Manufacturing Religion

0his provocative book offers a powerful critique of traditional religion scholarship, and particularly the oft-repeated bromide that "religion" is a sui generis phenomenon. McCutcheon skillfully analyses the ideological basis for and service of this claim, demonstrating that it has been used to render the field's object of study ahistorical, apolitical, fetishised, and sacrosanct. He considers a range of sites in the modern study of religion and uncovers at each point sui generis religion serving as a protective strategy that ultimately authorises socio-political program. On a larger scale, he contends, the study of religion as a historical category participates in a larger system of political domination and economic and cultural imperialism.