Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.
Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Religion in Human Evolution written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal
Download or read book Ritual Theory Ritual Practice written by Catherine Bell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual studies today figures as a central element of religious discourse for many scholars around the world. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Catherine Bell's sweeping and seminal work on the subject, helped legitimize the field. In this volume, Bell re-examines the issues, methods, and ramifications of our interest in ritual by concentrating on anthropology, sociology, and the history of religions. Now with a new foreword by Diane Jonte-Pace, Bell's work is a must-read for understanding the evolution of the field of ritual studies and its current state.
Download or read book Holiness and Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecology Meaning and Religion written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Two enterprises have proceeded in anthropology since ts earliest days. One, objective in its aspirations and inspired by biological disciplines, seeks explanation and is concerned to discover laws and causes. The other, subjective in its orientation and influenced by philosophy, linguistics, and the humatities, attempts interpretation and seeks to elucidate meanings. I take any raditcal separation of the two to be misguided, for the relationship between tem, with all of its difficulty, ambiguity, and tension, is a reflection of, or metaphor for, the condition of a species that lives in terms of meanings in a physical world devoid of intrinsic meaning but subject to causal law. The concept of adaptatioon when applied to human society must take account of meaning as well as cause, and of the complex dynamic of their relationship." -from the book.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Ritual written by Evangelos Kyriakidis and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide spectrum of scholars, historians, art historians, anthropologists, students of performance, students of religion, archaeologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists were all asked to think and comment on how ritual can be traced in archaeology and which ways ritual research can go in that discipline. The product is a fairly accurate representation of research on ritual and the archaeology of ritual: scholars from various disciplines, backgrounds and agendas, arguing mostly in the most logical fashion, yet with little agreement between them. So this book should not be seen as presenting one unified attitude towards ritual and its study in archaeology. It should rather be seen as a reflection of what the discourse in the archaeology of ritual is today. The outcome has been extremely thought-provoking, often controversial, but always of extremely high quality.
Download or read book Religion of the Gods written by Kimberley Christine Patton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many of the world's religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, a seemingly enigmatic and paradoxical image is found--that of the god who worships. Various interpretations of this seeming paradox have been advanced. Some suggest that it represents sacrifice to a higher deity. Proponents of anthropomorphic projection say that the gods are just "big people" and that images of human religious action are simply projected onto the deities. However, such explanations do not do justice to the complexity and diversity of this phenomenon. In Religion of the Gods, Kimberley C. Patton uses a comparative approach to take up anew a longstanding challenge in ancient Greek religious iconography: why are the Olympian gods depicted on classical pottery making libations? The sacrificing gods in ancient Greece are compared to gods who perform rituals in six other religious traditions: the Vedic gods, the heterodox god Zurvan of early Zoroastrianism, the Old Norse god Odin, the Christian God and Christ, the God of Judaism, and Islam's Allah. Patton examines the comparative evidence from a cultural and historical perspective, uncovering deep structural resonances while also revealing crucial differences. Instead of looking for invisible recipients or lost myths, Patton proposes the new category of "divine reflexivity." Divinely performed ritual is a self-reflexive, self-expressive action that signals the origin of ritual in the divine and not the human realm. Above all, divine ritual is generative, both instigating and inspiring human religious activity. The religion practiced by the gods is both like and unlike human religious action. Seen from within the religious tradition, gods are not "big people," but other than human. Human ritual is directed outward to a divine being, but the gods practice ritual on their own behalf. "Cultic time," the symbiotic performance of ritual both in heaven and on earth, collapses the distinction between cult and theology each time ritual is performed. Offering the first comprehensive study and a new theory of this fascinating phenomenon, Religion of the Gods is a significant contribution to the fields of classics and comparative religion. Patton shows that the god who performs religious action is not an anomaly, but holds a meaningful place in the category of ritual and points to a phenomenologically universal structure within religion itself.
Download or read book Ritual A Very Short Introduction written by Barry Stephenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion written by Matt J. Rossano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-04 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of ritual in social life, human evolution, and religion. It explains the functions and purpose of varied rituals across the world by arguing they are mechanisms of ‘resource management’, providing a descriptive tool for understanding rituals and generating predictions about ritual survival. By showing how rituals have resulted from the need to cultivate social resources necessary to sustain cooperative groups, Rossano presents a unique examination of the function of rituals and how they cultivate, mobilize, and direct psychological resources. Rossano examines rituals from a diverse range of historical contexts, including the Greco-Romans, Soviet Russians, and those in ‘crisis cults’. The book shows how rituals address societal and community problems by cultivating three psychological resources – commitment to communal values, goodwill (both of humans and supernatural agents) and social support or social capital. Holding communities together in the face of threat, disaster, or apathy is one of ritual’s primary functions, and the author describes how our ancestors used ritual to become the highly social, inter-dependent primate that is Homo sapiens. Including examples from all over the world and providing detailed descriptions of both past and current ritual practices, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, sociology, religion, anthropology, and sociology.
Download or read book Ritual written by Catherine Bell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.
Download or read book Culture Mind and Brain written by Laurence J. Kirmayer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent neuroscience research makes it clear that human biology is cultural biology - we develop and live our lives in socially constructed worlds that vary widely in their structure values, and institutions. This integrative volume brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from the human, social, and biological sciences to explore culture, mind, and brain interactions and their impact on personal and societal issues. Contributors provide a fresh look at emerging concepts, models, and applications of the co-constitution of culture, mind, and brain. Chapters survey the latest theoretical and methodological insights alongside the challenges in this area, and describe how these new ideas are being applied in the sciences, humanities, arts, mental health, and everyday life. Readers will gain new appreciation of the ways in which our unique biology and cultural diversity shape behavior and experience, and our ongoing adaptation to a constantly changing world.
Download or read book Why We Believe written by Agustin Fuentes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea—is central to the human way of being in the world.
Download or read book The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion written by Robert A. Segal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore a rigorous but accessible guide to contemporary approaches to the study of religion from leading voices in the field The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion delivers an expert and insightful analysis of modern perspectives on the study of religion across the humanities and the social sciences. Presupposing no knowledge of the approaches examined in the collection, the book is ideal for undergraduate students who have yet to undertake extensive study in the humanities or social sciences. The book includes perspectives from those in fields as diverse as globalization, cognitive science, the study of emotion, law, esotericism, sex and gender, functionalism, terror, the comparative method, modernism, and postmodernism. Many of the topics covered in the book clearly hail from religious studies, while others are grounded in other areas of academia. All of the chapters contained within are written by recognized authors who show how their chosen discipline contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon of religion. This book also includes topics like: A comprehensive exploration of multiple approaches to religious study, including anthropology, economics, literature, phenomenology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology A review of various topics germane to the study of religion, including the study of the body, cognitive science, the comparative method, death and the afterlife, law, magic, music, and myth A selection of subjects touching on modern trends in extremism and violence, including chapters on terror and violence, fundamentalism, and nationalism A discussion of the influence of modernism and postmodernism in religion Ideal for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in humanities and social science programs taking courses on religion and myth, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion will also earn a place in the libraries of specialists working in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, History, and Philosophy.
Download or read book Mighty Stories Dangerous Rituals written by Herbert Anderson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2002-02-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together two of our greatest sources of meaning andtransformation This book marries two partners that are made for each other. Theresult, as in all good unions, is mutual enrichment and deeperlife. --Jack Shea, author of Stories of God Now available in paperback, this moving and enlightening bookpresents us with a compelling vision of what can happen when wetake the opportunity to connect stories and rituals--a vision ofindividuals and communities transformed through a deeper sense ofconnection to our loved ones, our communities, and God. HerbertAnderson and Edward Foley reveal how when stories and rituals worktogether, they have the potential to be both mighty anddangerous--mighty in their ability to lift us up and help us makethese connections beyond ourselves and dangerous in challenging usto learn to live with complexity and contradiction. They show how much more meaningful a baptism, wedding, or funeralcan be when liturgy is made to include and recognize the personalstories of those involved. Suddenly, these familiar life-cyclerituals are infused with new life as their participants becomeconnected in a narrative web linking past and present, human anddivine. Newly created rituals can also help us connect our storiesto the divine story, giving meaning to what we experience andbringing us closer to God. Ministers, worship leaders, and pastoral caregivers can use thisapproach to storytelling and ritual to find ways to bring togetherworship and pastoral care, diminishing fragmentation and fosteringcoherence in their religious communities.
Download or read book Creation of the Sacred written by Walter Burkert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason? Why are sacrifice and numerous other religious rituals and concepts shared by so many different cultures? In this extraordinary book, one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient religions explores the possibility of natural religion.
Download or read book Ritual and Communication in the Graeco Roman World written by Eftychia Stavrianopoulou and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Klassisches Altertum - Ritual - Kult - Gesellschaft.
