The Critical Study of Non-religion: Discourse, Identification and Locality

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.

Christopher R. Cotter is a Staff Tutor in Sociology and Religious Studies at the Open University, UK.

Amy L. Allocco is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Multifaith Scholars Program at Elon University, USA.

Bettina E. Schmidt is Professor in the Study of Religions and Anthropology of Religion in the Centre of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK.

Steven J. Sutcliffe is Visiting Fellow in Religious Studies at The Open University, UK. He is the co-editor (with Carole Cusack) of The Problem of Invented Religions (2016) and (with Ingvild Gilhus) of New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion (2014), and is the author of Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices (2003). He is one of the editors of the series Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies, which publishes theoretically astute, evidence-based monographs and edited volumes on the study of religion.