Overview
Nancy Tatom Ammerman examines the stories Americans tell of their everyday lives, from dinner table to office and shopping mall to doctor's office, about the things that matter most to them and the routines they take for granted, and the times and places where the everyday and ordinary meet the spiritual. In addition to interviews and observation, Ammerman bases her findings on a photo elicitation exercise and oral diaries, offering a window into the presence and absence of religion and spirituality in ordinary lives and in ordinary physical and social spaces. The stories come from a diverse array of ninety-five Americans -- both conservative and liberal white Protestants, African American Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Wiccans, and people who claim no religious or spiritual proclivities -- across a range that stretches from committed religious believers to the spiritually neutral. Ammerman surveys how these people talk about what spirituality is, how they seek and find experiences they deem spiritual, and whether and how religious traditions and institutions are part of their spiritual lives.
Full Product Details
Author: Nancy Tatom Ammerman
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 2.90cm
, Length: 24.50cm
Weight: 0.798kg
ISBN: 9780199896448
ISBN 10: 0199896445
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 03 October 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
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Reviews
This comprehensive, thought-provoking work adds immeasurably to scholarship in sociology of religion and will help set agendas in sociology of religion for years to come. --Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion By setting aside the typical categories academic researchers use when studying contemporary religion, Ammerman and her team document the complex ways religion shows up in a wide range of domains: in communities and conversations, in homes, at work and in public life, and not surprisingly around matters of health, illness and death. --Religion Dispatches Nancy Ammerman's Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes offers the most in-depth, yet wide-ranging mapping of religious/spiritual/secular sensibilities in the everyday lives of contemporary Americans yet to emerge. She weaves a tapestry that shatters many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about people's circumscribed life-worlds. The book deserves a serious reading on the part of anyone who would try to describe this emerging, but exceedingly complex mix of the sacred and the secular. --Wade Clark Roof, J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society, University of California at Santa Barbara
Provides a helpful glimpse into how 'non experts' in America talk about and practice religion in their everyday lives...Besides making a wonderful addition to the syllabus of different graduate courses such as practical theology, spirituality, and the sociology of religion, Sacred Stories could be helpful for church book group discussions on everyday religion. --Ecclesial Practices Sacred Stories brings to light the myriad ways our contemporaries find religious meaning in their twenty-first century lives. It succeeds in launching readers into new conversations about what spirituality is, how we go about identifying activities and experiences as in some way spiritual, and how existing traditions connect with specific moments of everyday religion. --Church History This comprehensive, thought-provoking work adds immeasurably to scholarship in sociology of religion and will help set agendas in sociology of religion for years to come. --Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion By setting aside the typical categories academic researchers use when studying contemporary religion, Ammerman and her team document the complex ways religion shows up in a wide range of domains: in communities and conversations, in homes, at work and in public life, and not surprisingly around matters of health, illness and death. --Religion Dispatches Nancy Ammerman's Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes offers the most in-depth, yet wide-ranging mapping of religious/spiritual/secular sensibilities in the everyday lives of contemporary Americans yet to emerge. She weaves a tapestry that shatters many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about people's circumscribed life-worlds. The book deserves a serious reading on the part of anyone who would try to describe this emerging, but exceedingly complex mix of the sacred and the secular. --Wade Clark Roof, J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society, University of California at Santa Barbara
<br> Nancy Ammerman's Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes offers the most in-depth, yet wide-ranging mapping of religious/spiritual/secular sensibilities in the everyday lives of contemporary Americans yet to emerge. She weaves a tapestry that shatters many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about people's circumscribed life-worlds. The book deserves a serious reading on the part of anyone who would try to describe this emerging, but exceedingly complex mix of the sacred and the secular. <br>--Wade Clark Roof, J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society, University of California at Santa Barbara <br><p><br>
Author Information
Nancy Ammerman is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Boston University, where she teaches in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Theology. She has written award-winning books on America's conservative religious movements and on the role of religious organizations in community life.
