No Bosses, No Gods

Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

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Flagging enrollments. Disappearing majors. Closed departments. The academic study of religion is in trouble. No Bosses, No Gods argues that Karl Marx is essential for reversing course-but it will take letting go of what most scholars think they know about him.

The book's first half draws on the scholarship of international specialists-as well as new translations of the original German texts-to present Marx the anti-theorist, a political journalist deeply skeptical about what happens when the professoriate sits down to "theorize" about social worlds. The second half appeals to this modified portrait of Marx and charts a new course beyond both actually existing religious studies and contemporary genealogies of the religion category. The result, perhaps, is an academic study of religion worth having in the twenty-first century.