The Critical Study of Non-Religion: Discourse, Identification and Locality (Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies)

Product Description This book acts as a bridge between two increasingly entrenched positions in contemporary religious studies-one that is interested in understanding 'religion in the real world', and the other in understanding the discursive processes by which that statement makes sense, or 'critical religion.' Chris Cotter argues that both have a lot to learn from each other, and that rigorous empirical work can be conducted under the religion/non-religion binary and still contribute to the critical project. This book presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh's Southside which blurs the boundary between 'religion' and 'non-religion'. In doing so, the author demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake. This book details an approach which avoids constructing 'religion' as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating 'non-religious' subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be of interest to those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-/religious landscape. Review "Christopher Cotter's The Critical Study of Non-Religion is an intelligent and innovative study of the porous boundaries between religion and non-religion, which charts a path through the complex interrelations of family, community and individual identity and how these interact with ideological blocs in society, such as nationalism, politics and religion. Cotter insightfully deconstructs monolithic notions of non-religion and demonstrates the overlaps and grey areas that exist between certain religious people and certain non-religious people, in the areas of assumptions, beliefs and praxis." --Carole M. Cusack, The University of Sydney, Australia"Christopher Cotter's interview subjects make it plain that identifying as religious-and, as he importantly argues, nonreligious or even indifferent to it all-is an act of identification taking place in a hectic social world. Cotter invites us to hear all of these claims as tactics by which social actors position themselves in relation to others, making The Critical Study of Non-Religion a coming-of-age moment for one of the discipline's newest subfields." --Russell T. McCutcheon, University Research Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama, USA"An exceptional combination of textbook and original empirical study outlines the field of non-religion and shows the situational and contextual nature of our religion-related categories. It argues convincingly that non-religion studies would benefit from moving towards a critical discursive approach that does not reify non-religion as anything substantial." --Teemu Taira, Senior Lecturer, Study of Religion, University of Helsinki, Finland About the Author Chris Cotter is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is co-editor of New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates (2017) and After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies (2016). He is co-founder, co-editor-in-chief, and co-host of the The Religious Studies Project podcast and Co-Director at the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network.