Secularism and religion-making

the long version

"This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions. It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas, social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between history, politics, and religion. The individual contributions, written by a new generation of scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the processes of translation and globalization of historically specific concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion and secularism as modern concepts."--Publisher. "This is an excellent collection of essays. Its unusual perspective allows the talented contributors to explore not just the concept and practice of secularism, but also the development of religion in our time. Anyone interested in this theme will profit from reading this book."--Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.