Eight Theories of Religion

Eight Theories of Religion offers summary, analysis, and appraisal of a number of landmark modern efforts to explain the origin and function of religion. Beginning in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, it considers the Victorian anthropology of E.B. Tylor and James Frazer, the "reductionist" social science of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, the non-reductionist approaches of Max Weber and Mircea Eliade, and the alternatice paradigms that have arisen from the fieldwork of E.E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive sociology of Clifford Geertz. The book is ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the main text in theory and sociology of religion courses.