Full Product Details
Author: Axel Michaels (Professor of Classical Indology, Professor of Classical Indology, University of Heidelberg)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 15.50cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.10cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780190262631
ISBN 10: 019026263
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 07 January 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
It has been evident at least since the time of Marcel Mauss that the study of ritual ought to draw more than it does on the rich indigenous tradition of ritual theory produced within Hinduism. Until now few have possessed the necessary skills to bring these fields together. Axel Michaels is a Sanskritist, a founder of the field of ethno-Indology, and the leader of a major research program within ritual studies. He is therefore ideally placed to be the confluence where Indology, South Asian ethnography, and ritual studies flow together and produce an important new synthesis. Homo Ritualis will be an essential point of reference for all three fields. --David N. Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford
Michaels's key contributions are twofold: first, he offers a unifying theory of the complex structure and variety of South Asian ritual performances in their own hermeneutical terms, and second he demonstrates that a theoretically sophisticated understanding of such rituals can make significant contributions to the field of ritual studies. * Jarrod Whitaker, Journal of Religion * Michaels's book is a positive contribution to ritual studies and to the study of Hindu ritual within the larger conversation of ritual theory. The ethno-Indological approach taken by Michaels is, furthermore, an innovative and rewarding method for the study of Hindu ritual, particularly as these two fieldsethnography and Indologyhave sometimes been seen as at odds with each other. * Adam Newman, Reading Religion *
Axel Michaels' Homo Ritualis indicates something of a mini-renaissance at the intersection of ritual studies and South Asian studies...This is the greatest achievement of Homo Ritualis to translate the contemporary field of ritual theory into digestibly South Asian terms; to pose adhikara as agency ; to place the history of Indology (from Hillebrandt to Houben) opposite textbook figures in the study of religion (from Durkheim to Lawson and McCauley). The book is worth reading simply for this exercise of cross-cultural theorizing. --Journal of the American Academy of Religion It has been evident at least since the time of Marcel Mauss that the study of ritual ought to draw more than it does on the rich indigenous tradition of ritual theory produced within Hinduism. Until now few have possessed the necessary skills to bring these fields together. Axel Michaels is a Sanskritist, a founder of the field of ethno-Indology, and the leader of a major research program within ritual studies. He is therefore ideally placed to be the confluence where Indology, South Asian ethnography, and ritual studies flow together and produce an important new synthesis. Homo Ritualis will be an essential point of reference for all three fields. --David N. Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford
Author Information
Axel Michaels is a scholar of Indology and religious studies. Since 1996, he has been Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg.
