PDF-(BOOK)-Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text

In this important scholarly and wideranging text Brian Morris provides a lucid outline of the nature of the explanations of religious phenomena offered by such great thinkers as Hegel Marx and Weber In doing so he also unravels the many theoretical strategies in the study of religion that have been developed and explored by later anthropologists Besides discussing the classical authors and the debates surrounding their work Morris presents perceptive accounts of more contemporary scholars such as Jung Malinowski LeviStrauss Geertz and Godelier Written from the standpoint of critical sympathy and free of jargon this book is an invaluable guide to the writings on religion of all the major figures in anthropology. By Adam Rosseau, . Writing Consultant. Edited by the UWC Staff. Table of Contents. Determining Style. Doctrinal/Theological Papers. Christian History Papers. Exegetical Papers. Formatting a Religion Paper. 73 Anthropological Notebooks, XVII/1, 2011 stantial research evidence to back it up and it is used as a passe partout tool for referring to auto-critical thought and works. Re�exivity is an By Adam Rosseau, . Writing Consultant. Edited by the UWC Staff. Table of Contents. Determining Style. Doctrinal/Theological Papers. Christian History Papers. Exegetical Papers. Formatting a Religion Paper. Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Research Award 2004 Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University Program Fellow, 2004-2005 Academic Year Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows, Princeton University 199 Drawing on expertise from various fields, this ground-breaking volume of twelve chapters explores the potential of a graphic anthropology to change the way we think. Along the way a team of authors from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia contribute to key debates on what happens in making, the relation between design and performance, how people acquire bodily skills, the place of movement in human self-awareness, the relation between walking and imagination, and the perception of time. Religious capacity is a highly elaborate, neurocognitive human trait that has a solid evolutionary foundation. This book uses a multidisciplinary approach to describe millions of years of biological innovations that eventually give rise to the modern trait and its varied expression in humanity\'s many religions. The authors present a scientific model and a central thesis that the brain organs, networks, and capacities that allowed humans to survive physically also gave our species the ability to create theologies, find sustenance in religious practice, and use religion to support the social group. Yet, the trait of religious capacity remains non-obligatory, like reading and mathematics. The individual can choose not to use it.The approach relies on research findings in nine disciplines, including the work of countless neuroscientists, paleoneurologists, archaeologists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists.This is a cutting-edge examination of the evolutionary origins of humanity\'s interaction with the supernatural. It will be of keen interest to academics working in Religious Studies, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, and Psychology. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History, Seventh Edition, presents a selection of critical essays in anthropology from 1860 to the present day. Classic authors such as Marx, Durkheim, Boas, Radcliffe-Brown, Benedict, Rappaport, Geertz, and Turner are joined by contemporary thinkers including Das, Ortner, Kwiatkowski, and Mattingly. What sets McGee and Warms\'s text apart from other collections are its introductions, footnotes, and index. Detailed introductions examine critical developments in theory, introduce key people, and discuss historical and personal influences on theorists. In extensive footnotes, the editors provide commentary that puts the writing in historical and cultural context, defines unusual terms, translates non-English phrases, identifies references to other scholars and their works, and offers paraphrases and summaries of complex passages. The notes identify and provide background information on hundreds of scholars and concepts important in the development of anthropology. This makes the essays more accessible to both students and current day scholars. An extensive index makes this book an invaluable reference tool. NEW TO THIS EDITION ?Zora Neale Hurston: From Of Mules and Men (1935) ?Roy Rappaport: Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among New Guinea People (1967) ?James P. Spradley: A Bucket Full of Tramps (1970) ?Eric R. Wolf: Facing Power--Old Insights, New Questions (1990) ?Tom Boellstorff: The Emergence of Political Homophobia in Indonesia: Masculinity and National Belonging (2004) ?Lynn Kwiatkowski: Feminist Anthropology: Approaching Domestic Violence in Northern Viet Nam (2016) ?Veena Das: Engaging with the Life of the Other: Love and Everyday Life (2010) ?Cheryl Mattingly: Luck, Friendship, and the Narrative Self (2014) The sixth edition of this market-leading introduction to anthropological theory offers 43 seminal essays from 1860 through the present day, including six new essays from Kroeber, Benedict, Spradley, Wardlow, Ortner, and Gomberg-Munoz. Accessible introductions and commentary provide necessary background information and historical context of each article. This edition also features a new timeline and recommended additional readings. Presenting a selection of critical essays in anthropology from 1860 to the current day, this sixth edition of Anthropological Theory includes classic authors such as Tylor, Marx, Boas, Malinowski, Foucault, Turner, and Geertz as well as contemporary thinkers such as Appadurai, Abu-Lughod, and Bourgois. Most essays are reprinted without abridgement. Those that are shortened include notes explaining how much and what was removed. What sets McGee and Warms\' text apart from other readers are its introductions, footnotes, and index. Detailed introductions examine critical developments in theory, introduce key people and discuss historical and personal influences on theorists. In extensive footnotes the editors provide commentary that puts the writing in historical and cultural context, defines unusual terms, translates non-English phrases, identifies references to other scholars and their works, and offers paraphrases and summaries of complex passages. The notes identify and provide background information on hundreds of scholars and concepts important in the development of anthropology. This makes the essays more accessible to both students and current day scholars. An extensive index makes this book an invaluable reference tool. Drawing on expertise from various fields, this ground-breaking volume of twelve chapters explores the potential of a graphic anthropology to change the way we think. Along the way a team of authors from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia contribute to key debates on what happens in making, the relation between design and performance, how people acquire bodily skills, the place of movement in human self-awareness, the relation between walking and imagination, and the perception of time. Spanning many different epochs and varieties of religious experience, this book develops a new approach to religion and its role in human history. The authors look across a range of religious phenomena-from ancestor worship to totemism, shamanism, and worldwide modern religions-to offer a new explanation of the evolutionary success of religious behaviors. Their book is more empirical and verifiable than most previous books on evolution and religion because they develop an approach that removes guesswork about beliefs in the supernatural, focusing instead on the behaviors of individuals. The result is a pioneering look at how and why natural selection has favored religious behaviors throughout history. What are you drawn to like, to watch, or even to binge? What are you free to consume, and what do you become through consumption? These questions of desire and value, Kathryn Lofton argues, are questions for the study of religion. In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney Spears and the Kardashians, corporate culture and Goldman Sachs, Lofton shows the conceptual levers of religion in thinking about social modes of encounter, use, and longing. Wherever we see people articulate their dreams of and for the world, wherever we see those dreams organized into protocols, images, manuals, and contracts, we glimpse what the word “religion” allows us to describe and understand. With great style and analytical acumen, Lofton offers the ultimate guide to religion and consumption in our capitalizing times.   At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century people in the United States live in a scary and confusing post-truth era of disinformation, fake news, counter-knowledge, weaponized lies, conspiracy theories, magical thinking and sheer irrationalism. In this intellectual climate where many people lack the rudimentary skills to distinguish between contending claims to knowledge or differentiate between fact and opinion, there is a proliferation of purveyors of supernaturalism, pseudoscience and alternative forms of knowledge whose ideas are an affront to the intelligence and sensibilities of rational people. At the same time, here and around the world oppressive religious fundamentalism and violence are on the rise. The merchants of superstition and paranormalism almost in unison are broadcasting with bluster and hubris that science is now defunct and are offering their own truths and ways of knowing as better substitutes. Even our highest government officials are flagrantly declaring that it is impossible to distinguish between fact and opinion, that for every fact there is an alternative fact, and that truth is whatever people want it to be.By posing a direct challenge to science and rationality, the advocates of supernatural and paranormal modes of thought have made their own central epistemological and ontological premises legitimate subjects for critical scrutiny in accordance with the tradition of systematic skepticism. Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal and Pseudoscience provides a comprehensive rejoinder to the challenges posed to science, scientific anthropology, evolutionary theory and rationality. Moreover, scientific anthropological answers are offered for several important questions: Why do humans have the proclivity for the supernatural and the paranormal thinking? Why has humanity remained shackled to sets of ideas inherited from a violent past that have no basis in reality, bestow an illusionary solace, inspire endless cruelties and fervent hatreds, and have come at a high cost? Why have ancient superstitions been maintained as sacred, inviolate truths while other aspects of the archaic belief systems of which they were a part have long been discarded? Why have not humans outgrown religion and paranormal beliefs?This study draws upon the author\'s scientific anthropological background and ethnographic field research of supernatural and paranormal beliefs and practices in several cultures over the course of the last 30 years. It also relies upon the works of numerous skeptics critical historians scientific anthropologists cognitive, evolutionary, experimental and anomalistic psychologists philosophers of science scientists in various fields and many theologians. In the nineteenth century, science and technology developed a close and continuing relationship. The most important advancements in physics—the science of energy and the theory of the electromagnetic field—were deeply rooted in the new technologies of the steam engine, the telegraph, and electric power and light. Bruce J. Hunt here explores how the leading technologies of the industrial age helped reshape modern physics.This period marked a watershed in how human beings exerted power over the world around them. Sweeping changes in manufacturing, transportation, and communications transformed the economy, society, and daily life in ways never before imagined. At the same time, physical scientists made great strides in the study of energy, atoms, and electromagnetism. Hunt shows how technology informed science and vice versa, examining the interaction between steam technology and the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics, for example, and that between telegraphy and the rise of electrical science.Hunt’s groundbreaking introduction to the history of physics points to the shift to atomic and quantum physics. It closes with a brief look at Albert Einstein’s work at the Swiss patent office and the part it played in his formulation of relativity theory. Hunt translates his often-demanding material into engaging and accessible language suitable for undergraduate students of the history of science and technology. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project.The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise.Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, Competing with the Soviets looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists’ choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.