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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Susannah Crockford
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226777917
- eISBN:
- 9780226778105
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226778105.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Sedona, Arizona, has a special energy, according to the people who live there. It permeates the whole area but coalesces in swirling spirals called vortexes, identified with specific red rock ...
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Sedona, Arizona, has a special energy, according to the people who live there. It permeates the whole area but coalesces in swirling spirals called vortexes, identified with specific red rock formations. People feel called in but then they find it hard to stay, the energy of Sedona spits them out again. Yet Sedona is also a tourist resort, with high real estate prices, and a rental market bottomed out by short-term vacation rentals through sites like Airbnb. Susannah Crockford analyzes both the spiritual explanations for Sedona's specialness and the material conditions which underlay them. Asking what entanglements of race and class remain when people choose to move to Sedona to follow their spiritual path, she highlights how spirituality emerged in the same social and historical conditions as neoliberalism, and how the two are co-constituted by the same characteristics of financialization, privatization, deregulation, and individualism. Based on two years' ethnographic fieldwork in Sedona, the ostensible benefits of positive thinking are put under critical scrutiny, as she shows that alternative narratives constructed against 'mainstream' thinking can also lead to conspiracy theories and self-destruction.Less
Sedona, Arizona, has a special energy, according to the people who live there. It permeates the whole area but coalesces in swirling spirals called vortexes, identified with specific red rock formations. People feel called in but then they find it hard to stay, the energy of Sedona spits them out again. Yet Sedona is also a tourist resort, with high real estate prices, and a rental market bottomed out by short-term vacation rentals through sites like Airbnb. Susannah Crockford analyzes both the spiritual explanations for Sedona's specialness and the material conditions which underlay them. Asking what entanglements of race and class remain when people choose to move to Sedona to follow their spiritual path, she highlights how spirituality emerged in the same social and historical conditions as neoliberalism, and how the two are co-constituted by the same characteristics of financialization, privatization, deregulation, and individualism. Based on two years' ethnographic fieldwork in Sedona, the ostensible benefits of positive thinking are put under critical scrutiny, as she shows that alternative narratives constructed against 'mainstream' thinking can also lead to conspiracy theories and self-destruction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ira Helderman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469648521
- eISBN:
- 9781469648545
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469648521.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
The Introduction begins by laying out the methodological and theoretical foundations of the book. It explains that, currently, religious studies research on this topic has been limited, only ...
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The Introduction begins by laying out the methodological and theoretical foundations of the book. It explains that, currently, religious studies research on this topic has been limited, only conducted on select aspects such as mindfulness practices. Methodologically, ethnographic observation and interviews add significant texture to historical and discourse analysis and reveals the full diversity of ways therapists have related to Buddhist traditions. Further, at a theoretical level, previous studies often present binary interpretations of psychotherapists’ approaches to Buddhist traditions as either cases of secularization or religious transmission. These totalizing interpretations do not take account of research on the social construction of classifications of the religious and not-religious (the secular, science, medicine, etc.). The Introduction then outlines six major sets of approaches that clinicians have taken to Buddhist traditions: clinicians (1) therapize, (2) filter, (3) translate, (4) personalize, (5) adopt, and (6) integrate those aspects of Buddhist traditions that they view to be religious. These categories, though highly artificial, are a useful method for mapping therapists’ approaches to Buddhist traditions because they illustrate how they arise out of the relational configurations clinicians believe they make between the religious and the not-religious. And yet, these configurations always prove unstable.Less
The Introduction begins by laying out the methodological and theoretical foundations of the book. It explains that, currently, religious studies research on this topic has been limited, only conducted on select aspects such as mindfulness practices. Methodologically, ethnographic observation and interviews add significant texture to historical and discourse analysis and reveals the full diversity of ways therapists have related to Buddhist traditions. Further, at a theoretical level, previous studies often present binary interpretations of psychotherapists’ approaches to Buddhist traditions as either cases of secularization or religious transmission. These totalizing interpretations do not take account of research on the social construction of classifications of the religious and not-religious (the secular, science, medicine, etc.). The Introduction then outlines six major sets of approaches that clinicians have taken to Buddhist traditions: clinicians (1) therapize, (2) filter, (3) translate, (4) personalize, (5) adopt, and (6) integrate those aspects of Buddhist traditions that they view to be religious. These categories, though highly artificial, are a useful method for mapping therapists’ approaches to Buddhist traditions because they illustrate how they arise out of the relational configurations clinicians believe they make between the religious and the not-religious. And yet, these configurations always prove unstable.
Adam Yuet Chau
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199731398
- eISBN:
- 9780199914487
- 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.
Nurit Stadler
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197501306
- eISBN:
- 9780197501337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197501306.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter contextualizes the different levels of the work. The author use in order to study the sacred places and rituals in the Holy Land, the nation state and Middle Eastern context. The author ...
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This chapter contextualizes the different levels of the work. The author use in order to study the sacred places and rituals in the Holy Land, the nation state and Middle Eastern context. The author start this chapter with the explanation of the relations between state and religion, and go on to explaining the sacred archetypes of holiness by interpreting relations between texts and lands. The author go on to discuss the eschatological and pragmatic forces in the Holy Land and the idea of the Holy Land in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She goes on to contextualize the veneration of female saints by means of prototypical illustrations at different levels of resolution—Holy Land, Middle Eastern, and the idea of the state and its construction. The author concludes this chapter with the discussion of religion and the variety of ritualistic performance in Israel/Palestine.Less
This chapter contextualizes the different levels of the work. The author use in order to study the sacred places and rituals in the Holy Land, the nation state and Middle Eastern context. The author start this chapter with the explanation of the relations between state and religion, and go on to explaining the sacred archetypes of holiness by interpreting relations between texts and lands. The author go on to discuss the eschatological and pragmatic forces in the Holy Land and the idea of the Holy Land in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She goes on to contextualize the veneration of female saints by means of prototypical illustrations at different levels of resolution—Holy Land, Middle Eastern, and the idea of the state and its construction. The author concludes this chapter with the discussion of religion and the variety of ritualistic performance in Israel/Palestine.
Nurit Stadler
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197501306
- eISBN:
- 9780197501337
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197501306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of and manifestation of rituals at female saint shrines in the Holy Land. In the Middle East, a turbulent, often violent place, states tend to have no clear ...
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Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of and manifestation of rituals at female saint shrines in the Holy Land. In the Middle East, a turbulent, often violent place, states tend to have no clear physical borders, and lands are constantly in flux. Here, groups with no voice in the political, cultural, media, and legal arenas look for alternative venues to voice their entitlements. Members of religious minorities employ rituals in various sacred places to claim their belonging to and appropriation of territory. What does this female ritualistic revival mean—politically, culturally, and spatially? The author bases her analysis on a long ethnographic study (2003–2017) that analyzes the rise of female sacred shrines, focusing on four dimensions of the ritual: the body in motion, female materiality, place, and the rituals encrypted in the Israel/Palestine landscape. In the practices at these shrines, mostly canonical, the idea of the “body in motion” is central, with rituals imitating birth and the cycle of life using a set of body gestures. These rituals, performed by men and women, are intimate forces that extend between the female saint and the worshippers. Female materiality strengthens intimacy and creates a bridge between the experience and the material. The intimacy between saint and worshipper created with the body and the female material scattered around represent keys to intimate claims to the land, making the land familiar to worshippers. Rituals encrypt female themes into the landscape that has for decades been dominated by masculine-disseminated war and conflict.Less
Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of and manifestation of rituals at female saint shrines in the Holy Land. In the Middle East, a turbulent, often violent place, states tend to have no clear physical borders, and lands are constantly in flux. Here, groups with no voice in the political, cultural, media, and legal arenas look for alternative venues to voice their entitlements. Members of religious minorities employ rituals in various sacred places to claim their belonging to and appropriation of territory. What does this female ritualistic revival mean—politically, culturally, and spatially? The author bases her analysis on a long ethnographic study (2003–2017) that analyzes the rise of female sacred shrines, focusing on four dimensions of the ritual: the body in motion, female materiality, place, and the rituals encrypted in the Israel/Palestine landscape. In the practices at these shrines, mostly canonical, the idea of the “body in motion” is central, with rituals imitating birth and the cycle of life using a set of body gestures. These rituals, performed by men and women, are intimate forces that extend between the female saint and the worshippers. Female materiality strengthens intimacy and creates a bridge between the experience and the material. The intimacy between saint and worshipper created with the body and the female material scattered around represent keys to intimate claims to the land, making the land familiar to worshippers. Rituals encrypt female themes into the landscape that has for decades been dominated by masculine-disseminated war and conflict.
Nurit Stadler
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197501306
- eISBN:
- 9780197501337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197501306.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Materials and objects representing female saints and images are scattered all around the shrines the author visited. This chapter concentrates on these sacred objects and analyzes the structure and ...
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Materials and objects representing female saints and images are scattered all around the shrines the author visited. This chapter concentrates on these sacred objects and analyzes the structure and architecture of sacred places. What do these objects symbolize or represent? Why are they placed in specific places? And how do they produce particular effects or permit certain behaviors, cultural practices, and religious rituals? The author follows recent studies that center upon various items and their properties and materials, and that look at how these material facets give rise to human sensations, a consideration that is central to an understanding of culture and social relations in sacred places. In this view, sacred tombs and shrines pose an opportunity to explore the intertwined and dialectical relationships between people and things, pilgrimages, and sacred objects as they are arranged and experienced in the place of devotion.Less
Materials and objects representing female saints and images are scattered all around the shrines the author visited. This chapter concentrates on these sacred objects and analyzes the structure and architecture of sacred places. What do these objects symbolize or represent? Why are they placed in specific places? And how do they produce particular effects or permit certain behaviors, cultural practices, and religious rituals? The author follows recent studies that center upon various items and their properties and materials, and that look at how these material facets give rise to human sensations, a consideration that is central to an understanding of culture and social relations in sacred places. In this view, sacred tombs and shrines pose an opportunity to explore the intertwined and dialectical relationships between people and things, pilgrimages, and sacred objects as they are arranged and experienced in the place of devotion.
Nathan Myrick
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- April 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197550625
- eISBN:
- 9780197550663
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197550625.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America—from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Its use as an affective ...
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Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America—from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Its use as an affective agent for political and religious programs suggests that it has ethical significance, but it is one of the most undertheorized aspects of both theological ethics and music scholarship. Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music fills part of this scholarly gap by focusing on the religious aspects of musical activity, particularly on the practices of Christian communities. It is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork at three Protestant churches and interviews with a group of seminary students, combined with theories of discourse, formation, response, and care ethics oriented toward restorative justice. The book argues that relationships are ontological for both human beings and musical activity. It further argues that musical meaning and emotion converge in human bodies such that music participates in personal and communal identity construction in affective ways—yet these constructions are not always just. Thus, Music for Others argues that music is ethical when it preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other, and thereby with God.Less
Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America—from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Its use as an affective agent for political and religious programs suggests that it has ethical significance, but it is one of the most undertheorized aspects of both theological ethics and music scholarship. Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music fills part of this scholarly gap by focusing on the religious aspects of musical activity, particularly on the practices of Christian communities. It is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork at three Protestant churches and interviews with a group of seminary students, combined with theories of discourse, formation, response, and care ethics oriented toward restorative justice. The book argues that relationships are ontological for both human beings and musical activity. It further argues that musical meaning and emotion converge in human bodies such that music participates in personal and communal identity construction in affective ways—yet these constructions are not always just. Thus, Music for Others argues that music is ethical when it preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other, and thereby with God.
Nurit Stadler
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197501306
- eISBN:
- 9780197501337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197501306.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
In this chapter the author analyzes the ritualistic inner experience in female sacred places. The author shows the centrality of the body and the “ritual of the body in motion.” As mentioned in the ...
More
In this chapter the author analyzes the ritualistic inner experience in female sacred places. The author shows the centrality of the body and the “ritual of the body in motion.” As mentioned in the book’s introduction, in the Holy Land, places of veneration and rituals are based on canonical texts or mythologies of particular saints. As such, the assumption was that rituals are a product of texts and their translation into action. However, this chapter shows different dynamics of these rituals. Although the canon and its physical manifestations are robust, it is mostly “the body in motion” that shapes the experience.Less
In this chapter the author analyzes the ritualistic inner experience in female sacred places. The author shows the centrality of the body and the “ritual of the body in motion.” As mentioned in the book’s introduction, in the Holy Land, places of veneration and rituals are based on canonical texts or mythologies of particular saints. As such, the assumption was that rituals are a product of texts and their translation into action. However, this chapter shows different dynamics of these rituals. Although the canon and its physical manifestations are robust, it is mostly “the body in motion” that shapes the experience.