The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion

Praise for the previous edition: “This volume, expertly edited and introduced by Segal, collects a series of essays that combine clarity and accessibility with nuance and balance … and are uniformly of high quality, each with a helpful bibliography that supplements the volume bibliography… This work will command a wide audience, ranging from the general public to religious studies specialists. Highly recommended.” —CHOICE “This is an excellent volume of papers about the study of religion both in conception and execution … Robert Segal has done a marvelous job in editing the volume and providing a bibliography and index … a very useful, well constructed and interesting book that should be widely read and used on courses.” —British Association for the Study of Religions Bulletin Now in its second edition, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion offers an expertly compiled and comprehensive overview of contemporary religious studies across the humanities and the social sciences. Truly interdisciplinary in its methodology and featuring an international team of contributors from diverse academic backgrounds, this Companion explores the anthropological, economic, literary, philosophical, psychological, sociological, and theological terrain of religious studies, and presupposes no prior knowledge of the academic study of religion. Each chapter is framed around an approach to religious studies from the vantage point of an adjacent discipline or topic that contributes to our understanding of religion, and is accompanied by its own bibliography to guide further reading. New to this edition are chapters which reflect contemporary trends in scholarship, including gender, science, law, music, emotion, cognition, globalization, and violence. Standard topics like death and the afterlife, ethics, fundamentalism, magic, ritual, and myth, among others, have been rigorously updated to reflect new directions in research and foster discussion among disciplines. Ideal for students and scholars alike, the second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion remains an authoritative resource in the study of religion for anyone working in the fields of religious studies, theology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, history, and philosophy.

List of Contributors viii About the Editors x Introduction xi Robert A. Segal Part I Approaches 1 1 Anthropology of Religion 3 Fiona Bowie 2 Economics of Religion 25 Rodney Stark 3 Literature and Religion 44 Eric Ziolkowski 4 Phenomenology of Religion 65 Thomas Ryba 5 Philosophy of Religion 93 Charles Taliaferro 6 Psychology of Religion 113 Roderick Main 7 Sociology of Religion 135 Titus Hjelm 8 Theology 152 Ian S. Markham Part II T opics 169 9 Body 171 Yudit Kornberg Greenberg 10 Cognitive Science 184 Jesper Sorensen 11 Comparative Method 197 Paul Roscoe 12 Death and Afterlife 209 Douglas J. Davies 13 Emotion 219 Tony Milligan 14 Esotericism 229 Karl Baier 15 Ethics 241 G. Scott Davis 16 Functionalism 253 Robert A. Segal 17 Fundamentalism 265 Henry Munson 18 Globalization 277 Michael Wilkinson 19 History 289 Robert A. Yelle 20 Law 302 Winnifred Fallers Sullivan 21 Magic 315 Kocku von Stuckrad 22 Modernism and Postmodernism 325 Paul-Francois Tremlett 23 Music 335 Guy L. Beck 24 Myth 348 Robert A. Segal 25 Nationalism 361 Mark Juergensmeyer 26 Pilgrimage 371 Simon Coleman 27 Ritual 382 Part I by Catherine Bell -- Part II by Jens Kreinath 28 Science 400 Ralph O'Connor 29 Secularization 414 Steve Bruce 30 Sex and Gender 429 Ivan Strenski 31 Terror and Violence 440 Lorne L. Dawson Index 451