Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Cultural Memory of the Present (Paperback)) (Paperback)
$22.76 - Save $1.19 (4%) - RRP $23.95 Free shipping worldwide (to United States and
all these other countries) Usually dispatched within 48 hours | |Short Description for Formations of the Secular Opening with the provocative query "what might an anthropology of the secular look like?" this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism. The focus is on major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes towards Islam in the modern West and the Middle East.
Full description- Publisher: Stanford University Press
- Published: 31 March 2003
- Format: Paperback 280 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Anthropology | Comparative Religion | Religion & Politics | Islam | Humanist & Secular Alternatives To Religion
- ISBN 13: 9780804747684 ISBN 10: 0804747687
- Sales rank: 69,262
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Full description for Formations of the Secular
Opening with the provocative query "what might an anthropology of the secular look like?" this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the "strangeness of the non-European world" and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion), the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity.
