Across The Boundaries Of Belief : Contemporary Issues In The Anthropology Of Religion

ISBN-13: 9780813326955 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 428 str.

Morton Klass; Maxine K. Weisgrau

Opis

In this collection of anthropological writings drawn from many different world areas, contemporary theoretical issues and conflicts in the anthropological study of religion are explored and illustrated. The editors present these anthropological writings on religion within a larger cultural matrix by drawing upon literature exhibiting an interdisciplinary as well as global approach.The book examines religion within social, political, and historical contexts to confront theoretical and methodological questions that apply across time and borders. How do belief systems respond to conquest and the imposition of foreign values, beliefs, and practices? What happens to religion when the colonial rulers depart? What are the relationships between gender, sexuality, and religious rules and restrictions? How is gender constructed and maintained within ideological systems? How do the beliefs and practices underlying possession and trance deal with illness and death, and how do they respond to science and other belief systems? Is religion a tool or weapon of the stateor an enemy of the people? And how does religion, often erroneously perceived as changeless and constant, respond to the pressures and technologies of this rapidly changing world? Across the Boundaries of Belief examines these issues and many others.The readings derive from interdisciplinary as well as global literature, and the titles of the sections reflect the contexts within which religion is explored and portrayed in this collection: Colonialism and the Post-Colonial Legacy, Gender and Sexuality, The Healing Touch and Altered States, Religion and the State, and Changes and Continuities. The book will help students and general readers to perceive religion as a pan-human institution embedded in social structures, political systems, and historical contexts."

Spis treści

Introduction Part I: Colonialism and Postcolonial Legacies 1. Anthropologists Versus Missionaries: The Influence of Presuppositions 2. From Tupã to the Land Without Evil: The Christianization of Tupi-Guarani Cosmology 3. Shamanism and Christianity: Modern-Day Tlingit Elders Look at the Past 4. Reflections on Christianity in China Part II: Gender and Sexuality 5. Menstruation and Reproduction: An Oglala Case 6. The Domestication of Religion: The Spiritual Guardianship of Elderly Jewish Women 7. Becoming a Mujercita: Rituals, Fiestas, and Religious Discourses 8. Erotic Anthropology: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia and Beyond Part III: The Healing Touch and Altered States 9. Exorcistsy Psychiatrists, and the Problems of Possession in Northwest Madagascar 10. The Woman Who Wanted To Be Her Father: A Case Analysis of Dybbuk Possession in a Hasidic Community 11. Hypnosis and Trance Induction in the Surgeries of Brazilian Spiritist Healer-Mediums 12. Zar as Modernization in Contemporary Sudan Part IV: Religion and the State 13. Pockets Full of Mistakes: The Personal Consequences of Religious Change in a Toraja Village 14. Bandits, Beggars, and Ghosts: The Failure of State Control over Religious Interpretation in Taiwan 15. Muslim Identity and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey: The Headscarf Dispute 16. The Interpretation of Politics: A Hopi Conundrum Part V: Changes and Continuities 17. Cargoism in Irian Jaya Today 18. Transnational Popular Culture and the Global Spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement 19. On Founders and Followers: Some Factors in the Development of New Religious Movements 20. Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion

O autorze

Klass, Morton | Weisgrau, Maxine