Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods

Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods
Author: Ina Wunn
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 366252757X

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.

Evolutionary Processes in the Natural History of Religion

Evolutionary Processes in the Natural History of Religion
Author: Hansjörg Hemminger
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2021-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3030704084

The study of religion by the humanities and social sciences has become receptive for an evolutionary perspective. Some proposals model the evolution of religion in Darwinian terms, or construct a synergy between biological and non-Darwinian processes. The results, however, have not yet become truly interdisciplinary. The biological theory of evolution in form of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) is only sparsely represented in theories published so far by scholars of religion. Therefore this book reverses the line of view and asks how their results assort with evolutionary biology: How can the subject area “religion” integrated into behavioral biology? How is theory building affected by the asymmetry between the scarce empirical knowledge of prehistoric religion, and the body of knowledge about extant and historic religions? How does hominin evolution in general relate to the evolution of religion? Are there evolutionary pre-adaptations? Subsequent versions of evolutionary biology from the original Darwinism to EES are used in interdisciplinary constructs. Can they be integrated into a comprehensive theory? The biological concept most often used is co-evolution, in form of a gene-culture co-evolution. However, the term denotes a process different from biological co-evolution. Important EES concepts do not appear in present models of religious evolution: e.g. neutral evolution, evolutionary drift, evolutionary constraints etc. How to include them into an interdisciplinary approach? Does the cognitive science of religion (CSR) harmonize with behavioral biology and the brain sciences? Religion as part of human culture is supported by a complex, multi-level behavioral system. How can it be modeled scientifically? The book addresses graduate students and researchers concerned about the scientific study of religion, and biologist interested in interdisciplinary theory building in the field.

Chieftains into Ancestors

Chieftains into Ancestors
Author: David Faure
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0774823704

While official Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint, Chieftains into Ancestors describes the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture in the culturally diverse southwestern region of China. Contemplating the rhetorical question of how one can begin to rewrite the story of a conquered people whose past was never transcribed in the first place, the authors combine anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis to build a new regional history – one that recognizes the ethnic, religious, and gendered transformations that took place in China’s nation-building process.

The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology

The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology
Author: Jay R. Feierman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-09-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000704858

This book takes a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary approach to religion, religiosity and theology from their earliest beginnings to the present day. It uniquely brings together the natural sciences and theology to explore how religious practice emerged and developed through the four sections into which the book is organized: Evolutionary biology; Philosophical linguistics, psychology and neuroscience; Theology and Anthropology. The volume features an international panel of contributors who develop an innovative picture of religion as a culturally-created social institution; religiosity as a more personal and subjective anthropological element of people expressed through religion; and theology as the study of god. To survive in changing times, living systems — a good characterization of religion, religiosity and theology — all must adaptively evolve. This is a vital study of a rapidly burgeoning field. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies and theology as well as in the psychological, sociological, and anthropological study of religion.

Global Migration and Christian Faith

Global Migration and Christian Faith
Author: M. Daniel Carroll R.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2021-12-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172528149X

Human history is the history of migration. Never before, however, have the numbers of people on the move been so large nor the movement as global as it is today. How should Christians respond biblically, theologically, and missiologically to the myriad of daunting challenges triggered by this new worldwide reality? This volume brings together significant scholars from a variety of fields to offer fresh insights into how to engage migration. What makes this book especially unique is that the authors come from across Christian traditions, and from different backgrounds and experiences--each of whom makes an important contribution to current debates. How has the Christian church responded to migration in the past? How might the Bible orient our thinking? What new insights about God and faith surface with migration, and what new demands are placed now upon God's people in a world in so much need? Global Migration and Christian Faith points in the right direction to grapple with those questions and move forward in constructive ways.

Engendering the Buddhist State

Engendering the Buddhist State
Author: Ashley Thompson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317218191

Drawing from more than a decade of field and archival research, this monograph concerns Cambodian cultural history and historiography, with an ultimate aim of broadening and deepening bases for understanding the Cambodian Theravadin politico-cultural complex. The book takes the form of an interdisciplinary analysis of performative and representational strategies for constituting social collectivities, largely developed at Angkor. The analysis involves extended close readings of a wide range of cultural artefacts including epigraphic and manuscript texts, sculpture and ritual practices. The author proposes a critical re-evaluation of dominant paradigms of Cambodian historiography in view of engendering new histories, or hybrid histories, which make room for previously absent perspectives and voices, while developing new theoretical tools engaging with and partially derived from "indigenous" narrative practices in the broadest sense. In this history-making process the historical event is shown to never be entirely separable from its aesthetic representation. Particular attention is paid to the roles of sexual difference in such (re)constructions of history. The book presents a theory of power capable of accounting for the historical phenomena by which vernacular cultures appropriate, subvert and submit to cosmopolitan forces. It charts out a novel approach to the study of classical Southeast Asian materials, and is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Art, Religion and Philosophy, Buddhism and Southeast Asian History.

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics
Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 26924
Release: 2005-11-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0080547842

The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field

Land of Our Fathers

Land of Our Fathers
Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2011-04-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567551172

The biblical motif of a land divinely-promised and given to Abraham and his descendants is argued to be an ideological reflex of post-monarchic, territorial disputes between competing socio-religious groups. The important biblical motif of a Promised Land is founded upon the ancient Near Eastern concept of ancestral land: hereditary space upon which families lived, worked, died and were buried. An essential element of concept of ancestral land was the belief in the post-mortem existence of the ancestors, who were venerated with grave offerings, mortuary feasts, bone rituals and standing stones. The Hebrew Bible is littered with stories concerning these practices and beliefs, yet the specific correlation of ancestor veneration and certain biblical land claims has gone unrecognized. The book remedies this in presenting evidence for the vital and persistent impact of ancestor veneration upon land claims. It proposes that ancestor veneration, which formed a common ground in the experiences of various socio-religious groups in ancient Israel, became in the Hebrew Bible an ideological battlefield upon which claims to the land were won and lost.