Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology of Religion

The Durkheimians have traditionally been understood as positivist, secular thinkers, fully within the Enlightenment project of limitless reason and progress. In a radical revision of this view, this book persuasively argues that the core members of the Durkheimian circle (Durkheim himself, Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert and Robert Hertz) are significantly more complicated than this. Through his extensive analysis of large volumes of correspondence as well as historical and macro-sociological mappings of the intellectual and social worlds in which the Durkheimian project emerged, the author...

From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion. Taking a 'senses' approach, Hume's engaging account takes into consideration the look, smell, feel, touch and sound of religious apparel, the 'smells and bells' of dress and its accoutrements, as well as the emotions evoked by donning religious garb.

The book's global perspective provides wide-ranging, yet detailed, coverage of religious dress, from the...

From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion. Taking a 'senses' approach, Hume's engaging account takes into consideration the look, smell, feel, touch and sound of religious apparel, the 'smells and bells' of dress and its accoutrements, as well as the emotions evoked by donning religious garb.

The book's global perspective provides wide-ranging, yet detailed, coverage of religious dress, from the...

What does it mean to be a Western Buddhist? For the predominantly Anglo-Australianaffiliates of two Western Buddhist centres in Australia, the author proposes ananswer to this question, and finds support for it from interviews and her ownparticipant-observation experience.Practitioners'prior experiences of experimentation with spiritual groups and practices--andtheir experiences of participation, practice and self-transformation--areexamined with respect to their roles in practitioners' appropriation of theBuddhist worldview, and their subsequent commitment to the path...

The opposition between 'religion' and 'modernity' has long held the status of a self-evident truth. Recently, however, there has been a growing realization that religion has not died out and may be more compatible with modern society than previously assumed.This development is particularly striking in France where laicite has long been the official doctrine.

How did religion become opposed to the secular and modern? If distinctions between sacred and secular are less adequate than commonly believed, how do these two categories interact?Addressing these questions, this book explores...