspects of this authorizing process in the so-called fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia, in the Rushdie affair in Great Britain, and in other phenomena."--Jacket.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 307-323) and index.
Issued in other formOnline version: Asad, Talal. Genealogies of religion. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©1993
Genre/formHistory (form)
LCCN 93021831
ISBN0801846315 (alk. paper)
ISBN9780801846311 (alk. paper)
ISBN0801846323 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
ISBN9780801846328 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks BL50 .A85 1993 ✔ Available Place Hold