Arguments and Icons Divergent Modes of Religiosity

by Whitehouse, Harvey

• ISBN13: 9780198234142
• ISBN10: 0198234147
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Why do initiations in Papua New Guinea often subject novices to violence and terror? Why do some cargo cults lead to regional unity and others to regional divisions? How have features of cognitive processing in missionary Christianity contributed to new forms of identity among Melanesians? Thetheory of 'modes of religiosity' which Whitehouse here develops answers these and a range of other questions about Melanesia with reference to a set of interconnections between styles of religious transmission, systems of memory, and patterns of political association. Although building his argumenton detailed Melanesian ethnography, Whitehouse goes on to suggest that the theory of modes of religiosity may have wider applicability. Thus, in the final two chapters of this book, he explores such diverse topics as the spread of Reformed Christianity in sixteenth-century Europe, theinterpretation of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, the genesis of tribal warfare, and the impact of literacy on social transmission and organization.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures	xi
Introduction	1	(2)
The Theoretical Context	3	(2)
Episodic and Semantic Memory	5	(4)
Memory and Modes of Religiosity	9	(3)
Summary of the Book	12	(6)
Indigenous Religions of Papua New Guinea	18	(16)
Initiations as Rites of Terror	21	(2)
Existing Approaches to Rites of Terror	23	(7)
The Cognitive and Political Implications of Rites of Terror	30	(4)
From Mission to Movement	34	(20)
Modalities of Codification	35	(2)
Early Missionization and the Politics of Memory	37	(4)
Christianity and Indigenous Movements	41	(3)
The Tedium Effect and Localized Splintering	44	(3)
The Political Implications of Indigenous Movements	47	(2)
Codification, Memory, and Group Formation	49	(5)
Modalities of Codification and Dissemination	54	(27)
The Case Studies	54	(4)
Doctrinal Revelations	58	(5)
Imagistic Revelations	63	(10)
Dissemination in the Doctrinal Mode	73	(4)
Dissemination in the Imagistic Mode	77	(4)
Order and Disorder in Melanesian Religion	81	(18)
Ritual and Exegesis	83	(5)
Analogic Codes	88	(5)
Doctrinal Codification	93	(6)
Cognition, Emotion, and Politics	99	(26)
Frequency of Transmission and Memory	100	(12)
Memory and Political Association	112	(13)
Interacting Modes of Religiosity	125	(22)
Potentialities and Limitations of the Two Modes of Religiosity	126	(4)
The Imagistic Domain of the Early Paliau Movement	130	(10)
Modes of Religiosity in the Early Paliau Movement	140	(7)
Entangled Histories	147	(13)
Modes of Religiosity in the European Reformation	150	(6)
From Reformation to Missionization	156	(4)
Modes of Religiosity and Political Evolution	160	(29)
The Imagistic Mode in the Upper Palaeolithic	161	(8)
The Doctrinal Mode and the Great Transformation	169	(3)
Literacy, Orality, and Modes of Religiosity	172	(8)
Routinization, Communitas, and Modes of Religiosity	180	(5)
Epilogue	185	(4)
References	189	(10)
Index	199