Religion on the Edge

The thirteen essays in this volume offer a challenge to conventional scholarly approaches to the sociology of religion. They urge readers to look beyond congregational settings beyond the United States and to religions other than Christianity and encourage critical engagement with religion''s complex social consequences. By expanding conceptual categories the essays reveal how aspects of the religious have always been part of allegedly non-religious spaces and show how by attending to these intellectual blindspots we can understand aspects of identity modernity and institutional life that have long been obscured. Religion on the Edge addresses a number of critical questions: What is revealed about the self pluralism or modernity when we look outside the U.S. or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in the categories we use? Religion on the Edge offers groundbreaking new methodologies and models bringing to light conceptual lacunae re-centering what is unsettled by their use and inviting a significant reordering of long-accepted political and economic hierarchies. The book shows how social scientists across the disciplines can engage with the sociology of religion. By challenging many of its long-standing empirical and analytic tendencies the contributors to this volume show how their work informs and is informed by debates in other fields and the analytical purchase gained by bringing these many conversations together. Religion on the Edge will be a crucial resource for any scholar seeking to understand our post-modern post-secular world.