Download or read book The Social Life of Spirits written by Ruy Blanes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.
Download or read book Spirits Among Us written by Sherry Howard and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scooter has been wheelchair bound ever since the accident that took her mother's life. Carrying on her mother's ghost hunting work, Scooter and her best friend Harlan create a YouTube show called Spirits Among Us. Wanting to get a message from her mother before she passes over, Scooter buys a special ghost hunting camera and places it in her family's cemetery. But, when a string of robberies frighten the locals, will the camera capture more than a ghost?
Download or read book Spirits in Politics written by Barbara Meier and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 4e de couv.: This anthropology addresses persisting questions social anthropologist, historians, and political scientists working in African societies have been confronted with: Do spirits enter the scene after political have failed as a relapse into an allegedly non-modern condition? Or do they precede colonial processes of political transformation, as classis theories of modernization try to establish? The volume seeks to extend the reflections on the relationship of religious phenomena in the socio-political sphere in African societies. It presents case studies which focus on the concepts of modernity, power, and violence, adding the notion of healing to this context and investigating their empirical correlations.
Download or read book Spirit and System written by Dominic Boyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1906 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's Spirit and System exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture. Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of "German-ness" from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of "German-ness"—that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner "spirit" and an external "system" of social life —is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals' self-knowledge as it tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity.
Download or read book Atlantic Perspectives written by Markus Balkenhol and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on mobility, religion, and belonging, the volume contributes to transatlantic anthropology and history by bringing together religion, cultural heritage and placemaking in the Atlantic world. The entanglements of these domains are ethnographically scrutinized to perceive the connections and disconnections of specific places which, despite a common history, are today very different in terms of secular regimes and the presence of religion in the public sphere. Ideally suited to a variety of scholars and students in different fields, Atlantic Perspectives will lead to new debates and conversations throughout the fields of anthropology, religion and history.
Download or read book Developing the Dead written by Diana Espírito Santo and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana Espírito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different from Enlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how Espiritismo’s self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.
Download or read book The Spirits of America written by Eric Burns and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The spirits of America, Burns relates that drinking was "the first national pastime," and shows how it shaped American politics and culture from the earliest colonial days. He details the transformation of alcohol from virtue to vice and back again and how it was thought of as both scourge and medicine. He tells us how "the great American thirst" developed over the centuries, and how reform movements and laws sprang up to combat it. Burns brings back to life such vivid characters as Carrie Nation and other crusaders against drink. He informs us that, in the final analysis, Prohibition, the culmination of the reformers' quest, had as much to do with politics and economics and geography as it did with spirituous beverage.
Download or read book The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To day written by Evelyn Underhill and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Spirits and Letters written by Thomas G. Kirsch and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter' as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between 'charisma' and 'institution' by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.
Download or read book Signs of the Spirit written by Tony Perman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005, Tony Perman attended a ceremony alongside the living and the dead. His visit to a Zimbabwe farm brought him into contact with the madhlozi, outsider spirits that Ndau people rely upon for guidance, protection, and their collective prosperity. Perman's encounters with the spirits, the mediums who bring them back, and the accompanying rituals form the heart of his ethnographic account of how the Ndau experience ceremonial musicking. As Perman witnessed other ceremonies, he discovered that music and dancing shape the emotional lives of Ndau individuals by inviting them to experience life's milestones or cope with its misfortunes as a group. Signs of the Spirit explores the historical, spiritual, and social roots of ceremonial action and details how that action influences the Ndau's collective approach to their future. The result is a vivid ethnomusicological journey that delves into the immediacy of musical experience and the forces that transform ceremonial performance into emotions and community.
Download or read book Coaxing the Spirits to Dance written by Robert Louis Welsch and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coaxing the Spirits to Dance explores the relationship between social life and artistic expression since the nineteenth century in one of the most important art-producing regions of Papua New Guinea. It includes a stunning presentation of hand-carved and hand-painted ancestor boards, masks, drums, skull racks, and personal items. Each society on the Papuan Gulf had its own elaborate traditions of carved, painted, or decorated masks, boards, and hand drums that filled the men's longhouses for use in dances and performances. Today these art objects offer a glimpse into the varied cosmologies and ritual lives of these surprisingly diverse societies before they were changed significantly through their contact with the West.
Download or read book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down written by Anne Fadiman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.
Download or read book The Spirit Level written by Richard Wilkinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is common knowledge that, in rich societies, the poor have worse health and suffer more from almost every social problem. This book explains why inequality is the most serious problem societies face today.
Download or read book Your Spirits Walk Beside Us written by Barbara Dianne Savage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent.
Download or read book The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking at a time of intense war in Europe, Rudolf Steiner reveals the spiritual roots of the crises of our times and the means by which we can overcome them. Since 1879, Steiner tells us that "backward" angels, or "spirits of darkness"--who were forced out of the heavens and made their abode on Earth following their defeat in a forty-year battle with the Archangel Michael--have influenced human minds. It is now possible for human beings to awaken more consciously to the truth of these profound changes and thus inwardly counter the fallen spirits' influences. We can come to the realization that definite spiritual causes lie behind earthly events in our rapidly changing times. In these fourteen lectures, given at the end of 1917 following four years of war in Europe, Steiner speaks on the complex spiritual forces behind the World War I, humanity's attempts to build theoretically perfect social orders, and the many divisions and disruptions that would continue on Earth into our own time. Humanity in general was asleep to the fact that fallen spirits, cast from the spiritual worlds, had become intensely active on Earth. This manifested mainly in human thinking and perception of the surrounding world. However, the defeat and fall of these spirits also ensured that a science of the spirit would always be available to humanity.
Download or read book Spirit Of Community written by Amitai Etzioni and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1994-05-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how Americans need to develop or restore a sense of community in order to reconstruct society.
Download or read book Human Spirits A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte written by Michael Lambek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1981-11-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes and interprets trance behaviour among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, a small island in the Comoro Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Professor Lambek describes how the people of Mayotte (most often women) enter into trances, during which they believe their bodies are inhabited by spirits. He then analyses the conventions for behaviour in trance and the process by which the individuals come to terms with the spirits in their midst. The book presents thorough case studies of spirit possession over time, providing one of the most detailed accounts of possession phenomena available for a single society. The author argues that trance can best be understood as a social activity within a defined system of cultural meaning rather than as a psychological problem, a simple deception or a means of manipulating others. This book should be of particular interest to those concerned with the study of ritual, symbols and non-Western religious systems.
