Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.

`This perceptive and wide-ranging book embraces a number of distinctive themes... one of the most stimulating books in the field for a long time′ - British Journal of Sociology`Turner writes... with much more analytical penetration and sensitivity to historical variation and conjuncture than is to be found in the vast majority of sociological writings of our time on the theme of religion′ - Theory, Culture & Society`The most important theoretical contribution to the sociology of religion in the last two decades. It presents a challenge to many of the prevailing assumptions in that field and suggests ways in which it could regain the position of centrality that it occupied in the work of classical sociologists such as Weber and Durkheim′ - Professor Kenneth Thompson

• Introduction to the Second EditionOther ReligionsSocial CementSocial OpiumReligion as ExchangeReligion as Social ControlFeudalism and ReligionIndividualism, Capitalism and ReligionReligion and Political LegitimacyReligion and Global Politicscular Bodies and the Dance of DeathAppendixWhat is Religion?