Description
In Geneologies of Religion, Talal Asad explores how religion as a historical category emerged in the West and has come to be applied 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 invokved 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."
Author: Talal Asad
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 08/18/1993
Pages: 344
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.10w x 0.88d
ISBN13: 9780801846328
ISBN10: 0801846323
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Comparative Religion
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Religion | Christianity | General
About the Author
Talal Asad is a professor of anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.