Naturalistic understanding of the experiences that people deem religious

Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things by Ann Taves

Taves addresses a series of key questions:

• how can we set up studies without obscuring contestations over meaning and value? 
• What is the relationship between experience and consciousness? 
• How can research into consciousness help us access and interpret the experiences of others? 
• Why do people individually or collectively explain their experiences in religious terms? How can we set up studies that allow us to compare experiences across times and cultures?

Religious Experience Reconsidered demonstrates how methods from the sciences can be combined with those from the humanities to advance a naturalistic understanding of the experiences that people deem religious.

Fits, Trances, and Visions: experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James by Ann Taves

Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse.: An article from: Church History by Ann Taves

Indias New Middle Class: Urban Forms of Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity (Cities and the Urban Imperative) Christiane Brosius Series: Cities and the Urban Imperative 

This book examines the complexities of lifestyles of the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the context of economic liberalisation in the new millennium, by analysing new social formations and aspirations, modes of consumption and ways of being in contemporary urban India.

Rich in ethnographic material, the work is based on empirical case-studies, research material, and illustrations. Offering a model of how urban cosmopolitan India might be studied and understood in a transnational and transcultural context, the book takes the reader through three panoramic landscapes: new ‘world-class’ real estate advertising, a unique religious leisure site — the Akshardham Cultural Complex, and the world of themed weddings and beauty/wellness, all responses to India’s new middle classes’ tryst with cosmopolitanism.

The work will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in sociology, South Asian studies, media studies, anthropology and urban studies as also those interested in religion, performance and rituals, diaspora, globalisation and transnational migration.

Empowering Visions: The Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism (Anthem South Asian Studies) Christiane Brosius

Image Journeys Christiane Brosius