More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion
More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion By Manuel A. Vasquez
2010 | 382 Pages | ISBN: 0195188543 | PDF | 56 MB
2010 | 382 Pages | ISBN: 0195188543 | PDF | 56 MB
This book challenges the traditional idea that religions can be understood primarily as texts to be interpreted, decoded, or translated. In More Than Belief, Manuel A. Vasquez argues for a new way of studying religions, one that sees them as dynamic material and historical expressions of the practices of embodied individuals who are embedded in social fields and ecological networks. He sketches the outlines of this approach through a focus on body, practices, and space. In order to highlight the centrality of these dimensions of religious experience and performance, Vasquez recovers materialist currents within religious studies that have been consistently ignored or denigrated. Drawing on state-of-the-art work in fields as diverse as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, critical theory, environmental studies, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences, Vasquez offers a groundbreaking new way of looking at religion.