Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Intersecting Journeys
The appeal of sacred sites remains undiminished at the start of the twenty-first century, as unprecedented numbers of visitors travel to Lourdes, Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, and even Star Trek conventions. Ethnographic analysis of the conflicts over resources and meanings associated with such sites, as well as the sense of community they inspire, provides compelling evidence re-emphasizing the links between pilgrimage and tourism. As the papers in this collection demonstrate, studies of these forms of journeying are at the forefront of postmodern debates about movement and centers, global flows, social identities, and the negotiation of meanings.
Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society
By examining the ongoing tension between popular and official religion in Europe, this collection of essays contributes significantly to the continuing effort to understand the religious experience of ordinary people. Ranging from the Mediterranean to northern Europe and including both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the ethnographic contexts evoked in these essays enable us to see people actively and creatively shaping their religious domain, sometimes in collaboration with official ritual specialists, often in open rebellion against them. The use of folklore texts and extensive narrative quotations, combined with an approach highlighting key symbols such as pilgrimages and ...
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony
Are postcolonies haunted more by criminal violence than other nation-states? The usual answer is yes. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, Jean and John Comaroff and a group of respected theorists show that the question is misplaced: that the predicament of postcolonies arises from their place in a world order dominated by new modes of governance, new sorts of empires, new species of wealth—an order that criminalizes poverty and race, entraps the “south” in relations of corruption, and displaces politics into the realms of the market, criminal economies, and the courts. As these essays make plain, however, there is another side to postcoloniality: while postcolonies live in states of...
Dealing with Deities
Drawing on original field research, Dealing with Deities explores the practice of taking ritual vows in the lives of ordinary religious practitioners in South Asia. The cornerstone of lay religious activity, vow rituals are adopted by Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs who wish to commit themselves to ritually enacted relationships with sacred figures in order to gain earthly boons and spiritual merit. The contributors to this volume offer a fascinating look at the varieties and complexities of vows and also focus on a unique characteristic of this vow-taking culture, that of resorting to deities and shrines of other religions in defiance of institutional directives and religious boundaries. Richly illustrated, the book explores the creativity of South Asian devotees and their deeply felt convictions that what they require, they can achieve faithfully—and independently—by dealing directly with deities.
Journeys and Destinations
Journeys and Destinations: Studies in Travel, Identity, and Meaning brings together scholarship from diverse fields all focused on either practices of journeying, or destinations to which such journeys lead. Common across the contributions herein are threads that indicate travel as a core component — as a concept or a practice — of the fabric of identity and meaning.
Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society
Since the end of state repression against religion, two major processes have taken place in the formerly socialist countries: historically dominant churches strive to reassert their position in society, while new religious groups and ideas from various parts of the world are proliferating. This generates pluralism of religious communities and individual religious attitudes. Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society presents the first collection of ethnographies of this new religious diversity for Lithuania, a country that has a long history of a dominant Catholic Church. The authors reveal how Catholicism has become increasingly diversified and other religions (Charismatic Protestantism, Baltic Paganism, Eastern religions and other alternative spiritualities) are claiming their space in the religious field.
Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France
An innovative study revealing that folklore collections can shed new light on the lives of the socially marginalized.
Moving Subjects
Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of "moving subjects" they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.
Death, Mourning, and Burial
In Death, Mourning, and Burial, an indispensable introduction to the anthropology of death, readers will find a rich selection of some of the finest ethnographic work on this fascinating topic. Comprised of six sections that mirror the social trajectory of death: conceptualizations of death; death and dying; uncommon death; grief and mourning; mortuary rituals; and remembrance and regeneration Includes canonical readings as well as recent studies on topics such as organ donation and cannibalism Designed for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as: violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals Serves as a text for anthropology classes, as well as providing a genuinely cross-cultural perspective to all those studying death and dying
Vernacular Religion
A comprehensive collection of the pioneering work of Leonard Norman Primiano, one of the preeminent scholars in religious studies In 1995, Leonard Norman Primiano introduced the idea of “vernacular religion.” He coined this term to overcome the denigration implied in the concept of “folk religion” or “popular religion,” which was juxtaposed to “elite religion.” This two-tiered model suggested that religion existed somewhere in a pure form and that the folk version transforms it. Instead, Primiano urged scholars to adopt an inductive approach to the study of religion and to pay attention to experiential aspects of belief systems, ultimately redressing a heritage of scholarly m...
