Download or read book Religious and Ritual Change written by Pamela J. Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of religious and ritual change, including conversion from one modality of practices to another, has emerged in recent years as a prime focus of scholarly attention in anthropology and related disciplines, such as history, sociology, political science and religious studies. Conversion to Christianity is one focus that has developed within this broad and dynamic field of investigations. This edited volume is a unique set of studies that explores this field further, with a doubly innovative approach. First, the chapters represent a collaboration of leading scholars from Taiwan and from the USA and Europe. Second, the studies involve a comparative dimension, juxtaposing work done among indigenous Austronesian minorities in Taiwan and work done in the Pacific Islands (Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands). Within this collection of essays, common processes of change are evident, while the importance of specific histories is revealed, and analytical and theoretical issues are probed and reviewed in ways that demonstrate their relevance to the overall dimensions of comparison. No other work in this arena of study has brought together scholars with such a comparative framework in mind. This volume is relevant for scholars and students of religious change generally, as well as those readers who are interested in the wider Asia-Pacific region, minority groups, Christianity, indigenous movements, and the socialization of the ritual body in contexts of historical and cosmological change. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "... [A] wide range of views are offered ... Overall the book offers itself as a detailed archive of ethnographic information for further analysis and interpretation of these and other issues." -- Religion and Society: Advances in Research

Download or read book The Politics of Ritual Change written by John Tracy Thames, Jr. and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of Ritual Change, John Thames explores the intersection of ritual and politics in the zukru festival texts from Emar and suggests a new understanding of the Hittite Empire’s relationship to northern Syria in the 13th century BCE.

Download or read book The Craft of Ritual Studies written by Ronald L. Grimes and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readership: Students and scholars of ritual studies, religious studies, anthropology

Download or read book Ritual Innovation written by Brian Kemble Pennington and published by Suny Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends.

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 Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers written by Yonghua Liu and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers, Yonghua Liu presents a detailed study of how a southeastern Chinese community experienced and responded to the process whereby Confucian rituals - previously thought unfit for practice by commoners - were adopted in the Chinese countryside and became an integral part of village culture, from the mid fourteenth to mid twentieth centuries. The book examines the important but understudied ritual specialists, masters of rites (lisheng), and their ritual handbooks while showing their crucial role in the ritual life of Chinese villagers. This discussion of lisheng and their rituals deepens our understanding of the ritual aspect of popular Confucianism and sheds new light on social and cultural transformations in late imperial China.

Download or read book Death and Changing Rituals written by J. Rasmus Brandt and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration. The contributions presented here are focused not on the examination of different funerary practices, their function and meaning, but on the changes of such rituals _ how and when they occurred and how they may be explained. Based on case studies from a range of geographical regions and from different prehistoric and historical periods, a range of key themes are examined concerning belief and ritual, body and deposition, place, performance and commemoration, exploring a complex web of practices.

Download or read book Theorizing Rituals written by Jens Kreinath and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume two of Theorizing Rituals mainly consists of an annotated bibliography of more than 400 items covering those books, edited volumes and essays that are considered most relevant for the field of ritual theory. Instead of proposing yet another theory of ritual, the bibliography is a comprehensive monument documenting four decades of theorizing rituals.

Download or read book Modern Passings written by Andrew Bernstein and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-01-31 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What to do with the dead? In Imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the modernizing world, answering this perennial question meant relying on age-old solutions. Funerals, burials, and other mortuary rites had developed over the centuries with the aim of building continuity in the face of loss. As Japanese coped with the economic, political, and social changes that radically remade their lives in the decades after the Meiji Restoration (1868), they clung to local customs and Buddhist rituals such as sutra readings and incense offerings that for generations had given meaning to death. Yet death, as this highly original study shows, was not impervious to nationalism, capitalism, and the other isms that constituted and still constitute modernity. As Japan changed, so did its handling of the inevitable. Following an overview of the early development of funerary rituals in Japan,Andrew Bernstein demonstrates how diverse premodern practices from different regions and social strata were homogenized with those generated by middle-class city dwellers to create the form of funerary practice dominant today. He describes the controversy over cremation, explaining how and why it became the accepted manner of disposing of the dead. He also explores the conflict-filled process of remaking burial practices, which gave rise, in part, to the suburban "soul parks" now prevalent throughout Japan; the (largely failed) attempt by nativists to replace Buddhist death rites with Shinto ones; and the rise and fall of the funeral procession. In the process, Bernstein shows how today’s "traditional" funeral is in fact an early twentieth-century invention and traces the social and political factors that led to this development. These include a government wanting to separate itself from religion even while propagating State Shinto, the appearance of a new middle class, and new forms of transportation. As these and other developments created new contexts for old rituals, Japanese faced the problem of how to fit them all together. What to do with the dead? is thus a question tied to a still broader one that haunts all societies experiencing rapid change: What to do with the past? Modern Passings is an impressive and far-reaching exploration of Japan’s efforts to solve this puzzle, one that is at the heart of the modern experience.

Download or read book The Interpretation of Ritual written by J. S. La Fontaine and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1972. A revival of interest in primitive religion has been one of the most marked characteristics of British social anthropology of recent years. Inspired by the work of Audrey Richards, whose writing on ritual contains many of the insights that have been developed in later studies, this volume uses material drawn from all over Africa and Polynesia. The contributors include: Raymond Firth, Esther Goody, Aidan Southall, R.G. Abrahams, Edwin Ardener, J.S. La Fontaine, Monica Wilson, Elizabeth Bott, Edmund Leach and P.H. Gulliver.

Download or read book A Study in Ritual Modification written by Raymond Firth and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Discourse in Ritual Studies written by Hans Schilderman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Discourse in Ritual Studies" offers an introduction into the study of public worship from the perspective of ritual studies.The contributing authors confront an action-oriented and empirical approach of ritual studies with perennial and normative questions that characterize the study of liturgy.

Download or read book The Reformation of Ritual written by Susan Karant-Nunn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-19 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Reformation of Ritual Susan Karant-Nunn explores the function of ritual in early modern German society, and the extent to which it was modified by the Reformation. Employing anthropological insights, and drawing on extensive archival research, Susan Karant-Nunn outlines the significance of the ceremonial changes. This comprehensive study includes an examination of all major rites of passage: birth, baptism, confirmation, engagement, marriage, the churching of women after childbirth, penance, the Eucharist, and dying. The author argues that the changes in ritual made over the course of the century reflect more than theological shifts; ritual was a means of imposing discipline and of making the divine more or less accessible. Church and state cooperated in using ritual as one means of gaining control of the populace.

Download or read book Homa Variations written by Richard K. Payne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout human history, and across many religious cultures, offerings are made into fire. The essays collected in Homa Variations provide detailed studies of this practice, known in the tantric world as the "homa," from its inception up to the present.

Download or read book Rites of the God King written by Marko Geslani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rites of the God-King offers a critical revision of mainstream Hinduism from the perspective of the life of a single ritual from medieval India. Drawing theoretical connections to modern ethnographies, it raises questions about the nature of kingship and priesthood, image-worship, and ritual change.

Download or read book The Tusayan ritual A study on the influence of environment on aboriginal cults written by Jesse Walter Fewkes and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Tusayan ritual : A study on the influence of environment on aboriginal cults" by Jesse Walter Fewkes. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Download or read book Theorizing Rituals Volume 2 Annotated Bibliography of Ritual Theory 1966 2005 written by Jens Kreinath and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-09-30 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume two of Theorizing Rituals mainly consists of an annotated bibliography of more than 400 items covering those books, edited volumes and essays that are considered most relevant for the field of ritual theory. Instead of proposing yet another theory of ritual, the bibliography is a comprehensive monument documenting four decades of theorizing rituals.