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Internationally recognized scholars from many parts of the world provide a critical survey of recent developments and achievements in the global field of religious studies. The work follows in the footsteps of two former publications: Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Jacques Waardenburg (1973), and Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Frank Whaling (1984/85). New Approaches to the Study of Religion completes the survey of the comparative study of religion in the twentieth century by focussing on the past two decades. Many of the chapters, however, are also pathbreaking and point the way to future approaches.
In Africa, the emphasis on family, marriage, and offspring suggest that there is a kind of an unwritten ancestral law that imposes on every male the duty of begetting a son. The reason is because the core of African soteriology is centered on offspring. The predicament of the childless couples, therefore, stems from the desire for immortality and salvation that culminates in the admission of the dead into the ancestral world. This quest for salvation and immortality constitute social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems for Christian as well as non-Christian childless couples.
The first two parts of this book present four detailed historical studies, filled with Geertzian "thick description," of the encounters of Christianity and Buddhism (universal religions with a high quotient of "transcendence") with various primal religious traditions ("biocosmic" or "immanentist") of the Asian-Pacific region, namely, Aboriginal Australia and Melanesia (Christianity) and Sri Lanka and Japan (Buddhism). In each case, the encounters represented a failure of the "great" traditions. In the third, constructive and theological part of the book, the author shows how an acknowledgment of these failures may provide a back door to dialogue.
For generations of anthropologists, the Baining people have presented a challenge, because of their apparent lack of cultural or social structure. This group of small-scale horticulturists seems devoid of the complex belief systems and social practices that characterize other traditional peoples of Papua New Guinea. Their daily existence is mundane and repetitive in the extreme, articulated by only the most elementary familial relationships and social connections. The routine of everyday life, however, is occasionally punctuated by stunningly beautiful festivals of masked dancers, which the Baining call play and to which they attribute no symbolic significance. In a new work sure to evoke considerable repercussions and debate in anthropological theory, Jane Fajans courageously takes on the "Baining Problem," arguing that the Baining define themselves not through intricate cosmologies or social networks, but through the meanings generated by their own productive and reproductive work.
Describes the exposure of island churches to brutal interlopers in World War II which foreshadowed the twilight of the missionary and colonial eras.
Internationally recognized scholars from many parts of the world provide a critical survey of recent developments and achievements in the global field of religious studies. The work follows in the footsteps of two former publications: Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Jacques Waardenburg (1973), and Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Frank Whaling (1984/85). New Approaches to the Study of Religion completes the survey of the comparative study of religion in the twentieth century by focussing on the past two decades. Many of the chapters, however, are also pathbreaking and point the way to future approaches.
"The book also features cross-references throughout, a bibliography accompanying each entry, an elaborate appendix listing biographies according to particular categories of interest, and a comprehensive index."--BOOK JACKET.
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This volume of essays honours the life and work of Stephen A. Wild, one of Australia’s leading ethnomusicologists. Born in Western Australia, Wild studied at Indiana University in the USA before returning to Australia to pursue a lifelong career with Indigenous Australian music. As researcher, teacher, and administrator, Wild’s work has impacted generations of scholars around the world, leading him to be described as ‘a great facilitator and a scholar who serves humanity through music’ by Andrée Grau, Professor of the Anthropology of Dance at University of Roehampton, London. Focusing on the music of Aboriginal Australia and the Pacific Islands, and the concerns of archiving and aca...
Ritual masking is an important institution in many traditional societies and has attracted much attention from Western scholars. In 'Ritual Masks', Pernet provides a thorough survey of masks and masking traditions in Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, based on a close analysis of the literature in several languages. Pernet's approach provides him with an opportunity to examine issues of importance to the history of religion and anthropology. These include the influence of theory on the interpretation of prehistoric documents; androcentrism in anthropology and the history of religions; and Western scholarship's recurrent problems in interpreting preliterate or traditional societies.