Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion : An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural

by Moro, Pamela A.; Myers, James E.; Lehmann, Arthur C.; Moro, Pamela A.

• ISBN13: 9780073405216
• ISBN10: 0073405213
• Edition: 7th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-15
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

Summary

This comparative reader takes an anthropological approach to the study of religious beliefs, both strange and familiar. The engaging articles on all key issues related to the anthropology of religion grab the attention of students, while giving them an excellent foundation in contemporary ideas and approaches in the field. The multiple authors included in each chapter represent a range of interests, geographic foci, and ways of looking at each subject. Divided into ten chapters, this book begins with a broad view of anthropological ways of looking at religion, and moves on to some of the core topics within the subject, such as myth, ritual, and the various types of religious specialists.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
The Anthropological Study of Religion	1	(46)
Religion	6	(10)
Clifford Geertz
Why We Became Religious and The Evolution of the Spirit World	16	(4)
Marvin Harris
Religious Perspectives in Anthropology	20	(8)
Dorothy Lee
Non-Overlapping Magisteria	28	(7)
Stephen Jay Gould
Darwin's Rib	35	(5)
Robert S. Root-Bernstein
Anthropologists Versus Missionaries: The Influence of Presuppositions	40	(7)
Claude E. Stipe
Myth, Symbolism, and Taboo	47	(40)
The Study of Mythology	51	(12)
Scott Leonard
Michael McClure
Nyoro Myth	63	(5)
John Beattie
Harelips and Twins: The Splitting of a Myth	68	(4)
Claude Levi-Strauss
An Anthropologist's Reflections on Symbolic Usage	72	(4)
Raymond Firth
Taboo	76	(5)
Mary Douglas
Serpent-Handling as Sacrament	81	(6)
Mary Lee Daugherty
Ritual	87	(57)
Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage	91	(10)
Victor W. Turner
Female Circumcision in Egypt and Sudan: A Controversial Rite of Passage	101	(8)
Daniel Gordon
Return to Wirikuta: Ritual Reversal and Symbolic Continuity on the Peyote Hunt of the Huichol Indians	109	(8)
Barbara G. Myerhoff
Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations Among a New Guinea People	117	(10)
Roy A. Rappaport
I Can Only Move My Feet Towards mizuko kuyo: Memorial Services for Dead Children in Japan	127	(13)
Elizabeth G. Harrison
Body Ritual Among the Nacirema	140	(4)
Horace Miner
Shamans, Priests, and Prophets	144	(45)
Religious Specialists	147	(8)
Victor W. Turner
The Shaman: A Siberian Spiritualist	155	(8)
William Howells
Dark Side of the Shaman	163	(4)
Michael Fobes Brown
Training for the Priesthood Among the Kogi of Colombia	167	(15)
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff
Reflections After Waco: Millennialists and the State	182	(7)
Michael Barkun
The Religious Use of Drugs	189	(23)
On the Peyote Road	192	(3)
Mike Kiyaani
Thomas J. Csordas
Ritual Enemas	195	(4)
Peter T. Furst
Michael D. Coe
The Sound of Rushing Water	199	(6)
Michael Harner
Psychedelic Drugs and Religious Experience	205	(7)
Robert S. de Ropp
Ethnomedicine: Religion and Healing	212	(46)
Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central African Republic	216	(9)
Arthur C. Lehmann
A School for Medicine Men	225	(5)
Robert Bergman
Mothering and the Practice of ``Balm'' in Jamaica	230	(9)
William Wedenoja
Swallowing Frogs: Anger and Illness in Northeast Brazil	239	(12)
L. A. Rebhun
Should Academic Medical Centers Conduct Clinical Trials of the Efficacy of Intercessory Prayer?	251	(7)
Edward C. Halperin
Witchcraft, Sorcery, Divination, and Magic	258	(51)
An Anthropological Perspective on the Witchcraze	265	(7)
James L. Brain
Sorcery and Concepts of Deviance Among the Kabana, West New Britain	272	(9)
Naomi M. McPherson
The Goat and the Gazelle: Witchcraft	281	(9)
T. M. Luhrmann
Consulting the Poison Oracle Among the Azande	290	(6)
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings	296	(6)
Bronislaw Malinowski
Baseball Magic	302	(7)
George Gmelch
Ghosts, Souls, and Ancestors: Power of the Dead	309	(42)
A New Weapon Stirs Up Old Ghosts	313	(6)
William E. Mitchell
The Real Vampire	319	(6)
Paul Barber
Vodou	325	(7)
Karen McCarthy Brown
Death Be Not Strange	332	(4)
Peter A. Metcalf
The Cremated Catholic: The Ends of a Deceased Guatemalan	336	(6)
Stanley Brandes
Spontaneous Memorialization: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual	342	(9)
C. Allen Haney
Christina Leimer
Juliann Lowery
Old and New Religions: The Changing Spiritual Landscape	351	(78)
The Revival of Monastic Life in Drepung Monastery	355	(16)
Melvyn C. Goldstein
Pilgrimage and Its Influence on West African Islam	371	(14)
James Steel Thayer
Revitalization Movements	385	(6)
Anthony F. C. Wallace
The Ghost Dance Religion	391	(5)
Alice Beck Kehoe
Cargo Cults	396	(5)
Peter M. Worsley
Urban Rastas in Kingston, Jamaica	401	(6)
William F. Lewis
Adoring the Father: Religion and Charisma in an American Polygamous Community	407	(11)
William Jankowiak
Emilie Allen
Religious Dimensions of the UFO Abductee Experience	418	(11)
John Whitmore
Religion as Global Culture: Migration, Media, and Other Transnational Forces	429	(72)
The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: Veiling Practices and Muslim Women	433	(16)
Homa Hoodfar
South Korea: Modernization with a Vengeance, Evangelization with the Modern Edge	449	(17)
Steve Brouwer
Paul Gifford
Susan D. Rose
The Global Rise of Religious Nationalism	466	(9)
Mark Juergensmeyer
Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks	475	(15)
Stephen D. O'Leary
Homer the Heretic and Charlie Church: Parody, Piety, and Pluralism in The Simpsons	490	(11)
Lisle Dalton
Eric Michael Mazur
Monica Siems
Glossary	501	(6)
Bibliography	507	(34)
Index	541