More Than Belief

A Materialist Theory of Religion

Manuel A. Vasquez

Offers a new, non-reductive materialist theory of religion
Brings the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences into conversation around the issue of religion
Synthesizes cutting-edge research on religious experience and performance

More Than Belief

A Materialist Theory of Religion

Manuel A. Vasquez

Description

This book challenges the traditional idea that religions can be understood primarily as texts to be interpreted, decoded, or translated. In More Than Belief, Manuel A. Vásquez argues for a new way of studying religions, one that sees them as dynamic material and historical expressions of the practices of embodied individuals who are embedded in social fields and ecological networks. He sketches the outlines of this approach through a focus on body, practices, and space. In order to highlight the centrality of these dimensions of religious experience and performance, Vásquez recovers materialist currents within religious studies that have been consistently ignored or denigrated. Drawing on state-of-the-art work in fields as diverse as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, critical theory, environmental studies, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences, Vásquez offers a groundbreaking new way of looking at religion.

More Than Belief

A Materialist Theory of Religion

Manuel A. Vasquez

Introduction
I. EMBODIMENT
Chapter 1: The Rise of Foundational Dualism and the Eclipse of the Body
Chapter 2: "Body Am I Entirely, and Nothing Else": Non-Reductive Materialism and the Struggle against Dualism
Chapter 3: Toward a Materialist Phenomenology of Religion
Chapter 4: The Phenomenology of Embodiment and the Study of Religion
Chapter 5: Religious Bodies as Social Artifacts
Chapter 6: Holding Social Constructionism in Check: The Recovery of the Active, Lived Body
Chapter 7: A Cultural Neurophenomenology of Religion: Enter the Embodied Mind
II. PRACTICE
Chapter 8: The Eclipse of Practice: Textualism at Large
Chapter 9: "Ceci n'est pas un texte": From Textualism to Practice
III. EMPLACEMENT
Chapter 10: Expanding the Conversation on Emplaced Religion
Chapter 11: Mobility, Networks, and Ecology
By the Way of a Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

More Than Belief

A Materialist Theory of Religion

Manuel A. Vasquez

Author Information

Manuel A. Vásquez teaches in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. He has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on religion in Latin America and among U.S. Latinos. His research currently focuses on the intersection between religion and globalization, particular on the dynamics of transnational religious networks and flows across the Americas.

More Than Belief

A Materialist Theory of Religion

Manuel A. Vasquez

Reviews and Awards

"Surveying a vast expanse of interdisciplinary terrain, More than Belief should find a wide-ranging audience. Vasquez provides accessible and astute summaries of theoretical approaches, while articulating a rigorous theory of material religion and offering a coherent methodology for the academic study of its practice. It is well suited for the graduate school classroom and should prove an invaluable resource for sociologists of religion." --Sociology of Religion

"More than Belief should find a wide-ranging audience. Vasquez provides accessible and astute summaries of theoretical approaches, while articulating a rigorous theory of material religion and offering a coherent methodology for the academic study of its practice. It is well suited for the graduate school classroom and should prove an invaluable resource for sociologists of religion."--Sociology of Religion

"Manuel Vasquez's provocative book is must reading for everyone who wants to understand contemporary theories of religion. It not only offers a new framework for 'rematerializing' the study of popular piety but also provides nothing less than a strategic reinterpretation of the history of Western theories about what religion is and how it functions." -Thomas A. Tweed, author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion

"Vasquz provides accessible and astute summaries of theoretical approaches, while articulating a rigorous theory of material religion and offering a coherent methodology for the academic study of its practice"--Sociology of Religion