Infrastructure and American religion: Sites, methods, and theories for a changing field

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on infrastructure in the study of American religions, examining its recent emergence as a topic of study and demonstrating its deeper role in the canons of the field. It argues that infrastructure has quickly become a multivalent conceptual term in the field, as well as a site for research. This latter point leads to a detailed summation of infrastructure's role in constructing and challenging the conventional boundaries of what “religion” is in America, what is “American” about American religion, and how scholars of religion might rethink “America” as a geographic and conceptual formation for our study. Infrastructure has an important role to play in creative theoretical and methodological engagements in the study of American religion and in fact has already staked its claim in the field's ongoing transformation.