Download or read book Religious Hair Display and Its Meanings written by William C. Innes, Jr and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the fascinating world of religious hair observances within six religious traditions that account for 77% of the world’s adherents: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Symbolic use of hair has been, and remains, prevalent in all six and carries significant amounts of religious and social meaning. Hair is a unique body substance. It can be shaped and colored, removed from us without pain but still retain an individual’s essence, signal our age, sex, and sexual maturity, and much, much more. The book’s approach is to situate each practice within its tradition. That requires a study of its foundational leaders and their teachings, sacred texts (where they mention hair), its rites and rituals, ideas of religious power and subsequent historical development. Contemporary practitioners are interviewed for their motivations. Even more insight can be gleaned by searching beyond an overt religious purpose. Social scientists from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and related fields bring their research to deliver added perceptions. The author reveals how hair practices are created from ancient psychological and cultural impulses, become modified by time, culture and religious intent, and are adopted by adherents for reasons ranging from personal religious expression to group identity. This book is written for the interested observer of our increasingly diverse society and for the student of comparative religion and sociology. It will change forever how you see hair.
Download or read book Religious Hair Display and Its Meanings written by Innes, Jr (William C.) and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the fascinating world of religious hair observances within six religious traditions that account for 77% of the world's adherents: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Symbolic use of hair has been, and remains, prevalent in all six and carries significant amounts of religious and social meaning. Hair is a unique body substance. It can be shaped and colored, removed from us without pain but still retain an individual's essence, signal our age, sex, and sexual maturity, and much, much more. The book's approach is to situate each practice within its tradition. That requires a study of its foundational leaders and their teachings, sacred texts (where they mention hair), its rites and rituals, ideas of religious power and subsequent historical development. Contemporary practitioners are interviewed for their motivations. Even more insight can be gleaned by searching beyond an overt religious purpose. Social scientists from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and related fields bring their research to deliver added perceptions. The author reveals how hair practices are created from ancient psychological and cultural impulses, become modified by time, culture and religious intent, and are adopted by adherents for reasons ranging from personal religious expression to group identity. This book is written for the interested observer of our increasingly diverse society and for the student of comparative religion and sociology. It will change forever how you see hair.
Download or read book Medusa s Hair written by Gananath Obeyesekere and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-02-08 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great pilgrimage center of southeastern Sri Lanka, Kataragama, has become in recent years the spiritual home of a new class of Hindu-Buddhist religious devotees. These ecstatic priests and priestesses invariably display long locks of matted hair, and they express their devotion to the gods through fire walking, tongue-piercing, hanging on hooks, and trance-induced prophesying. The increasing popularity of these ecstatics poses a challenge not only to orthodox Sinhala Buddhism (the official religion of Sri Lanka) but also, as Gananath Obeyesekere shows, to the traditional anthropological and psychoanalytic theories of symbolism. Focusing initially on one symbol, matted hair, Obeyesekere demonstrates that the conventional distinction between personal and cultural symbols is inadequate and naive. His detailed case studies of ecstatics show that there is always a reciprocity between the personal-psychological dimension of the symbol and its public, culturally sanctioned role. Medusa's Hair thus makes an important theoretical contribution both to the anthropology of individual experience and to the psychoanalytic understanding of culture. In its analyses of the symbolism of guilt, the adaptational and integrative significance of belief in spirits, and a host of related issues concerning possession states and religiosity, this book marks a provocative advance in psychological anthropology.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Hair written by Victoria Sherrow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This popular volume on the culture of hair through human history and around the globe has been updated and revised to include even more entries and current information. How we style our hair has the ability to shape the way others perceive us. For example, in 2017, the singer Macklemore denounced his hipster undercut hairstyle, a style that is associated with Hitler Youth and alt-right men, and in 2015, actress Rose McGowan shaved her head in order to take a stance against the traditional Hollywood sex symbol stereotype. This volume examines how hair-or lack thereof-can be an important symbol of gender, class, and culture around the world and through history. Hairstyles have come to represent cultural heritage and memory, and even political leanings, social beliefs, and identity. This second edition builds upon the original volume, updating all entries that have evolved over the last decade, such as by discussing hipster culture in the entries on beards and mustaches and recent medical breakthroughs in hair loss. New entries have been added that look at specific world regions, hair coverings, political symbolism behind certain styles, and other topics.
Download or read book Who s Afraid of Madalyn Murray O Hair written by Siarlys Jenkins and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2005-10-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is not about Madalyn Murray O ́Hair. It may help to exorcise her pale wan ghost from our legal system. She really doesn ́t amount to anything at all. She is irrelevant. There is nothing to be afraid of. But so many people don ́t know that. This book IS about who our laws belong to, and what our federal Constitution really means. Understanding the law is not the monopoly of lawyers, judges, elected officials, or people with advanced graduate degrees. All of those have an important role to play, but in a democratic republic, the law belongs to all of us. There is no reason that each and every American citizen cannot understand, and contribute to, the shape of our laws. That is especially true of our constitutional law - the supreme law of the land. One book can ́t cover everything in constitutional law. It can ́t even introduce everything. This book provides some simple introduction to Supreme Court cases, and federal appeals court cases, on the role of religion in public life. That means digging up court rulings from around 1869 right up until 2005. Really, the government and churches do have to interact with each other in all kinds of ways. Why? Because "We are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." (That was written by Justice William O. Douglas in 1952. It has never been abandoned by the Supreme Court in all the years since). A consistent line of principle There is a consistent line of principle to be found in Supreme Court cases developed over at least 150 years. Each chapter helps to present what those fundamental principles are, using the words of actual Supreme Court opinions. Of course, the author relies on his own reading of these cases. The author offers some original thoughts on questions the courts have not fully resolved. Most important, this is a book on how to find, and read, the actual words of court rulings. Not what the newspapers squeeze into an article, not what the opposing lawyers shout into the microphone, after the decision comes down, but what the court really said, in full. There is an appendix which provides some longer cites from actual cases, for readers who want to read for themselves. There is a chapter on how to find cases, in law libraries or on the internet, for readers who really want to read it all for themselves. To understand the law, we do not need to rely on news reporters, analysts, or fundraising letters from interest groups. Those all have an important role to play, but neither God nor man authorized them to do our thinking for us. None of them tell us a complete story. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they do not want to. It doesn ́t really matter what their reasons or motives are. No citizen needs to depend on these sources alone. Good News: Read it for yourself We can read federal court decisions for ourselves, think about what the courts wrote for ourselves, and come to our own conclusions about what it means for our lives and our country. There is a lot of very good news available to those who read what the law really says, instead of believing everything we hear on the street. There are a few common sense solutions to problems that have taken us around and around in legal circles without ever seeming to arrive anywhere. For example, how to offer a simple prayer before a football game without putting the school superintendent in the position of Establishing a religion. It ́s really very simple - Justices William O. Douglas, Potter Stewart, and Antonin Scalia have all pointed the way, and so has Justice Sandra Day O ́Connor. People who don ́t want to hear it don ́t have to. People who want to hear it can do so, or even say "Amen" at the closing. It is not necessary to sneeze in unison for a commencement speaker to say "God bless you." Here are the chapter headings, an outline of what is waiting for each r
Download or read book A Cultural History of Hair in the Renaissance written by Edith Snook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period 1450 to 1650 in Europe, hair was braided, curled, shaped, cut, colored, covered, decorated, supplemented, removed, and reused in magic, courtship, and art, amongst other things. On the body, Renaissance men and women often considered hair a signifier of order and civility. Hair style and the head coverings worn by many throughout the period marked not only the wearer's engagement with fashion, but also moral, religious, social, and political beliefs. Hair established individuals' positions in the period's social hierarchy and signified class, gender, and racial identities, as well as distinctions of age and marital and professional status. Such a meaningful part of the body, however, could also be disorderly, when it grew where it wasn't supposed to or transgressed the body's boundaries by being wild, uncovered, unpinned, or uncut. A natural material with cultural import, hair weaves together the Renaissance histories of fashion, politics, religion, gender, science, medicine, art, literature, and material culture. A necessarily interdisciplinary study, A Cultural History of Hair in the Renaissance explores the multiple meanings of hair, as well as the ideas and practices it inspired. Separate chapters contemplate Religion and Ritualized Belief, Self and Society, Fashion and Adornment, Production and Practice, Health and Hygiene, Sexuality and Gender, Race and Ethnicity, Class and Social Status, and Cultural Representations.
Download or read book Hidden Religion written by Micah L. Issitt and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores the history and origins of widely recognizable religious symbols, like the Christian cross and the Star of David, and also introduces readers to more obscure symbols from religious traditions around the world -- even defunct ones like those of the ancient Aztec and Mayan societies. In addition, it discusses some of the religious secrets found in major religions, including secret societies of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.
Download or read book Symbols Meaning and The Sacred Quest written by Andrew Cort and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fed up with Violence, Hatred, and Bigotry? In a world where religious differences often trigger hatred and violence, here is a book that celebrates the Beauty, Decency, Wisdom and Unity of all our traditions. The real purpose of religion is not to supply a questionable historical narrative, or to teach moral rules that no one can follow, or to command its followers to believe a lot of fantastic claims that defy all scientific logic. The REAL purpose of religion is to present a great Wisdom Teaching -- through Allegory, Symbol and Metaphor -- that teaches our souls the inner psychological and spiritual steps that must be taken to achieve spiritual awakening and communion with Divinity. The "Return to the Promised Land", for example, is a symbolic elucidation of the soul's return from inner material slavery (called "Egypt") to spiritual freedom and enlightenment (called "Canaan"). Along the path there are many steps, many adventures, many trials, and many joys. The different ways that the story is shared by different religions and different cultures is a testament to the magnificent human imagination! But the underlying commonality of meaning and purpose that unites the stories, the cultures, and us, is even more striking! What will SYMBOLS, MEANING, AND THE SACRED QUEST do for YOU? * It will reveal the hidden method of SPIRITUAL AWAKENING that lies buried in the ancient stories; * It will open your Heart to deeper levels of TRUST, UNDERSTANDING and COMPASSION; * It will give you hours of ENTERTAINMENT and PLEASURE as you discover and rediscover the spellbinding tales and legends from around the world - and read them with fresh eyes and ears!
Download or read book Wild Religion written by David Chidester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines South Africa's political journey of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century in the context of religious diversity and the recent revitalization of indigenous religion and rituals.
Download or read book Religion written by David Chidester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion: Material Dynamics is a lively resource for thinking about religious materiality and the material study of religion. Deconstructing and reconstructing religion as material categories, social formations, and mobile circulations, the book explores the making, ordering, and circulating of religious things. The book is divided into three sections: Part One revitalizes basic categories—animism and sacred, space and time—by situating them in their material production and testing their analytical viability. Part Two examines religious formations as configurations of power that operate in material cultures and cultural economies and are most clearly shown in the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. Part Three explores the material dynamics of circulation through case studies of religious mobility, change, and diffusion as intimate as the body and as vast as the oceans. Each chapter offers insightful orientations and surprising possibilities for studying material religion. Exploring the material dynamics of religion from poetics to politics, David Chidester provides an entry into the study of material religion that will be welcomed by students and specialists in religious studies, anthropology, and history.
Download or read book Religious Transformation in Maya Guatemala written by John P. Hawkins and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mayas, and indeed all Guatemalans, are currently experiencing the collapse of their way of life. This collapse is disrupting ideologies, symbols, life practices, and social structures that have undergirded their society for almost five hundred years, and it is causing rapid and massive religious transformation among the K’iche’ Maya living in highland western Guatemala. Many Maya are converting to Christian Pentecostal faiths in which adherents and leaders become bodily agitated during worship. Drawing on over fifty years of research and data collected by field-school students, Hawkins argues that two factors—cultural collapse and systematic social and economic exclusion—explain the recent religious transformation of Maya Guatemala and the style and emotional intensity through which that transformation is expressed. Guatemala serves as a window on religious change around the world, and Hawkins examines the rapid pentecostalization of Christianity not only within Guatemala but also throughout the global South. The “pentecostal wail,” as he describes it, is ultimately an acknowledgment of the angst and insecurity of contemporary Maya.
Download or read book Key Terms in Material Religion written by S. Brent Plate and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material religion is a rapidly growing field, and this volume offers an accessible, critical entry into these new areas of research. Each "key term" uses case studies and is accompanied by a color image – an object, practice, space, or site. The entries cut across geographies, histories, and traditions, offering a versatile and engaging text for the classroom. Key topics covered include: - Icon, ritual, magic, gender, race - Sacred, spirit, technology, - Space, belief, body, brain - Taste, touch, smell, sound, vision Each entry demonstrates in clear and jargon-free prose how the key term figures prominently in understanding the materiality of religion. Written by leading international scholars, all entries are linked by the ways materiality stands at the forefront of the understanding of religion, whether that comes from humanistic, social scientific, artistic, curatorial, or other perspectives. Brent Plate brings his expertise and extensive teaching experience to the comprehensive introduction which introduces students to the themes and methods of the material cultural study of religion. Key Terms in Material Religion provides a much-needed resource for courses on theory and method in religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and the ever-increasing number of courses focused on material religion.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age written by Geraldine Biddle-Perry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last century, there has been a revolution in self-presentation and social attitudes towards hair. Developments in mass manufacturing, advances in chemical science and new understandings of bodies and minds have been embraced by new kinds of hairdressers and their clientele and embodied in styles that reflect shifting ideals of what it is to be and to look modern. The emergence of the ladies hairdressing salon, the rise of the celebrity stylist, the impact of Hollywood, an expanding mass media, and a new synergy between fashions in clothing and hairstyles have rippled out globally. Fashions in hair styles and their representation have taken on new meanings as a way of resisting dominant social structures, experimenting with social taboos, and expressing a modern sense of self. From the 1920s bob to the punk cut, hair has continued to be deeply involved in society's larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources, and illustrated with 75 images, A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age presents essays that explore how politics, science, religion, fashion, beauty, the visual arts, and popular culture have reshaped modern hair and its significance as an agent of social change.
Download or read book My Brother Esau is a Hairy Man written by Susan Niditch and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Jacob and Esau is told in the book of Genesis. With his mother's help, Jacob impersonates his hairy older twin by dressing in Esau's clothes and covering his own hands and the nape of his neck with the hairy hide of goats. Fooled by this ruse, their blind father, Isaac, is tricked into giving the younger son the blessing of the firstborn. This is only one of many biblical stories in which hair plays a pivotal role. In recent years, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the relationship between culture and the body. Hair plays an integral role in the way we represent and identify ourselves. The way we treat our hair has to do with aesthetics, social structure, religious identity, and a host of other aspects of culture. In societies modern and ancient, the hairdo is one key to a group's cultural code. In ancient Israel, hair signifies important features of identity with respect to gender, ethnicity, and holiness. Susan Niditch seeks a deeper understanding of Israelite culture as expressed, shaped, and reinforced in images of hair. Among her examples is the tradition's most famous long-haired hero, Samson. The hair that assures Samson's strength is a common folktale motif, but is also important to his sacred status as a Nazirite. Niditch examines the meaning of the Nazirite identity held by Samuel as well as Samson arguing that long hair is involved in a complex set of cultural assumptions about men, warrior status, and divine election. In addition to biblical texts, Niditch looks at pictorial and other material evidence. She concludes by examining the troubling texts in which men impose hair cutting or loosening upon women, revealing much about attitudes to women and their place in Israelite culture. Much has been written on the presentation of the body in various literatures, including the Bible, but the role of hair in ancient Israel has been neglected. This book charts a new path for studies on the body, religion, and culture.
Download or read book The Religious Life of Dress written by Lynne Hume and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion. Taking a 'senses' approach, Hume's engaging account takes into consideration the look, smell, feel, touch and sound of religious apparel, the 'smells and bells' of dress and its accoutrements, as well as the emotions evoked by donning religious garb. The book's global perspective provides wide-ranging, yet detailed, coverage of religious dress, from the history and meaning of the simple 'no-frills' attire of the Anabaptists to the power structure displayed in the elaborate fabrics and colours of the Roman Catholic Church; Hume examines the 2,500 year-old tradition of Buddhist robes, the nudity of India's holy men, and much more. With chapters on Sufism, Vodou, modern Pagans, as well as painted and tattooed indigenous and modern Western bodies, the reader is swept along on a sensual journey of the sight, sound, smell and feel of wearing religion. Unique in its field, this intriguing and informative anthropological approach to the body and dress is an essential read for students of Anthropology, Anthropology of Dress, Sociology, Fashion and Textiles, Culture and Dress, Body and Culture and Cultural Studies.
Download or read book Greek and Roman Religions written by Rebecca I. Denova and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an introduction to the basic beliefs, practices, and major deities of Greek and Roman religions A volume in the Blackwell Ancient Religions, Greek and Roman Religions offers an authoritative overview of the region’s ancient religious practices. The author—a noted expert in the field—explores the presence of divinity in all aspects of ancient life and highlights the origins of myth, religious authority, institutions, beliefs, rituals, sacred texts, and ethics. Comprehensive in scope, the text focuses on myriad aspects that constitute Greco-Roman culture such as economic class, honor and shame, and slavery as well as the religious role of each member of the family. The integration of ethnic and community identity with divine elements are highlighted in descriptions of religious festivals. Greek and Roman Religions presents the evolution of ideas concerning death and the afterlife and the relation of death to concepts of ultimate justice. The author also offers insight into the elements of ancient religions that remain important in our contemporary quest for meaning. This vital text: Offers a comprehensive review of ancient Greek and Roman religions and their institutions, beliefs, rituals, and more Examines how the Roman culture and religions borrowed from the Greek traditions Explores the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin Contains suggestions at the end of each chapter for further reading that include both traditional studies and more recent examinations of topical issues Written for students of ancient religions and religious studies, this important resource provides an overview of the ancient culture and history of the general region as well as the basic background of Greek and Roman civilizations.
Download or read book The Symbolism and Communicative Contents of Dreadlocks in Yorubaland written by Augustine Agwuele and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-13 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an interpretation of Yoruba people’s affective responses to an adult Yoruba male with a ‘deviant’ hairstyle. The work, which views hairstyles as a form of symbolic communicative signal that encodes messages that are perceived and interpreted within a culture, provides an ontological and epistemological interpretation of Yoruba beliefs regarding dreadlocks with real-life illustrations of their treatment of an adult male with what they term irun were (insane person’s hairdo). Based on experiential observations as well as socio-cultural and linguistic analyses, the book explores the dynamism of Yoruba worldview regarding head-hair within contemporary belief systems and discusses some of the factors that assure its continuity. It concludes with a cross-cultural comparison of the perceptions of dreadlocks, especially between Nigerian Yoruba people an d African American Yoruba practitioners.
