Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology of Religion

To understand comedy is to understand humanity, for the comic sense is central to what it means to be human. Nearly all the major issues with which human beings have exercised themselves are touched upon in some manner by the comic spirit. Yet education in the art of comedy and in comic appreciation is given little attention in most societies. The Spirituality of Comedy explores the wisdom of comedy and the comic answer to tragedy (in both popular and classical senses of the term). Tragedy is seen as a fundamental problem of human existence, while comedy is its counterweight and...

There is an increasing interest in religion and belief and the diverse forms these take in the contemporary world. This timely book provides a unique analysis of these issues through a discussion of the work of Marx and Weber.

Taking Max Weber's interpretations of capitalism and religion as its point of departure, Weber and the Persistence of Religion re-examines a wide range of classical and contemporary texts, including Immanuel Kant, Foucault and Jean Baudrillard, to help explain the peculiar character of religion and spirituality in mature capitalist...

Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea's (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women's lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity.

This enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious...

Religious belief is rooted in and sustained by material practice, and this book provides an extraordinary insight into how it works on the ground. David Morgan has brought together a lively group of writers from religious studies, anthropology, history of art, and other disciplines, to investigate belief in everyday practices; in the objects, images, and spaces of religious devotion and in the sensations and feelings that are the medium of experience. By avoiding mind/body dualism, the study of religion can break new ground by examining embodiment, sensation, space, and performance.

"Religious Scandals" brings together real-life controversies involving men and women of faith, from the media frenzy over the 1811 New York blasphemy case of "People v. Ruggles" that shaped American law for well over 100 years to the 2008 government raid on the fundamentalist Mormon Yearning for Zion community in Texas.

"Religious Scandals" focuses on two types of subjects: religious figures whose lapses put them at the center of scandals involving sex, money, or crime; and those who scandalized their fellow citizens by acting out according to their own religious beliefs. Together,...

This is the first comprehensive companion to the study of Daoism as a philosophical tradition. It provides a general overview of Daoist philosophy in various thinkers and texts from 6th century BCE to 5th century CE and reflects the latest academic developments in the field. It discusses theoretical and philosophical issues based on rigorous textual and historical investigations and examinations, reflecting both the ancient scholarship and modern approaches and methodologies. The themes include debates on the origin of the Daoism, the authorship and dating of the Laozi, the...