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Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation (Religion in Culture: Studies in Social Contest & Construction) ... Studies in Social Contest & Construction)
Religion and the Domestication of Dissent Or How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation Studies in Social Contest Construction - Religion in Culture: Studies in Social Contest & Construction Author:Russell T. McCutcheon In their efforts to apportion blame and channel retaliatory action in the post September 11 world, scholars and pundits alike have used a series of rhetorical techniques to great effect, manufacturing an image of Islam, the proverbial Other, that is highly conducive to the needs of liberal democracies but hardly a reflection of any one of the ma... more »ny 'authentic' Islams.
This has largely been achieved by ignoring the many differences within the Islamic movement and asserti ng that social identities are based on a stable, uniform kernel that moves unchanged throughout history and across the globe. This inevitably results in caricatures that have many uses; in portraits of dissenting groups it tends towards demonization.
In this wide-ranging essay--which considers a variety of discursive sites, from contemporary film and art to the War on Terror--a scholar of religion asks the reader to consider how the classifications we use to name and thereby negotiate our social worlds--foremost among them the classification "religion" itself--are implicitly political and are being wielded in the public arena to carry out generally undisclosed/under analyzed social work.« less