Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion

Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781441185693
• eBook ISBN:
  9781623568146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Ritual has emerged as a major focus of academic interest. As a concept, the idea of ritual integrates the study of behavior both within and beyond the domain of religion. Ritual can be both secular and religious in character. There is renewed interest in questions such as: Why do rituals exist at all? What has been, and continues to be, their place in society? How do they change over time? Such questions exist against a backdrop of assumptions about development, modernization, and disenchantment of the world.

Written with the specific needs of students of religious studies in mind, Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion surveys the field of ritual studies, looking at it both historically within anthropology and in terms of its contemporary relevance to world events.

Table of contents

• Cover
• HalfTitle
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• About the authors
• 1 Introduction: Problems of definition
• 2 Early grand theorists
• 3 The fieldwork revolution: Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and Boas
• 4 Structure and process: Victor Turner
• 5 Ancestor worship and sacrifice: Meyer Fortes, psychological interpretations and divination
• 6 Contemporary approaches to ritual analysis
• 7 Performance and performativity
• 8 Cognitive approaches
• 9 Conclusions: Framings and values
• Appendix 1 Temple renewal rituals on Jinmen island, Taiwan
• Appendix 2 The anthropology of disasters and disaster rituals
• Bibliography and further reading
• Index