Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion

Contents

CONTENTS Preface IX Acknowledgments XVlt Copyright Permissions XXI PART I Redescribing Religion as Something Ordinary Chapter 1 More Than a Shapeless Beast: Lumbering through the Academy with the Study of Religion 3 Chapter 2 Redescribing 'Religion' as Social Formation: Toward a Social Theory of Religion 21 PART II Dispatches from the Theory Wars Chapter 3 Writing a History of God: "Just the Same Game Wherever You Go" 43 Chapter 4 Explaining the Sacred: Theorizing on Religion in the Late Twentieth Century 57 Chapter 5 "We're All Stuck Somewhere": Taming Ethnocentrism and Transcultural Understandings 73 Chapter 6 The Economics of Spiritual Luxury: The Glittering Lobby and the World's Parliament of Religions 85 Chapter 7 "My Theory of the Brontosaurus ...": Postmodernism and "Theory" of Religion 103 PART III Culture Critics and Caretakers Chapter 8 A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual 125 v VI CRmCS NOT CARETAKERS Chapter 9 Talking Past Each Other: The Issue of Public Intellectuals Revisited 145 PART IV Going Public: Teaching Theory Chapter 10 Our "Special Promise" as Teachers: Scholars of Religion and the Politics of Tolerance 155 Chapter 11 Redescribing "Religion and ..." Film: Teaching the Insider/Outsider Problem 179 Chapter 12 Methods and Theories in the Classroom: Teaching the Study of Myths and Rituals 201 Chapter 13 Theorizing in the Introductory Course: A Survey of Resources 217 PART V Afterword Afterword 239 References 241 Index 257 To all those who labor in the part-time and adjunct trenches ofthe academy And also to Marcia, who helped to make those damp trenches a little cozier ...