Contemporary Views on Comparative Religion - In Celebration of Tim Jensen’s 65th Birthday - Peter Antes
12. Fanfare for the Common e.g.: On the Strategic Use of the Mundane
Contemporary Views on Comparative Religion - In Celebration of Tim Jensen’s 65th Birthday - Peter Antes
Russell T. McCutcheon [+]
University of Alabama
Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His major publications include Manufacutring Religion (Oxford University Press, 1997), The Guide to the Study of Religion (Bloomsbury, 2000), Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2001) and The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (Routledge, 2003).
Description
Evidenced in the Danish cartoon controversy, the mundane signifies no less than does elite culture. Those critical of focusing on the so-called sacred as a zone of transcendent meaning can therefore gain much by explicating cultural processes at ordinary sites. This paper argues for the importance of mundane e.g.s, in both scholarship and teaching, as sites where one can contest the widespread theory of religion as something inexplicable.