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Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2001 69(1):129-162; doi:10.1093/jaarel/69.1.129
© 2001 by American Academy of Religion
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ESSAY

Religious Studies as Critical Organic Intellectual Practice

Mark D. Wood

Mark D. Wood is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA 23284-2025

In this essay I argue that those who write and teach about religion within higher education can make vital contributions to struggles for social justice, ecological integrity, and human rights. In order to make such contributions scholars must, however, break with both corporate multicul-turalism, which reduces struggles over how we should live to matters of style, and methods of interpretation that remove the study of religion from the social context within which religious people actually exist, struggle to survive, and attempt to create better ways of life. I propose that scholars instead develop what I call, borrowing from Cornel West and Antonio Gramsci, critical organic intellectual practice. In this essay I elaborate several of the principles that ought to guide the work of developing this mode of practice


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