The Problem Of Ritual Efficacy

Author : William Sax,Johannes Quack,Jan Weinhold
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2010-01-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0199742367

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The Problem of Ritual Efficacy by William Sax,Johannes Quack,Jan Weinhold Pdf

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.

Author : William Sturman Sax,Jan Weinhold
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Ritual
ISBN : 0199852685

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The Problem of Ritual Efficacy by William Sturman Sax,Jan Weinhold Pdf

This collection of ten contributed essays explicitly addresses the question of ritual efficacy. The authors do not aspire to answer the question 'how do rituals work?' in a simplistic fashion, but rather to show how complex the question is.

Author : Barry Stephenson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2015-01-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199943593

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Ritual: A Very Short Introduction by Barry Stephenson Pdf

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.

Author : Matt Tomlinson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2014-02-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199341153

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Ritual Textuality by Matt Tomlinson Pdf

A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve-or fail to achieve-their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, Ritual Textuality presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries' insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization"-in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts-while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.

Author : Michael David Kaulana Ing
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2012-11-15
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780199924912

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The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism by Michael David Kaulana Ing Pdf

Michael Ing's The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism is the first monograph in English about the Liji--a text that purports to be the writings of Confucius' immediate disciples, and part of the earliest canon of Confucian texts called ''The Five Classics,'' included in the canon several centuries before the Analects. Ing uses his analysis of the Liji to show how early Confucians coped with situations where their rituals failed to achieve their intended aims. In contrast to most contemporary interpreters of Confucianism, Ing demonstrates that early Confucian texts can be read as arguments for ambiguity in ritual failure.

Author : Camille Wingo
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Psychology, Religious
ISBN : 159460973X

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Pictures Making Beliefs by Camille Wingo Pdf

One question which yet bedevils the study of ritual is this: "How are rituals ever efficacious?" Or, put another way, "How is anyone ever persuaded that a ritual does or makes what it claims to do or make?" This book addresses the question by proposing a cognitive model for ritual as information processors (participants) instantiating information processes (rituals). Ritual participants use cognitive technologies to create cultural objects. A cognitive technology is a change we make in the environment to bolster our native cognitive skills; shopping lists are cognitive technologies to bolster memory. A cultural object is a thing in the world that is what it is by virtue of the combination of what it is physically and a culture's agreement on what it is; biscuits in the U.K. and cookies in the U.S. are cultural objects. Rituals, the book proposes, are effective inasmuch as they make or manipulate cultural objects. Pictures Making Beliefs expands its proposal by comparing rituals to kindred cultural technologies: pictures and make-believe. The premise is that the study of ritual as cognition can be expanded, enlightened and improved by the use of concepts and methods prevalent in investigations of the cognitive underpinnings of these kindred cultural achievements. From these comparisons emerges the idea of worlds as a quasi-technical explanation of pictures, make-believe, the here and now and rituals as information streams flowing through body, brain and environment. Finally, the book situates the cognitive technological model within the wider landscape of religious studies by placing it within a chain of correlations from lower level descriptions (e.g. in neuro-science) to the higher levels (e.g. in sociology) by presenting the objects created and manipulated in ritual as essentially contested. The claim is that, in the performance of rituals, participants structure the world in ways to create boundless and obscure objects whose proper function in the world outside their ritual relies upon their being, in their essence, contestable. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "The author writes in a skillful and fluid style, and the book is remarkably accessible given its level of technical and scholarly information. This is not a book about debunking religious faith; it attempts to explain how rituals work, not why they do. Its goal is to describe how people's minds operate on levels from neurobiology to group social behavior. The book is interesting, unusual, strongly researched, and well written." -- Book News, Inc. (December 2012)

Author : David J. Mozina
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824883416

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Knotting the Banner by David J. Mozina Pdf

In the hills of China’s central Hunan province, an anxious young apprentice officiates over a Daoist ritual known as the Banner Rite to Summon Sire Yin. Before a crowd of masters, relatives, and villagers—and the entire pantheon of gods and deceased masters ritually invited to witness the event—he seeks to summon Celestial Lord Yin Jiao, the ferocious deity who supplies the exorcistic power to protect and heal bodies and spaces from illness and misfortune. If the apprentice cannot bring forth the deity, the rite is considered a failure and the ordination suspended: His entire professional career hangs in the balance before it even begins. This richly textured study asks how the Banner Rite works or fails to work in its own terms. How do the cosmological, theological, and anthropological assumptions ensconced in the ritual itself account for its own efficacy or inefficacy? Weaving together ethnography, textual analysis, photography, and film, David J. Mozina invites readers into the religious world of ritual masters in today’s south China. He shows that the efficacy of rituals like the Banner Rite is driven by the ability of a ritual master to form an intimate relationship with exorcistic deities like Yin Jiao, which is far from guaranteed. Mozina reveals the ways in which such ritual claims are rooted in the great liturgical movements of the Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368) and how they are performed these days amid the social and economic pressures of rural life in the post-Mao era. Written for students and scholars of Daoism and Chinese religion, Knotting the Banner will also appeal to anthropologists and comparative religionists, especially those working on ritual.

Author : Dušan Zupka
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004326392

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Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty (1000 - 1301) by Dušan Zupka Pdf

In Rituals and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty (1000 - 1301) Dušan Zupka examines rituals as means of symbolic communication in medieval political culture focusing on the Hungarian Kingdom under the rule of the Árpáds.

Author : Jesper Sørensen,Anders Klostergaard Petersen
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2021-05-03
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004447585

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Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Divination and Magic by Jesper Sørensen,Anders Klostergaard Petersen Pdf

In Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Divination and Magic ten leading scholars of religion provide up-to-date investigations into these classic domains from historical, anthropological, cognitive, philosophical and theoretical perspectives.

Author : Ronald L. Grimes
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780195301427

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The Craft of Ritual Studies by Ronald L. Grimes Pdf

Readership: Students and scholars of ritual studies, religious studies, anthropology

Author : Luc Sala
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 8182500613

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Ritual by Luc Sala Pdf

Author : Harish Naraindas,Johannes Quack,William S. Sax
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2014-05-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781782383093

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Asymmetrical Conversations by Harish Naraindas,Johannes Quack,William S. Sax Pdf

Ideas about health are reinforced by institutions and their corresponding practices, such as donning a patient's gown in a hospital or prostrating before a healing shrine. Even though we are socialized into regarding such ideologies as "natural" and unproblematic, we sometimes seek to bypass, circumvent, or even transcend the dominant ideologies of our cultures as they are manifested in the institutions of health care. The contributors to this volume describe such contestations and circumventions of health ideologies, and the blurring of therapeutic boundaries, on the basis of case studies from India, the South Asian Diaspora, and Europe, focusing on relations between body, mind, and spirit in a variety of situations. The result is not always the "live and let live" medical pluralism that is described in the literature.

Author : Risto Uro,Juliette Day,Rikard Roitto,Richard E. DeMaris
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
Page : 753 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780198747871

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The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual by Risto Uro,Juliette Day,Rikard Roitto,Richard E. DeMaris Pdf

Scholars of religion have long assumed that ritual and belief constitute the fundamental building blocks of religious traditions and that these two components of religion are interrelated and interdependent in significant ways. Generations of New Testament and Early Christian scholars have produced detailed analyses of the belief systems of nascent Christian communities, including their ideological and political dimensions, but have by and large ignored ritual as an important element of early Christian religion and as a factor contributing to the rise and the organization of the movement. In recent years, however, scholars of early Christianity have begun to use ritual as an analytical tool for describing and explaining Christian origins and the early history of the movement. Such a development has created a momentum toward producing a more comprehensive volume on the ritual world of Early Christianity employing advances made in the field of ritual studies. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual gives a manifold account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the end of the fifth century. The volume introduces relevant theories and approaches; central topics of ritual life in the cultural world of early Christianity; and important Christian ritual themes and practices in emerging Christian groups and factions.

Author : William S Sax
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2009-01-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199714674

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God of Justice by William S Sax Pdf

In God of Justice, anthropologist William S. Sax offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of cursing, black magic, and ritual healing in the Central Himalayas of North India. Based on ten years' ethnographic fieldwork, God of Justice shows how these practices are part of a moral system based on the principle of family unity.

Author : István Keul
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 405 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2017-02-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004337183

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Consecration Rituals in South Asia by István Keul Pdf

The essays in the volume Consecration Rituals in South Asia address the ritual procedures that accompany the installation of temple images in Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain contexts, in various traditions and historical periods.