Religious and Social Ritual

Religious and Social Ritual
Author: Michael Bjerknes Aune
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780791428252

Examines particular rituals (social and religious) as a special kind of cultural performance or interaction in a wide variety of traditions and locations.

Understanding Religious Ritual

Understanding Religious Ritual
Author: John P. Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1136889914

Although numerous studies of religious rituals have been conducted by religious studies scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, it is rare to find a work that brings scholars from different disciplines together to discuss the similarities and differences in their research. This book represents contributions by leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this topic. The goals of the chapters are to consider where the field currently stands in understanding religious rituals and what novel ideas can improve our knowledge about these practices; and furnish innovative applications of theory by discussing particular examples which are drawn from the authors’ fieldwork. The chapters cover Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic rituals, thus providing a view of how ritual practices vary across the globe, but also how they share some important characteristics.

Culture, Mind, and Brain

Culture, Mind, and Brain
Author: Laurence J. Kirmayer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 683
Release: 2020-09-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1108580572

Recent neuroscience research makes it clear that human biology is cultural biology - we develop and live our lives in socially constructed worlds that vary widely in their structure values, and institutions. This integrative volume brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from the human, social, and biological sciences to explore culture, mind, and brain interactions and their impact on personal and societal issues. Contributors provide a fresh look at emerging concepts, models, and applications of the co-constitution of culture, mind, and brain. Chapters survey the latest theoretical and methodological insights alongside the challenges in this area, and describe how these new ideas are being applied in the sciences, humanities, arts, mental health, and everyday life. Readers will gain new appreciation of the ways in which our unique biology and cultural diversity shape behavior and experience, and our ongoing adaptation to a constantly changing world.

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity
Author: Roy A. Rappaport
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 566
Release: 1999-03-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780521296908

Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Barry Stephenson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199943583

Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Dynamics of Changing Rituals

The Dynamics of Changing Rituals
Author: Jens Kreinath
Publisher: New York : P. Lang
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion and sociology
ISBN:

Most ritual participants claim that their rituals have been the same since time immemorial. Citing recent research in ritual studies, this book illustrates how, on the contrary, rituals are often subject to dynamic changes. When do rituals change? When is the change accidental and when is it on purpose? Are certain kinds of rituals more stable or unstable than others? Which elements of rituals are liable to change and which are relatively stable? Who has the power to change rituals? Who decides to accept a change or not? The Dynamics of Changing Rituals attempts to address these questions within this new field of ritual studies.

Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion

Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion
Author: Matt J. Rossano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2020-10-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000175952

This book explores the role of ritual in social life, human evolution, and religion. It explains the functions and purpose of varied rituals across the world by arguing they are mechanisms of ‘resource management’, providing a descriptive tool for understanding rituals and generating predictions about ritual survival. By showing how rituals have resulted from the need to cultivate social resources necessary to sustain cooperative groups, Rossano presents a unique examination of the function of rituals and how they cultivate, mobilize, and direct psychological resources. Rossano examines rituals from a diverse range of historical contexts, including the Greco-Romans, Soviet Russians, and those in ‘crisis cults’. The book shows how rituals address societal and community problems by cultivating three psychological resources – commitment to communal values, goodwill (both of humans and supernatural agents) and social support or social capital. Holding communities together in the face of threat, disaster, or apathy is one of ritual’s primary functions, and the author describes how our ancestors used ritual to become the highly social, inter-dependent primate that is Homo sapiens. Including examples from all over the world and providing detailed descriptions of both past and current ritual practices, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, sociology, religion, anthropology, and sociology.

Religious and Social Ritual

Religious and Social Ritual
Author: Michael B. Aune
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1996-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780791428269

Examines particular rituals (social and religious) as a special kind of cultural performance or interaction in a wide variety of traditions and locations.

The Problem of Ritual Efficacy

The Problem of Ritual Efficacy
Author: William Sax
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2010-01-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199742367

How do rituals work? Although this is one of the first questions that people everywhere ask about rituals, little has been written explicitly on the topic. In The Problem of Ritual Efficacy, nine scholars address this issue, ranging across the fields of history, anthropology, medicine, and biblical studies. For "modern" people, the very notion of ritual efficacy is suspicious because rituals are widely thought of as merely symbolic or expressive, so that - by definition - they cannot be efficacious. Nevertheless people in many cultures assume that rituals do indeed "work," and when we take a closer look at who makes claims for ritual efficacy (and who disputes such claims), we learn a great deal about the social and historical contexts of such debates. Moving from the pre-modern era-in which the notion of ritual efficacy was not particularly controversial-into the skeptical present, the authors address a set of debates between positivists, natural scientists, and religious skeptics on the one side, and interpretive social scientists, phenomenologists, and religious believers on the other. Some contributors advance a particular theory of ritual efficacy while others ask whether the question makes any sense at all. This path-breaking interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to readers in anthropology, history, religious studies, humanities and the social sciences broadly defined, and makes an important contribution to the larger conversation about what ritual does and why it matters to think about such things.

Religious Interaction Ritual

Religious Interaction Ritual
Author: Scott Draper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Religion and sociology
ISBN: 9781498576291

This book is a microsociological study of religious practice, based on fieldwork with Conservative Jews, Bible Belt Muslims, white Baptists, black Baptists, Buddhist meditators, and Latino Catholics. In each case, the author scrutinizes how a congregation's ritual strategies help or hinder their efforts to achieve a transformative spiritual encounter, an intense feeling that becomes the basis of their most fundamental understandings of reality. The book shows how these transformative spiritual encounters routinely depend on issues that can seem rather mundane by comparison, such as where the sanctuary's entrance is located, how many misprints end up in the church bulletin, or how long the preacher continues to preach beyond lunchtime. The spirit responds to other dynamics, as well, such as how congregations collectively imagine outsiders, or how they talk about ideas like individualism and patriarchy. Building on provocative theories from sociologists such as mile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Randall Collins, and Anne Warfield Rawls, this book shows how "interaction ritual theory" opens compelling new pathways for sociological scholarship on religion. Micro-level specifics from fieldwork in Texas are supplemented with large-scale survey analysis of a wide array of religious organizations from across the United States.