Books in the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion series

This innovative book explores the role of evangelical religion in the conflict in Northern Ireland, including how it may contribute to a peaceful political transition. Ganiel offers an original perspective on the role of a 'strong' religion in conflict transformation, and the misunderstood role of evangelicalism in the process.

Through his ethnographic study of the fishermen and their religious beliefs, Webster speaks to larger debates about religious radicalism, materiality, economy, language, and the symbolic. These debates also call into question assumptions about the decline of religion in modern industrial societies.

Since 1990, direct sales have attracted over two million recruits in Mexico and are characterized by a belief in the power of positive thinking. Through an ethnographic portrait, Peter S. Cahn demonstrates that the quasi-religious commission of self-empowerment accounts for the explosive growth of commission-based sales in the developing world.

This is a literary and anthropological analysis of historical narratives that illuminate regional notions of cosmological kingship, cosmopolitan notions of Islamic law and mysticism, and global notions of the modern bureaucratic state. These notions have coexisted in Southeast Asia since the Sixteenth century and influence politics to this day.

The Nigerian diaspora is now world-wide, and when Yoruba travel, they take with them their religious organizations. As a member of the Cherubim and Seraphim church in London for over thirty years, anthropologist Hermione Harris explores a world of prayer, spirit possession, and divination through dreams and visions.

Communitas is inspired fellowship; a group's pleasure in sharing common experiences; being 'in the zone' - as in music, sport, and work; the sense felt by a group when their life together takes on full meaning. The experience of communitas, almost beyond strict definition and with almost endless variations, often appears unexpectedly.

How have the Aluni Valley Duna people of Papua New Guinea responded to the challenges of colonial and post-colonial changes that have entered their lifeworld since the middle of the Twentieth-Century?

In October of 1943, the Danish resistance rescued almost all of the Jews in Copenhagen from roundups by the occupying Nazis. This book explores the questions that such inclusion raises for the Danish Jews, and what their answers can tell us about the meaning of religion, ethnicity and community in modern society.

In The Weight of the Past , Michael Lambek explores the complex ways that history shapes, constrains, and enables daily life.

Exactly where is the common ground between religion and medicine in phenomena described as 'religious healing?' In what sense is the human body a cultural phenomenon and not merely a biological entity?

Thomas Csordas's eloquent analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, part of the contemporary cultural and media phenomenon known as conservative Christianity, embraces one of the primary charges of anthropology as a discipline: to stimulate critical reflection by making the exotic seem familiar and the familiar appear strange.

In this richly contextualized study, Liana Chua explores how a largely Christian Bidayuh community has been reconfiguring its relationship to its old animist rituals through the trope and politics of "culture."

Hasinoff brings the untold history of the World in Boston of 1911, 'America's First Great Missionary Exposition,' to light, focusing on how the material culture of missions shaped domestic interactions with evangelism, Christianity, and the consumption of ethnological knowledge.

Many voices clamor to be heard in debates about whether shamans cure, and whether shamanic spirituality is worth continuing or recovering in the twenty-first century. This book provides newinsights into the fascinating resurgence of shamanism through an exploration of the politicalrepression of religion and its transcendence

In three congregations, representing three distinct social locations, Howell goes beneath the surface to argue that even with these Western forms, these Filipino Baptists are actively constructing themselves and the locality itself in terms of this global faith they have made their own.

Talk about Prayer is an experiment in writing ethnography, a commentary on a conversation with Mama Regine Tshitanda, the leader of a Charismatic prayer group (groupe de priere) in Lubumbashi (Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and members of her family in 1986. Fabian's research on expressions and practices of popular culture, including popular religion, was conducted during two visits to Katanga in 1985 and 1986. He discusses controversial issues in the study of the Global Charismatic Movement as seen at the time and gives a detailed account of the circumstances and events that led to the recorded meeting and how the ethnographic document on which this book is based was made. Central to the book is the authors understanding of anthropology of religion, in that research should be based on communicative ethnography, an approach that involves confrontation between researchers and interlocutors as well between their views of the world. Talk about Prayer is one such argument for keeping open the debate on a critical stance toward religion.

In recent years, millions of people have joined churches such as the Seventh-day Adventist which prosper enormously in different parts of the world. Eva Keller argues that the key attraction of the church lies in the excitement of study, argument and intellectual exploration.

Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen tells a story of a Yemeni hereditary elite which was overthrown in the 1962 revolution in North Yemen.

Ethnographers have observed Muslims nearly everywhere Islam is practiced. Varisco's analysis goes beyond the rhetoric over what Islam is to the information from ethnographic research about what Muslims say they do and actually are observed to do.

In October of 1943, the Danish resistance rescued almost all of the Jews in Copenhagen from roundups by the occupying Nazis. This book explores the questions that such inclusion raises for the Danish Jews, and what their answers can tell us about the meaning of religion, ethnicity and community in modern society.

Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book examines how the Islamic community in Java, Indonesia, is actively negotiating both modernity and tradition in the contexts of nation-building, globalisation, and a supposed clash of civilizations.

Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers.

Spirits without Borders is an ethnographic study of the transnational and multicultural expansion of Vietnam's Mother Goddess Religion and its spirit possession ritual. The work explores how and why the ritual spread from Vietnam to the US and back again and the impact of ritual transnationalism in both countries.

Based on an ethnographic study of rural Poland, this book investigates the challenges of maintaining pluralism in a religiously homogenous society. By examining a multireligious and multiethnic community, Pasieka reveals paradoxes inscribed into the practice and discourse of pluralism.

According to Max Weber, charisma is opposed to bureaucratic order. This collection reveals the limits of that formula. The contributors show how charisma is a part of cultural frameworks while retaining its ecstatic character among American and Italian Catholics, Syrian Sufis, Taiwanese Buddhists, Hassidic Jews, and Amazonian shamans, among others.

Natural disasters in Asian countries have brought global attention to the work of local Buddhist communities and groups. Here, the contributors examine local Buddhist communities and international Buddhist organizations engaged in a variety of relief work in countries including India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan.

This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia-where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft.

How have the Aluni Valley Duna people of Papua New Guinea responded to the challenges of colonial and post-colonial changes that have entered their lifeworld since the middle of the Twentieth-Century?

Natural disasters in Asian countries have brought global attention to the work of local Buddhist communities and groups. Here, the contributors examine local Buddhist communities and international Buddhist organizations engaged in a variety of relief work in countries including India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan.