A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion

by Lambek, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781405136143
• ISBN10: 1405136146
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-29
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

For anthropologists it has always been necessary to question and confront the components of religion, in order to understand its influence in society. In the second edition of the highly acclaimed Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Michael Lambek collects some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings on the subject, creating an unparalleled guide to the past, present, and future of the field.Including nine additional selections, among them classic pieces by Pouillon, Burridge, and Meyerhoff, as well as more contemporary work by Harding, De Boeck, and Palmi é, 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. Lambek begins with a general introduction to familiarize the reader with the subject matter, and then prefaces each selection with helpful contextual remarks and suggestions for further reading. Additionally, the inclusion of research tools and an extensive bibliography indexed by both ethnographic region and religious topics and practices lends unsurpassed accessibility to this text.

Author Biography

Michael Lambek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is author of The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar (2002), Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte (1993), and Human Spirits (1981), and co-editor of Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (1996) and Illness and Irony: On the Ambiguity of Suffering in Culture (2004) (both with Paul Antze).

Table of Contents

Preface to Second Edition	p. xi
General Introduction	p. 1
The Context of Understanding and Debate	p. 19
Opening Frameworks	p. 21
Introduction	p. 21
Religion in Primitive Culture	p. 23
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life	p. 34
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	p. 48
Religion as a Cultural System	p. 57
Skeptical Rejoinders	p. 77
Introduction	p. 77
Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough	p. 79
Religion, Totemism and Symbolism	p. 82
Remarks on the Verb "To Believe"	p. 90
Christians as Believers	p. 97
The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category	p. 110
Poiesis: The Composition of Religious Worlds	p. 127
Signs and Symbols	p. 129
Introduction	p. 129
The Logic of Signs and Symbols	p. 131
The Problem of Symbols	p. 139
On Key Symbols	p. 151
The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol	p. 160
Structure, Function, and Interpretation	p. 167
Introduction	p. 167
Myth in Primitive Psychology	p. 168
Folk Dialectics of Nature and Culture	p. 176
Land Animals, Pure and Impure	p. 183
A Jivaro Version of Totem and Taboo	p. 196
Text-Building, Epistemology, and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theatre	p. 206
Moral Inversions and Spaces of Disorder	p. 225
Introduction	p. 225
The Winnebago Trickster Figure	p. 226
Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social and Semantic Implications of the Structure of Belief	p. 238
The Politics and Poetics of Transgression	p. 253
Conceptualizing the Cosmos	p. 265
Introduction	p. 265
Closure and Multiplication: An Essay on Polynesian Cosmology and Ritual	p. 267
Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism	p. 280
Praxis: Religious Action	p. 299
The Movement in Ritual: Emergence	p. 301
Introduction	p. 301
The Control of Experience: Symbolic Action	p. 302
Form and Meaning of Magical Acts	p. 311
Liminality and Communitas	p. 326
Gender, Subjectivity, and the Body	p. 341
Introduction	p. 341
"Jewish Comes Up in You from the Roots"	p. 342
Fate in Relation to the Social Structure	p. 350
Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience	p. 356
Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: The Cultural Therapeutics of Possession and Trance	p. 368
The Poetics of Time in Mayan Divination	p. 386
What Ritual Does: The Foundations of Order	p. 397
Introduction	p. 397
The Disconnection between Power and Rank as a Process	p. 398
Enactments of Meaning	p. 410
Historical Dynamics: Power, Modernity, and Change	p. 429
Capitalism, Colonialism, Christianity, and Conflict	p. 431
Introduction	p. 431
New Heaven, New Earth	p. 432
The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money	p. 447
The Colonization of Consciousness	p. 464
Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion	p. 479
On Being Shege in Kinshasa: Children, the Occult and the Street	p. 495
Religious Ethics and Politics in the State, Public Sphere, and Transnational Scene	p. 507
Introduction	p. 507
Civil Religion in America	p. 509
Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery	p. 519
"Using the Past to Negate the Present": Ritual Ethics and State Rationality in Ancient China	p. 533
Passional Preaching, Aural Sensibility, and the Islamic Revival in Cairo	p. 544
Moral Landscapes: Ethical Discourses among Orthodox and Diaspora Jains	p. 560
Candomble in Pink, Green and Black: Re-scripting the Afro-Brazilian Religious Heritage in the Public Sphere of Salvador, Bahia	p. 573
Martyr vs. Martyr: The Sacred Language of Violence	p. 590
Afterword	p. 597
Evidence and Presence, Spectral and Other	p. 598
Research Tools	p. 611
A Guide to the Literature	p. 613
Bibliography	p. 630
Index	p. 673
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