ABSTRACT
The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice.
Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions.
The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts:
- Genealogies of Material Religion
- Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion
- Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping
- Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions
In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination.
From Spinoza’s political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants’ attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India’s Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition.
The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |12 pages
Editors' Introduction
part I|98 pages
Genealogies of Material Religion
chapter 1.2|13 pages
Material Theories in Japanese Buddhism
chapter 1.3|13 pages
Gender, Ritual, and Dancing Images
chapter 1.4|18 pages
The Philosophy of Ubuntu and Material Religion in Africa
part II|132 pages
Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion
chapter 2.2|17 pages
Of Manuscripts That Can't Be Read and Roads That Can't Be Seen
chapter 2.8|13 pages
Three Sacred Mouthfuls
part III|129 pages
Entanglements, Entrapments, Escaping
chapter 3.2|19 pages
Measuring Entanglement in Material Traces of Ritualized Interaction
chapter 3.3|15 pages
“Disentangling” as an Everyday Practice
chapter 3.5|12 pages
Buddhist Practice, Recreation, and Fun
chapter 3.6|19 pages
Christmas Gifts at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in Santiago, Chile
chapter 3.8|14 pages
Human-Animal Entanglements and the Anthropology of Sacrifice
part IV|77 pages
Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions