دانلود کتاب Identity and the Sacred: Sketch for a New Social Scientific Theory of Religion

This book is a sketch for a general, social-scientific, theory of reli-
gion. It is a sketch in the sense that it is incomplete and needs further
filling in and rubbing out. Yet it is also a sketch in the sense that it
provides tentative, plausible, coherence. It is an attempt to integrate
anthropological, historical, psychological, and sociological approaches
to religion into one conceptual scheme. It is also a stocktaking of
years of extensive reading, research, and writing in the field. If my
own previous work occasionally occupies centre stage, the reason is
that this book grew out of a critical dialogue with that work. Hope-
fully, this book is an improvement!

This study also argues that existing categorizations in the sociology
of religion are either inconsistent (the underlying assumptions of
some of these classifications do not accord with others) or irrelevant
for a systematic, comprehensive, sociological approach to religious
phenomena. This bold accusation is sometimes articulated, but
usually only inferred, as I believe that the burden of proof lies not in
denigration but in construction.

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