Ramon Sarro
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635153
- eISBN:
- 9780748653003
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
This book offers an in-depth analysis of an iconoclastic religious movement initiated by a Muslim preacher among coastal Baga farmers in the French colonial period. With an ethnographic approach that ...
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This book offers an in-depth analysis of an iconoclastic religious movement initiated by a Muslim preacher among coastal Baga farmers in the French colonial period. With an ethnographic approach that listens as carefully to those who suffered iconoclastic violence as to those who wanted to ‘get rid of custom’, it discusses the extent to which iconoclasm produces a rupture of religious knowledge and identity, and analyses its relevance in the making of modern nations and citizens. The book covers many topics such as the anthropology of religion, iconoclasm, the history and anthropology of West Africa, and the politics of heritage.Less
This book offers an in-depth analysis of an iconoclastic religious movement initiated by a Muslim preacher among coastal Baga farmers in the French colonial period. With an ethnographic approach that listens as carefully to those who suffered iconoclastic violence as to those who wanted to ‘get rid of custom’, it discusses the extent to which iconoclasm produces a rupture of religious knowledge and identity, and analyses its relevance in the making of modern nations and citizens. The book covers many topics such as the anthropology of religion, iconoclasm, the history and anthropology of West Africa, and the politics of heritage.
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, and Saba Mahmood (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226248479
- eISBN:
- 9780226248646
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226248646.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In a remarkably short span of time, religious freedom has taken center stage in public and policy debates worldwide. Longstanding legal guarantees of religious freedom built into laws and ...
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In a remarkably short span of time, religious freedom has taken center stage in public and policy debates worldwide. Longstanding legal guarantees of religious freedom built into laws and constitutions over the last few centuries are being mobilized while comparable guarantees are introduced into new types of legal instruments, constitutions, and legislation. In legal and public policy circles, religious freedom is presented as the key to emancipating individuals and communities from violence, poverty, and oppression. What exactly is being promoted through the discourse of religious freedom, and what is not? What is being protected under these various legal instruments? What forms of politics are enabled by these activities? How might we describe the cultural and epistemological assumptions that underlie this frenzy? And, what is its longer and contentious history? This volume seeks to understand the various conceptions of religious freedom at play in the world today, their different social and political contexts, and their varied histories. The volume emerged out of the Politics of Religious Freedom research project, a three-year effort funded by the Luce Foundation to study the discourses of religious freedom in South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States; later expanded to include research on sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. It is divided into four sections, Religion, History, Law/Politics, and Freedom, each with a brief preface by one of the editors.Less
In a remarkably short span of time, religious freedom has taken center stage in public and policy debates worldwide. Longstanding legal guarantees of religious freedom built into laws and constitutions over the last few centuries are being mobilized while comparable guarantees are introduced into new types of legal instruments, constitutions, and legislation. In legal and public policy circles, religious freedom is presented as the key to emancipating individuals and communities from violence, poverty, and oppression. What exactly is being promoted through the discourse of religious freedom, and what is not? What is being protected under these various legal instruments? What forms of politics are enabled by these activities? How might we describe the cultural and epistemological assumptions that underlie this frenzy? And, what is its longer and contentious history? This volume seeks to understand the various conceptions of religious freedom at play in the world today, their different social and political contexts, and their varied histories. The volume emerged out of the Politics of Religious Freedom research project, a three-year effort funded by the Luce Foundation to study the discourses of religious freedom in South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States; later expanded to include research on sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. It is divided into four sections, Religion, History, Law/Politics, and Freedom, each with a brief preface by one of the editors.
Kristin Norget, Valentina Napolitano, and Maya Mayblin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288423
- eISBN:
- 9780520963368
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288423.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and ...
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A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and technologies of mediation.Less
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and technologies of mediation.
Janet Alison Hoskins
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824840044
- eISBN:
- 9780824868611
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824840044.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
The final chapter examines how the syncretism of the colonial period has been transformed by the experience of exile into a diasporic formation. In 1975, Caodaism was a “religion in diaspora”—a group ...
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The final chapter examines how the syncretism of the colonial period has been transformed by the experience of exile into a diasporic formation. In 1975, Caodaism was a “religion in diaspora”—a group of refugees, “victims of an unpopular war,” dispossessed—and their displacement was seen as a tragic event. In the past forty years, however, it has come to be perceived as part of a larger plan to create a “religion of diaspora,” taking advantage of multiple locations around the world, using this as a spatial resource, elaborating a “global faith of unity.” The story of Caodaism forces us to reconsider how anthropologists study religious mixtures in postcolonial settings, since it may reveal and challenge the “unconscious Eurocentrism” of our own notions of how religions are bounded and conceptualized.Less
The final chapter examines how the syncretism of the colonial period has been transformed by the experience of exile into a diasporic formation. In 1975, Caodaism was a “religion in diaspora”—a group of refugees, “victims of an unpopular war,” dispossessed—and their displacement was seen as a tragic event. In the past forty years, however, it has come to be perceived as part of a larger plan to create a “religion of diaspora,” taking advantage of multiple locations around the world, using this as a spatial resource, elaborating a “global faith of unity.” The story of Caodaism forces us to reconsider how anthropologists study religious mixtures in postcolonial settings, since it may reveal and challenge the “unconscious Eurocentrism” of our own notions of how religions are bounded and conceptualized.
John D. Early
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813040134
- eISBN:
- 9780813043838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813040134.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
This chapter describes the four main questions of the research: What were the conditions in Maya communities at mid-twentieth century when the Church returned to them? How did the Catholic Church ...
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This chapter describes the four main questions of the research: What were the conditions in Maya communities at mid-twentieth century when the Church returned to them? How did the Catholic Church present itself to the Maya then and in the following decades? How did the Maya perceive these presentations? What activities took place in Maya communities as a result of their perceptions? The research is not a comprehensive historical work but presents a synthetic view of the principal trends of interaction between the Maya and Catholic worldviews in Guatemala and Chiapas. The research is a work of the anthropology of religion that examines religious systems when embedded in the everyday lives of communities and their individual members. The research draws on and synthesizes the writer's research as well as ethnographic and historical accounts.Less
This chapter describes the four main questions of the research: What were the conditions in Maya communities at mid-twentieth century when the Church returned to them? How did the Catholic Church present itself to the Maya then and in the following decades? How did the Maya perceive these presentations? What activities took place in Maya communities as a result of their perceptions? The research is not a comprehensive historical work but presents a synthetic view of the principal trends of interaction between the Maya and Catholic worldviews in Guatemala and Chiapas. The research is a work of the anthropology of religion that examines religious systems when embedded in the everyday lives of communities and their individual members. The research draws on and synthesizes the writer's research as well as ethnographic and historical accounts.
Nathaniel Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288812
- eISBN:
- 9780520963634
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288812.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
To Be Cared For offers a unique window into the conceptual and moral world of slum-bound Dalits (“untouchables”), in the south Indian city of Chennai. It focuses on decisions by many women there to ...
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To Be Cared For offers a unique window into the conceptual and moral world of slum-bound Dalits (“untouchables”), in the south Indian city of Chennai. It focuses on decisions by many women there to embrace locally specific forms of Pentecostal Christianity. Nathaniel Roberts challenges dominant anthropological understandings of religion as a matter of culture and identity, as well as Indian nationalist narratives of Christianity as a “foreign” ideology that disrupts local communities. Far from being a divisive force, he argues, these conversions serve to integrate the slum community as a whole, Christians and Hindus alike, by addressing hidden moral fault lines in the slum that subtly pit women against one another and render them vulnerable in their own homes. Christians and Hindus in the slum are not in opposed camps; they are united in a shared struggle to survive in a national context that renders Dalits as outsiders in their own country.Less
To Be Cared For offers a unique window into the conceptual and moral world of slum-bound Dalits (“untouchables”), in the south Indian city of Chennai. It focuses on decisions by many women there to embrace locally specific forms of Pentecostal Christianity. Nathaniel Roberts challenges dominant anthropological understandings of religion as a matter of culture and identity, as well as Indian nationalist narratives of Christianity as a “foreign” ideology that disrupts local communities. Far from being a divisive force, he argues, these conversions serve to integrate the slum community as a whole, Christians and Hindus alike, by addressing hidden moral fault lines in the slum that subtly pit women against one another and render them vulnerable in their own homes. Christians and Hindus in the slum are not in opposed camps; they are united in a shared struggle to survive in a national context that renders Dalits as outsiders in their own country.
Janet Alison Hoskins
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824840044
- eISBN:
- 9780824868611
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824840044.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
The Divine Eye and the Diaspora addresses the connection between colonial era syncretism and postcolonial diaspora. Caodaism was described by the French as a syncrétisme à l’outrance, an excessive, ...
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The Divine Eye and the Diaspora addresses the connection between colonial era syncretism and postcolonial diaspora. Caodaism was described by the French as a syncrétisme à l’outrance, an excessive, even transgressive mixture of different elements that was outrageous in its audacious combinations. My analysis picks apart the conceptual framework for these claims, looking at how Caodaism, as an explicit form of syncretism, restructures the religious field (using Bourdieu’s term). Caodaism was perceived as trespassing by crossing the border into other religions, as well as crossing the border between religion and politics. The form of syncretism developed by colonized intellectuals was idiosyncratic: I profile five different religious leaders from the founding generation, and look at their legacy through the lives of five disciples in 21st century California.Less
The Divine Eye and the Diaspora addresses the connection between colonial era syncretism and postcolonial diaspora. Caodaism was described by the French as a syncrétisme à l’outrance, an excessive, even transgressive mixture of different elements that was outrageous in its audacious combinations. My analysis picks apart the conceptual framework for these claims, looking at how Caodaism, as an explicit form of syncretism, restructures the religious field (using Bourdieu’s term). Caodaism was perceived as trespassing by crossing the border into other religions, as well as crossing the border between religion and politics. The form of syncretism developed by colonized intellectuals was idiosyncratic: I profile five different religious leaders from the founding generation, and look at their legacy through the lives of five disciples in 21st century California.
Jon Bialecki
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520294202
- eISBN:
- 9780520967410
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520294202.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How are miracles something that are at once unanticipated, and yet worked for? Finally, what do miracles tell us about ...
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What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How are miracles something that are at once unanticipated, and yet worked for? Finally, what do miracles tell us about Christianity, and even about the category of religion? A Diagram for Fire engages with those questions through an detailed ethnographic study of the Vineyard, a Southern-California originated American Evangelical movement known for believing that biblical-style miracles are something that all Christians can perform today. This book sees the miracle a resource and a challenge to institutional cohesion and human planning, and as an immanently-situated and fundamentally social means of producing change that operates through taking surprise and the unexpected, and using it to reimagine and reconfigure the will. A Diagram for Fire shows how this configuration of the miraculous shapes typical Pentecostal and Charismatic religious practices such as prophesy, speaking in tongues, healing, and battling demons; but it also shows how the miraculous as a configuration also ends up shaping other practices that seem far from the miracle, such as a sense of temporality, music, reading, economic choices, and both conservative and progressive political imaginaries. This book suggests that the open potential of the miracle, and the ironic constriction of the miracle’s potential through the intentional attempt to embrace it, has much to tell us not only about how contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity both functions and changes, but about an underlying mutability that plays an important role in Christianity and even in religion writ large.Less
What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How are miracles something that are at once unanticipated, and yet worked for? Finally, what do miracles tell us about Christianity, and even about the category of religion? A Diagram for Fire engages with those questions through an detailed ethnographic study of the Vineyard, a Southern-California originated American Evangelical movement known for believing that biblical-style miracles are something that all Christians can perform today. This book sees the miracle a resource and a challenge to institutional cohesion and human planning, and as an immanently-situated and fundamentally social means of producing change that operates through taking surprise and the unexpected, and using it to reimagine and reconfigure the will. A Diagram for Fire shows how this configuration of the miraculous shapes typical Pentecostal and Charismatic religious practices such as prophesy, speaking in tongues, healing, and battling demons; but it also shows how the miraculous as a configuration also ends up shaping other practices that seem far from the miracle, such as a sense of temporality, music, reading, economic choices, and both conservative and progressive political imaginaries. This book suggests that the open potential of the miracle, and the ironic constriction of the miracle’s potential through the intentional attempt to embrace it, has much to tell us not only about how contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity both functions and changes, but about an underlying mutability that plays an important role in Christianity and even in religion writ large.
Joan-Pau Rubiés
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190267070
- eISBN:
- 9780190267100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190267070.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
India and its religion played an important role in the assault on Christian orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment. However, the late-seventeenth century transition from antiquarian apologetics to ...
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India and its religion played an important role in the assault on Christian orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment. However, the late-seventeenth century transition from antiquarian apologetics to libertinism is harder to explain, and yet historically more crucial. This chapter maps this process with particular reference to the interpretation of the remarkable range of materials concerning Hinduism that appeared in the illustrated encyclopedia of world religions Cérémonies et coutumes de tots les peuples du monde. Its editor, Jean-Fréderic Bernard, went well beyond the mere task of compilation and publication, and his interpretative choices, colored by a rationalist form of Deism, often departed from the differing agendas present in his sources. On the basis of considering these differences, this chapter seeks to elucidate how exactly the shift from comparative antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of religion took place and analyzes its implications for the religious culture of the Enlightenment.Less
India and its religion played an important role in the assault on Christian orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment. However, the late-seventeenth century transition from antiquarian apologetics to libertinism is harder to explain, and yet historically more crucial. This chapter maps this process with particular reference to the interpretation of the remarkable range of materials concerning Hinduism that appeared in the illustrated encyclopedia of world religions Cérémonies et coutumes de tots les peuples du monde. Its editor, Jean-Fréderic Bernard, went well beyond the mere task of compilation and publication, and his interpretative choices, colored by a rationalist form of Deism, often departed from the differing agendas present in his sources. On the basis of considering these differences, this chapter seeks to elucidate how exactly the shift from comparative antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of religion took place and analyzes its implications for the religious culture of the Enlightenment.
Adam Yuet Chau
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199731398
- eISBN:
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199731398.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter presents a model for understanding religious practice in Chinese culture by means of five modalities: the discursive or scriptural, based on the composition and use of religious texts; ...
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This chapter presents a model for understanding religious practice in Chinese culture by means of five modalities: the discursive or scriptural, based on the composition and use of religious texts; the personal‐cultivational, involving a long‐term interest in cultivating and transforming oneself; the liturgical, which makes use of procedures conducted by priests, monks or other ritual specialists; the immediate‐practical, aiming at quick results making use of using religious or magical techniques; and the relational, emphasizing the relationship between humans, deities, ghosts, and ancestors as well as among people in families, villages, and religious communities. These five modalities cut across different religious traditions and may be applied to the anthropological study of Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion, Islam, Christianity, or Confucianism.Less
This chapter presents a model for understanding religious practice in Chinese culture by means of five modalities: the discursive or scriptural, based on the composition and use of religious texts; the personal‐cultivational, involving a long‐term interest in cultivating and transforming oneself; the liturgical, which makes use of procedures conducted by priests, monks or other ritual specialists; the immediate‐practical, aiming at quick results making use of using religious or magical techniques; and the relational, emphasizing the relationship between humans, deities, ghosts, and ancestors as well as among people in families, villages, and religious communities. These five modalities cut across different religious traditions and may be applied to the anthropological study of Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion, Islam, Christianity, or Confucianism.
Kelly Bulkeley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199351534
- eISBN:
- 9780199351565
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199351534.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
“Big dreams” are rare but extremely vivid forms of dreaming that make a strong, lasting impact on waking consciousness. Experiences of big dreaming have played prominent roles in religious and ...
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“Big dreams” are rare but extremely vivid forms of dreaming that make a strong, lasting impact on waking consciousness. Experiences of big dreaming have played prominent roles in religious and cultural traditions throughout history. This book provides an original, evidence-based analysis of big dreams drawing on research from cognitive science and the comparative history of religions. The goal is to shed new light on the classic theory of Nietzsche, Tylor, and others that the origins of religion can be found in dreaming. This theory has always appealed to anthropologists and philosophers, but it has never been tested using current scientific research. Big Dreams is the first book to make that attempt. It builds on findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology to illuminate the dreaming‒religion connection. The book provides a mapping of four “prototypes” of big dreaming: aggressive, sexual, gravitational, and mystical. Each prototype is associated with a distinct kind of emotional and physiological arousal—a fight/flight response in a chasing nightmare, an actual orgasm in a “wet” dream, a startled sensation of vertigo in a falling dream, a joyous feeling of freedom and power in a flying dream. Scientific research on these big dream prototypes has revealed a naturalistic basis for religious beliefs arising from intensified modes of sleep and dreaming. Big Dreams looks at cross-cultural and historical cases of dreams involved in demonic seduction, prophetic vision, ritual healing, and contemplative practice to argue that Nietzsche and Tylor were essentially right—dreaming is a primal wellspring of religious experience.Less
“Big dreams” are rare but extremely vivid forms of dreaming that make a strong, lasting impact on waking consciousness. Experiences of big dreaming have played prominent roles in religious and cultural traditions throughout history. This book provides an original, evidence-based analysis of big dreams drawing on research from cognitive science and the comparative history of religions. The goal is to shed new light on the classic theory of Nietzsche, Tylor, and others that the origins of religion can be found in dreaming. This theory has always appealed to anthropologists and philosophers, but it has never been tested using current scientific research. Big Dreams is the first book to make that attempt. It builds on findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology to illuminate the dreaming‒religion connection. The book provides a mapping of four “prototypes” of big dreaming: aggressive, sexual, gravitational, and mystical. Each prototype is associated with a distinct kind of emotional and physiological arousal—a fight/flight response in a chasing nightmare, an actual orgasm in a “wet” dream, a startled sensation of vertigo in a falling dream, a joyous feeling of freedom and power in a flying dream. Scientific research on these big dream prototypes has revealed a naturalistic basis for religious beliefs arising from intensified modes of sleep and dreaming. Big Dreams looks at cross-cultural and historical cases of dreams involved in demonic seduction, prophetic vision, ritual healing, and contemplative practice to argue that Nietzsche and Tylor were essentially right—dreaming is a primal wellspring of religious experience.
Nathaniel Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288812
- eISBN:
- 9780520963634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288812.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The introduction begins by describing the stark racialized division between Dalits and non-Dalits in India, noting that it derives from a usually unacknowledged legacy of slavery. It then explains ...
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The introduction begins by describing the stark racialized division between Dalits and non-Dalits in India, noting that it derives from a usually unacknowledged legacy of slavery. It then explains the book’s arguments by chapter. The book provides an analysis of a widespread movement to convert Dalits to Pentecostal Christianity, which is taking place in a slum in the south Indian city of Chennai. It describes how slum dwellers understand religion in the context of their social and political-economic situations as marginalized residents of an urban periphery. It contrasts this picture with how religion is conceptualized by national elites, and in Indian law, which seeks to ban conversions that are allegedly not “genuine” because they focus on material well-being—exactly the kinds of conversion taking place in the slum.Less
The introduction begins by describing the stark racialized division between Dalits and non-Dalits in India, noting that it derives from a usually unacknowledged legacy of slavery. It then explains the book’s arguments by chapter. The book provides an analysis of a widespread movement to convert Dalits to Pentecostal Christianity, which is taking place in a slum in the south Indian city of Chennai. It describes how slum dwellers understand religion in the context of their social and political-economic situations as marginalized residents of an urban periphery. It contrasts this picture with how religion is conceptualized by national elites, and in Indian law, which seeks to ban conversions that are allegedly not “genuine” because they focus on material well-being—exactly the kinds of conversion taking place in the slum.
Matt Tomlinson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199341139
- eISBN:
- 9780199358373
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341139.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies, Religion and Society
A classic question in the anthropology of religion is how ritual performances achieve—or fail to achieve—their effects. This book argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual ...
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A classic question in the anthropology of religion is how ritual performances achieve—or fail to achieve—their effects. This book argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual efficacy by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research on Christianity in Fiji, the book presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians’ “happy deaths”; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. Each of these cases reveals the broad ideologies of motion that frame participants’ ritual actions, such as Pentecostals’ beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries’ insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of “entextualization”—in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts—while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.Less
A classic question in the anthropology of religion is how ritual performances achieve—or fail to achieve—their effects. This book argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual efficacy by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research on Christianity in Fiji, the book presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians’ “happy deaths”; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. Each of these cases reveals the broad ideologies of motion that frame participants’ ritual actions, such as Pentecostals’ beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries’ insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of “entextualization”—in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts—while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.
