Download or read book Icanchu s Drum written by Lawrence Eugene Sullivan and published by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers. This book was released on 1988 with total page 1036 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China written by James Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.
Download or read book World Prehistory written by Brian M. Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For one semester or quarter courses in World Prehistory. Written by one of the leading archaeological writers in the world -— in a simple, jargon-free narrative style —- this brief, well-illustrated account of the major developments in the human past makes world prehistory uniquely accessible to complete beginners. Written by Brian Fagan, World Prehistory covers the entire world, not just the Americas or Europe, and places major emphasis on both theories and the latest archaeological and multidisciplinary approaches. His focus is on four major developments in world prehistory: 1) The origins of humanity. 2) The appearance and spread of modern humans before and during the late Ice Age- including the first settlement of the Americas. 3) The beginnings of food production. 4) The rise of the first civilizations.
Download or read book The Hammer and the Flute written by Mary Keller and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award for the Best First Book in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion Feminist theory and postcolonial theory share an interest in developing theoretical frameworks for describing and evaluating subjectivity comparatively, especially with regard to non-autonomous models of agency. As a historian of religions, Mary Keller uses the figure of the "possessed woman" to analyze a subject that is spoken-through rather than speaking and whose will is the will of the ancestor, deity or spirit that wields her to engage the question of agency in a culturally and historically comparative study that recognizes the prominent role possessed women play in their respective traditions. Drawing from the fields of anthropology and comparative psychology, Keller brings the figure of the possessed woman into the heart of contemporary argument as an exemplary model that challenges many Western and feminist assumptions regarding agency. Proposing a new theoretical framework that re-orients scholarship, Keller argues that the subject who is wielded or played, the hammer or the flute, exercises a paradoxical authority—"instrumental agency"—born of their radical receptivity: their power derives from the communities' assessment that they no longer exist as autonomous agents. For Keller, the possessed woman is at once "hammer" and "flute," paradoxically powerful because she has become an instrument of the overpowering will of an ancestor, deity, or spirit. Keller applies the concept of instrumental agency to case studies, providing a new interpretation of each. She begins with contemporary possessions in Malaysia, where women in manufacturing plants were seized by spirits seeking to resacralize the territory. She next looks to wartime Zimbabwe, where female spirit mediums, the Nehanda mhondoro, declared the ancestors' will to fight against colonialism. Finally she provides an imaginative rereading of the performative power of possession by interpreting two plays, Euripides' Bacchae and S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, which feature possessed women as central characters. This book can serve as an excellent introduction to postcolonial and feminist theory for graduate students, while grounding its theory in the analysis of regionally and historically specific moments of time that will be of interest to specialists. It also provides an argument for the evaluation of religious lives and their struggles for meaning and power in the contemporary landscape of critical theory.
Download or read book Singing to the Plants written by Stephan V, Beyer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.
Download or read book A Treasury of Mystic Terms written by John Davidson (M.A.) and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Special Issue in English on Rafael Karsten written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Made in God s Image written by Regis A. Duffy and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Catholic Church in its social teaching has consistently rooted its mission in the dignity of the human person created in the image of God. For three years Catholic scholars from various disciplines participated in a seminar on human dignity. The fruits of their conversation are presented in this engaging and readable collection." "Ideal for college courses on religious and social issues or adult education groups, the essays in this volume are also useful for personal study."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Ritual written by Catherine M. Bell and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine Bell provides a practical introduction to ritual and its study with comprehensive overviews of the most influential theories of religion and ritual. The book examines the major categories of ritual activity.
Download or read book Shamanism 2 volumes written by Mariko Namba Walter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.
Download or read book A History of Religion in 51 2 Objects written by S. Brent Plate and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar explores the importance of physical objects and sensory experience in the practice of religion. A History of Religion in 5½ Objects takes a fresh and much-needed approach to the study of that contentious yet vital area of human culture: religion. Arguing that religion must be understood in the first instance as deriving from rudimentary human experiences, from lived, embodied practices, S. Brent Plate asks us to put aside, for the moment, questions of belief and abstract ideas. Instead, beginning with the desirous, incomplete human body, he asks us to focus on five ordinary objects—stones, incense, drums, crosses, and bread—with which we connect in our pursuit of religious meaning and fulfillment. As Plate considers each of these objects, he explores how the world’s religious traditions have put each of them to different uses throughout the millennia. Religion, it turns out, has as much to do with our bodies as our beliefs. Maybe even more.
Download or read book Plagues Priests and Demons written by Daniel T. Reff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on anthropology, religious studies, history, and literary theory, Plagues, Priests, and Demons explores significant parallels in the rise of Christianity in the late Roman empire and colonial Mexico. Evidence shows that new forms of infectious disease devastated the late Roman empire and Indian America, respectively, contributing to pagan and Indian interest in Christianity. Christian clerics and monks in early medieval Europe, and later Jesuit missionaries in colonial Mexico, introduced new beliefs and practices as well as accommodated indigenous religions, especially through the cult of the saints. The book is simultaneously a comparative study of early Christian and later Spanish missionary texts. Similarities in the two literatures are attributed to similar cultural-historical forces that governed the 'rise of Christianity' in Europe and the Americas.
Download or read book Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia written by Thomas A. Gregor and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-11-01 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great riddles of cultural history is the remarkable parallel that exists between the peoples of Amazonia and those of Melanesia. Although the two regions are separated by half a world in distance and at least 40,000 years of history, their cultures nonetheless reveal striking similarities in the areas of sex and gender. In both Amazonia and Melanesia, male-female differences infuse social organization and self-conception. They are the core of religion, symbolism, and cosmology, and they permeate ideas about body imagery, procreation, growth, men's cults, and rituals of initiation. The contributors to this innovative volume illuminate the various ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized, shaping subjective experiences common to entire cultural regions, and beyond. Through comparison of the life ways of Melanesia and Amazonia the authors expand the study of gender, as well as the comparative method in anthropology, in new and rewarding directions.
Download or read book Bibliography of Japanese New Religious Movements written by Peter B Clarke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing some 1500 entries, this new bibliography will be widely welcomed for its comprehensive brief, and for the sub-section profiling principal NRMs convering history, beliefs and practices, main publications, braches worldwide and membership.
Download or read book Bibliography of Japanese New Religions with Annotations and an Introduction to Japanese New Religions at Home and Abroad written by Peter Bernard Clarke and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing some 1500 entries, this new bibliography will be widely welcomed for its comprehensive brief, and for the sub-section profiling principal NRMs convering history, beliefs and practices, main publications, braches worldwide and membership.
Download or read book The Peoples of the Caribbean written by Nicholas J. Saunders and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-12-16 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true "first," this encyclopedia is the only comprehensive guide ever published on the archaeology and traditional culture of the Caribbean. In The Peoples of the Caribbean, archaeologist Nicholas J. Saunders assembles for the first time a comprehensive sourcebook on the archaeology, folklore, and mythology of the entire region, charting a story 7,000 years in the making. Drawing on decades of study in the Caribbean and South America, Saunders explores landmark archaeological sites, such as Caguana in Puerto Rico, with its ceremonial architecture and ballcourts, and plantation sites, such as Jamaica's Drax Hall. The author dives into the underwater archaeology of Spanish treasure galleons and untangles stories of cannibalism, zombies, and hallucinogenic snuffing rituals. He examines the impact of key Europeans, such as Christopher Columbus, and introduces readers to the native people, such as the Arawak, who welcomed them. Bringing the story up-to-date, Saunders chronicles the struggle of the indigenous people, from the Caribs of Dominica to the Taíno of the Dominican Republic, trying to reclaim and revitalize their historical cultural identity.
Download or read book The Imbalance of Power written by Marc Brightman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amerindian societies have an iconic status in classical political thought. For Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau, the native American ‘state of nature’ operates as a foil for the European polity. Challenging this tradition, The Imbalance of Power demonstrates ethnographically that the Carib speaking indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of ‘simple’ political units with ‘egalitarian’ political ideologies and ‘harmonious’ relationships with nature. Marc Brightman builds a persuasive and original theory of Amerindian politics: far from balanced and egalitarian, Carib societies are rife with tension and difference; but this imbalance conditions social dynamism and a distinctive mode of cohesion. The Imbalance of Power is based on the author’s fieldwork in partnership with Vanessa Grotti, who is working on a companion volume entitled Living with the Enemy: First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia.
