Celebrating the diversity of indigenous nations, cultures and religions, the essays which comprise this volume discuss the musics performed by a wide variety of peoples as an integral part of their cultural traditions. These include examinations of the various styles of Maori, Inuit and Australian Aboriginal musics, and the role of music in Korean Shaman rituals. Indeed, music forms a key component of many such rituals and belief systems and examples of these are explored amongst the peoples of Uganda, Amazonia and Africa. Through analysis of these rituals and the part music plays in them,...

The relationship between law and religion has traditionally been analysed according to two basic paradigms. One has focused on the relationship between religious communities and the State (the Church/State paradigm), while the other has concentrated on the relationship between the State and the individual (the liberal-individualist or civil liberties paradigm). This book enriches the analysis of law and religion in society by emphasising a third and complementary analytical dimension involving the relationship between religious communities and religious individuals. In particular, the...

Food, Sex and Strangers offers alternative ways of thinking about what religion involves and how we might better understand it.

The Handbook of Contemporary Animism brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range of animist worldviews and practices.

Food, Sex and Strangers offers alternative ways of thinking about what religion involves and how we might better understand it.

Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity considers indigenous peoples struggles for human rights, anxieties about anthropocentric mastery of nature, neoliberal statecraft, and entrepreneurialism of the self. The book focuses on four domains - shamanism, indigenism, environmentalism and neoliberalism - in terms of interrelated historical processes and overlapping discourses. In doing so, it engages with shamanism s manifold meanings in a world increasingly sensitive to indigenous peoples practices of territoriality, increasingly concerned about humans integral relationship with natural environments,...

Animism is an important part of many religions - from Shinto, Hinduism and Buddhism to Paganism and a range of indigenous religions - which connects the spiritual and material and holds that humans might not be unique in possessing souls or in being intentional agents. Over recent decades, research into animism has broadened its scope to consider, at one end, the vibrant roles of objects in human lives and, at the other, the possible similarities between humans and other species. "The Handbook of Contemporary Animism" brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range...