Arvind-Pal S. Mandair

Arvind-Pal S. Mandair is S.B.S.C. Associate Professor of Sikh Studies at the University of Michigan. His recent books include Religion and the Specter of the West (Columbia University Press, 2009) and Teachings of the Sikh Gurus (Routledge 2005). He is a founding editor of the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory and assistant editor of Culture and Religion.

Posts by Arvind-Pal S. Mandair:

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Religion-making

Broadly conceived the term religion-making refers to the ways in which religion(s) is conceptualized and institutionalized within the matrix of a globalized world-religions discourse in which ideas, social formations, and social/cultural practices are discursively reified as “religious” ones. Religion-making works, sometimes more and sometimes less explicitly, by means of normalizing and often functionalist discourses centered around certain taken-for-granted notions, such as the religion/secular binary, as well as binaries subordinated to it (such as sacred/profane, this-worldly/otherworldly, etc.).

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