Ivan Strenski

Why Politics Can't Be Freed from Religion

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Religion. Power. Politics. Ideas and institutions that have been laden with a baggage of meanings picked up through the course of history - and which, unfairly or not, are often defined by these historic and social contexts. In this thought-provoking book, Ivan Strenski unpacks the central concepts and influences of religion, politics, and power, and provides a new theoretical framework to think about what they mean in today's society. In addition to offering radical critiques of the religious and political perspectives of thinkers such as Talal Asad and Michel Foucault, Strenski moves beyond the theory in applying his intellectual framework to a variety of real-world issues, including insights into suicide bombers in the Middle East. Erudite and engaging, Why Politics Can't be Freed From Religion provides a timely and highly original contribution to our understanding of these concepts. It tries to dislodge readers from conventional thinking about politics and religion, and in doing so, helps make sense of the complexities of our twenty-first-century world.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. März 2010
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 160mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 458g
• ISBN-13: 9781405176491
• ISBN-10: 1405176490
• Artikelnr.: 31689943

Autorenporträt

Ivan Strenski is Holstein Family and Community Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of numerous books, including: Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism and Social Thought (2002); Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice (2003); The New Durkheim: Essays on Philosophy, Religious Identity and the Politics of Knowledge (2006); Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion and Thinking About Religion: A Reader (both Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments xi
1 When God Plays Politics: Radical Interrogations of Religion, Power, and
Politics 1
2 Interrogating 'Religion' 8
1. Religion Trouble 8
2. 'Seeing' Religion: Six Common Clichés 11
3. Gagging at the Feast of Two Unexamined Assumptions: Religion, All Good
or All Bad 14
4. The Religion-Is-No-Good Cliché 21
5. The Second Set of Two Clichés: Religion Is Belief and Belief in God 24
6. 'Religion's' Private Parts 33
7. Powerless in Paradise 35
8. Two Ways to Eliminate 'Religion' 36
9. Is Religion Our Phlogiston? An Historical Test Case 39
10. Talal Asad's 'Religion' Trouble 42
11. The Trick of Defining 'Religion' 46
12. Owning 'Religion' 50
13. How Durkheim Took 'Ownership' of 'Religion' 55
14. Religion and Its Despisers 59
3 Interrogating 'Power' 62
1. Confronting the Paradox of 'Power' 62
2. How 'Power' Plays Havoc with Thinking about "Institutional Violence" 66
3. Whom Should We Blame? 'History' on Trial 70
4. History's Helper: We Should Also Blame Foucault 81
5. Problematizing Power in South Africa 84
6. Foucault versus Foucault 88
7. Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Hierarchy 90
8. What More Is to Be Done? Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Social
Force 97
4 Interrogating 'Politics' 100
1. Defining 'Politics' 100
2. Where There Is No Politics: Despotism and Totalitarianism 102
3. Autonomous Politics 105
4. Where Our 'Politics' Makes No Sense 107
5. Politics, the Construct 109
6. Two Pernicious Views of 'Politics' 112
7. History Lessons for Professor Morgenthau 116
8. What Constitutionalism Owes the Council of Constance 119
9. The Emergence of the Political . . . from the Religious 123
10. Machiavelli and Luther: Critical Contributions to the Autonomy of
Politics 125
11. Foucault's Fault II: 'Everything Is Political' 130
12. The Hidden Fascism of Thinking that Everything Is Political 133
13. Public and Private: No Absolute Line of Demarcation 135
14. Resisting the Panopticon 136
15. Afterword: The Autonomy of 'Politics' and the Nation-State 140
5 Testing Interrogations of 'Religion,' 'Power,' and 'Politics': Human
Bombers and the Authority of Sacrifice in the Middle East 142
1. Is 'Suicide' Bombing Religious? 142
2. Making Too Much of Religion in 'Suicide' Bombing: 'Islamofascism' 144
3. Dying to Make Too Little of Religion in 'Suicide' Bombing: Robert A.
Pape 147
4. No Religion in 'Suicide' Bombing: Talal Asad 150
5. How Religion Helps Explain Human Bombing 153
6. Human Bombing Is "Catastrophe," but also a "Triumph" of "Secular
Immortality" 155
7. Human Bombing = Jihad + Sacrifice 160
8. Sacrifice or Suicide? 164
9. But Do Any Muslims Really Think Human Bombers Are 'Sacrifices'? 168
10. Sacrifice Makes Authority 175
11. How and Why Sacrifice Works: The Authority of Sacralization 176
12. How and Why Sacrifice Works: No Free Gifts 180
13. Concluding Remarks 182
References 187
Index 196

Rezensionen

"Overall the book is an excellentcontribution." (Political Studies Review, 1January 2013)

"But as a powerful myth-buster of some of the great fallaciesabout religion and politics, or even as a primer in the study ofreligion for undergraduates, it works very well and would serve toprovoke lively debate." (Modern Believing, 1April 2012)

"The book is written in an accessible and engaging style, andreaders who are new to the field of religion and politics will findit readable and helpful". (Religion, September 2010)"Going beyond the religion-is-good and the religion-is-badclichés, while also distancing himself from fashionableacademic eliminationists, Ivan Strenski examines the connectionsamong religion, power and politics. Is religion merely'used' by fanatics, as if it were an inert hammer thatcan be picked up or dropped at will? Is it to be equated withbelief? Or with power, à la Foucault? Or is it, rather,inseparable from authority? Most readers are likely to have theirpresuppositions shaken by Strenski's Manifesto."
--Gustavo Benavides, Villanova University