Overview

This book acts as a bridge between the critical study of ‘religion’ and empirical studies of ‘religion in the real world’. Chris Cotter presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh’s Southside which blurs the boundary between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. In doing so, Cotter demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake. This book details an approach that avoids constructing ‘religion’ as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating ‘non-religious’ subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be essential reading for those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-/religious landscape.

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9781350095243

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Reviews

Christopher Cotter's The Critical Study of Non-Religion is an intelligent and innovative study of the porous boundaries between religion and non-religion, which charts a path through the complex interrelations of family, community and individual identity and how these interact with ideological blocs in society, such as nationalism, politics and religion. Cotter insightfully deconstructs monolithic notions of non-religion and demonstrates the overlaps and grey areas that exist between certain religious people and certain non-religious people, in the areas of assumptions, beliefs and praxis. * Carole M. Cusack, The University of Sydney, Australia *

Christopher Cotter’s text is an admirable contribution to the growing study of non-religion in its various forms. * Nova Religio * Christopher Cotter's The Critical Study of Non-Religion is an intelligent and innovative study of the porous boundaries between religion and non-religion, which charts a path through the complex interrelations of family, community and individual identity and how these interact with ideological blocs in society, such as nationalism, politics and religion. Cotter insightfully deconstructs monolithic notions of non-religion and demonstrates the overlaps and grey areas that exist between certain religious people and certain non-religious people, in the areas of assumptions, beliefs and praxis. * Carole M. Cusack, The University of Sydney, Australia * Christopher Cotter’s interview subjects make it plain that identifying as religious—and, as he importantly argues, nonreligious or even indifferent to it all—is an act of identification taking place in a hectic social world. Cotter invites us to hear all of these claims as tactics by which social actors position themselves in relation to others, making The Critical Study of Non-Religion a coming-of-age moment for one of the discipline’s newest subfields. * Russell T. McCutcheon, University Research Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama, USA * An exceptional combination of textbook and original empirical study outlines the field of non-religion and shows the situational and contextual nature of our religion-related categories. It argues convincingly that non-religion studies would benefit from moving towards a critical discursive approach that does not reify non-religion as anything substantial. * Teemu Taira, Senior Lecturer, Study of Religion, University of Helsinki, Finland *

Author Information

Chris Cotter is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is co-editor of New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates (2017) and After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies (2016). He is co-founder, co-editor-in-chief, and co-host of the The Religious Studies Project podcast and Co-Director at the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network.

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