Books in the Key Thinkers in the Study of Religion series

'Freud on Religion' examines Freud's complex understanding of religious belief and practice. The book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic theory and case material from Freud's clinical practice to illustrate how the operations of the unconscious mind support various forms of religious belief, from mainstream to occult.

Identifies kernel ideas of interest for the study of religion. This book acknowledges Dumont's contribution to kinship studies and focuses on subjects of interest to students and scholars of religion: concepts such as sacred and profane, pure and impure, transcendence, values, ideology, hierarchy, and cross cultural comparison.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of de Martino's life and work, the thinkers and theories which informed his writings, his contribution to the study of religions and the potential of his methodology for contemporary scholarship.

Introduces the undergraduate student to Derrida's life and work. This volume offers an overview of Derrida's writing from the 1960s to his death in 2004, considering prominent terms, and some of the central issues, and philosophical and religious figures, his writing engages.

Claude Levi-Strauss and the style of thinking known as 'structuralism' with which his work is conventionally associated is widely recognized as having made a seminal contribution to the discipline of anthropology. This book presents an overview of Levi-Strauss' life and work, and the thinkers and theories that informed his writings.

Locates Roger Bastide (1898-1974) in the general context of sociology as it developed in the generation following that of Emile Durkheim. This biography shows how he helped broaden the original agenda by taking interest in historical factors and paying attention to the work of ethnologists on so-called primitive societies.

One of the foremost intellectuals of our time, Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) has had a resounding impact on a range of scholarly disciplines, from linguistics, sociology, and education to art history, philosophy, and literary criticism. The author introduces Bourdieu's "theory of practice" and shows its range of utility to the study of religion.