In Religion and Social Theory Bryan Turner assesses the different theoretical approaches to the social function of religion, in particular those of Engels, Durkheim, Weber, Nietzsche, Freud, Parsons, Marcuse, Habermas and Foucault. In so doing, he develops his own distinctive perspective on the role of religion as an institutional link between economic and human reproduction.
Social theories of religion are explored through a resolutely comparative and historical analysis of the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The author's sociological approach makes a major contribution to the analysis of religion as a global cultural force in the tensions between consensus and conflict, tradition and modernity.
The second edition of this major overview of the social analysis of religion incorporates a substantial new introduction. It will be essential reading for lecturers and students in sociology of religion, social theory and comparative religion.
Editorial Reviews
"This perceptive and wide-ranging book embraces a number of distinctive themes... one of the most stimulating books in the field for a long time" —British Journal of Sociology
"Turner writes... with much more analytical penetration and sensitivity to historical variation and conjuncture than is to be found in the vast majority of sociological writings of our time on the theme of religion" —Theory, Culture & Society
"The most important theoretical contribution to the sociology of religion in the last two decades. It presents a challenge to many of the prevailing assumptions in that field and suggests ways in which it could regain the position of centrality that it occupied in the work of classical sociologists such as Weber and Durkheim" —Professor Kenneth Thompson
About the Author
Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals. His previous books include Weber and Islam (1974), The Body and Society (1984), Medical Power and Social Knowledge (1987), Nietzsche's Dance (with Georg Stauth, 1988), and Theories of modernity and Postmodernity (edited, 1990)
