Ritual and Belief Readings in the Anthropology of Religion

by Hicks, David

• ISBN13: 9780759111561
• ISBN10: 0759111561
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-16
• Publisher: AltaMira Press

Summary

Ritual and Belief: Reading in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of thirty-six readings in religion, magic, and witchcraft. The choice of readings is eclectic: no single anthropological approach or theoretical perspective dominates the text. Theoretical significance, the scholarly eminence of the author, and inherent interest provide the principal criteria for inclusion, and each reading complements its companion chapters, which are pedagogically coherent rather than ad hoc assemblages. Included among the theoretical perspectives are structural-functionalism, structuralism. Malinowskian functionalism, cultural materialism, and cultural evolutionism; also included are the synchronic and diachronic approaches. The book offers a mixture of classic readings and more recent contributions, and discusses "world religions" along with religions of traditionally nonliterate cultures. Book jacket.

Author Biography

David Hicks is professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Perspectives	p. 1
Animism	p. 3
The Return of Totemism in Childhood	p. 7
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life	p. 12
Myth, Cosmology, and Symbolic Classification	p. 19
Harelips and Twins: The Splitting of a Myth	p. 21
The Dogon	p. 26
Pollution	p. 33
Gods, Spirits, and Souls	p. 45
A Kernel of Doubt	p. 47
The Universality of Ancestor Worship	p. 61
What Makes Anthropomorphism Natural: Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Representations	p. 74
Ritual	p. 93
Ritual Symbolism, Morality, and Social Structure among the Ndembu	p. 94
The Rites of Passage: Conclusions	p. 104
"Between Belief and Unbelief Lies the Performance of Salat": Meaning and Efficacy of a Muslim Ritual	p. 109
Practitioners of Ritual	p. 133
Religious Specialists	p. 138
The Woman Who Didn't Become a Shaman	p. 149
The Sound of Rushing Water	p. 165
Body and Mind	p. 173
My Adventure with Ebene: A "Religious Experience"	p. 175
"Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom": Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society	p. 182
"In Thy Blood Live": Gender and Ritual in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition	p. 215
Magic and Witchcraft	p. 239
Sympathetic Magic	p. 240
Men Bewitch Others When They Hate Them	p. 244
Baseball Magic	p. 253
Death	p. 263
"Voodoo" Death	p. 264
Symbolic Associations of Death	p. 276
Making the King Divine: A Case Study in Ritual Regicide from Timor	p. 286
Gender and Sexuality	p. 303
The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol	p. 305
The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role	p. 312
The Syphilitic Shock	p. 327
The Natural Environment	p. 359
Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: A View from the Rain Forest	p. 363
Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People	p. 376
Water Witching: An Interpretation of a Ritual Pattern in a Rural American Community	p. 389
Agents of Change	p. 411
Judaism, Christianity, and the Socio-Economic Order	p. 412
Revitalization Movements	p. 423
Cargo Cults	p. 440
New Religious Movements	p. 449
Apocalypse at Jonestown	p. 451
The Unification Church	p. 467
Faith beyond Belief: Evangelical Protestant Conceptions of Faith and the Resonance of Anti-Humanism	p. 475
Glossary	p. 499
General References	p. 505
Index	p. 507
About the Author	p. 511
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