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A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion
"A delicious smorgasbord of writings on a variety of religious traditions by scholars both well-known and emergent. This book belongs in the collection of every serious student of religion." "A rich selection of both core texts and supplemental exemplars. I recommend it." "A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is an excellent resource for students in anthropology and religious studies, demonstrating a range of classical as well as more recent approaches and debates. It would work equally well as a course reader and as a reference work to extend a particular aspect or topic in the anthropology of religion."
—Mari Womack, University of California, Los Angeles
—William H. Swatos, Jr., Baylor University
—Fiona Bowie, University of Bristol
Michael Lambek (Edited by), M Lambek (Author)
9781405136150, Wiley
Hardback, published 29 February 2008
692 pages
25.4 x 18.3 x 1.6 cm, 1.332 kg
"Michael Lambek has succeeded in putting together an impressive collection of key texts and essays." (Culture and Religion, July 2009) "The most comprehensive anthology on its subject, this is a splendid tool for teaching and a matchless scholarly resource." (International Review of Biblical Studies, 2008) Praise for the first edition: "[A] reader that ambitiously attempts to represent the full breadth, depth, and complexity of anthropology's investigations into religion.... The masterly general introduction situates this anthology within the long and often difficult anthropological engagement with this most mystified and powerful realm of social action.... [A]n excellent text." (International Social Science Review) "A major guide to both the history of the anthropology of religion and new trends in research.... Lambek has compiled an excellent anthology." (Journal of Empirical Theology)
A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings in the field. Updated in its second edition, this volume examines numerous aspects of religion in a diversity of cultures and expands upon the idea of what we mean by ‘religion’, linking it to some of the broader questions of culture and politics.
Preface to Second Edition xi General Introduction 1 Part I The Context of Understanding and Debate 19 Opening Frameworks 21 Introduction 21 1 Religion in Primitive Culture 23 2 The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 34 3 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 48 4 Religion as a Cultural System 57 Skeptical Rejoinders 77 5 Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough 79 6 Religion, Totemism and Symbolism 82 7 Remarks on the Verb “To Believe” 90 8 Christians as Believers 97 9 The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category 110 Part II Poiesis: The Composition of Religious Worlds 127 Signs and Symbols 129 10 The Logic of Signs and Symbols 131 11 The Problem of Symbols 139 12 On Key Symbols 151 13 The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol 160 Structure, Function, and Interpretation 167 Introduction 167 14 Myth in Primitive Psychology 168 15 Folk Dialectics of Nature and Culture 176 16 Land Animals, Pure and Impure 183 17 A Jivaro Version of Totem and Taboo 196 18 Text-Building, Epistemology, and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theatre 206 Moral Inversions and Spaces of Disorder 225 19 The Winnebago Trickster Figure 226 20 Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social and Semantic Implications of the Structure of Belief 238 21 The Politics and Poetics of Transgression 253 Conceptualizing the Cosmos 265 22 Closure and Multiplication: An Essay on Polynesian Cosmology and Ritual 267 23 Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism 280 Part III Praxis: Religious Action 299 The Movement in Ritual: Emergence 301 24 The Control of Experience: Symbolic Action 302 25 Form and Meaning of Magical Acts 311 26 Liminality and Communitas 326 Gender, Subjectivity, and the Body 341 Introduction 341 27 “Jewish Comes Up in You from the Roots” 342 28 Fate in Relation to the Social Structure 350 29 Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience 356 30 Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: The Cultural Therapeutics of Possession and Trance 368 31 The Poetics of Time in Mayan Divination 386 What Ritual Does: The Foundations of Order 397 Introduction 397 32 The Disconnection between Power and Rank as a Process 398 33 Enactments of Meaning 410 Part IV Historical Dynamics: Power, Modernity, and Change 429 Capitalism, Colonialism, Christianity, and Conflict 431 Introduction 431 34 New Heaven, New Earth 432 35 The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labor and the Baptism of Money 447 36 The Colonization of Consciousness 464 37 Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion 479 38 On Being Shege in Kinshasa: Children, the Occult and the Street 495 Religious Ethics and Politics in the State, Public Sphere, and Transnational Scene 507 39 Civil Religion in America 509 40 Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery 519 41 “Using the Past to Negate the Present”: Ritual Ethics and State Rationality in Ancient China 533 42 Passional Preaching, Aural Sensibility, and the Islamic Revival in Cairo 544 43 Moral Landscapes: Ethical Discourses among Orthodox and Diaspora Jains 560 44 Candomblé in Pink, Green and Black: Re-scripting the Afro-Brazilian Religious Heritage in the Public Sphere of Salvador, Bahia 573 45 Martyr vs. Martyr: The Sacred Language of Violence 590 Afterword 597 46 Evidence and Presence, Spectral and Other 598 Part V Research Tools 611 A Guide to the Literature 613 Bibliography 630 Index 673
Edward Burnett Tylor
Emile Durkheim
Max Weber
Clifford Geertz
Introduction 77
Ludwig Wittgenstein
W. E. H. Stanner
Jean Pouillon
Malcolm Ruel
Talal Asad
Introduction 129
Susanne K. Langer
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Sherry B. Ortner
Eric R. Wolf
Bronislaw Malinowski
Marshall Sahlins
Mary Douglas
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Alton L. Becker
I
ntroduction 225
Paul Radin
Raymond C. Kelly
Peter Stallybrass and Allon White
Introduction 265
Alfred Gell
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Introduction 301
Godfrey Lienhardt
Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
Victor Turner
Barbara Myerhoff
Meyer Fortes
Gananath Obeyesekere
Janice Boddy
Dennis Tedlock
Maurice Bloch
Roy A. Rappaport
Kenelm Burridge
Michael Taussig
John and Jean Comaroff
Susan F. Harding
Filip De Boeck
Introduction 507
Robert N. Bellah
Caroline Humphrey
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang
Charles Hirschkind
Anne Vallely
Mattijs van de Port
Galit Hasan-Rokem
Stephan Palmié
Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]
