The Anthropology of Religion

Author:   Peter Metcalf
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN:  

9781032303161


Pages:   216
Publication Date:   25 November 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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The Anthropology of Religion


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Overview

This book describes how anthropologists in the twentieth century went about documenting the religions of those independent peoples who still lived beyond the frontiers of the global economy and the world religions. It begins by examining the enormous popularity of the newly invented field of anthropology in the nineteenth century as a site of multiple intellectual developments. Its climax was Frazer’s Golden Bough, which is a pillar of modernity second only to Darwin’s Origin of Species. But its notion of religion was entirely speculative. When anthropologists went to see for themselves, they encountered formidable obstacles. How to access a people’s most profound understandings of the world and everything in it? Holding fast to the premise that ethnographers have no special powers of seeing inside other people’s brains, this book teaches students to proceed slowly, a step at a time, watching how people perform rituals great and small, asking questions that seem stupid to their hosts, and struggling to translate abstract terms in unrecorded languages. Using a handful of examples from different continents, the book shows the potential of an anthropological approach to religion.

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter Metcalf
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.440kg
ISBN:  

9781032303161


ISBN 10:   1032303166
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   25 November 2022
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"Introducing the Independent Thinkers 1. ""Such Turbulent Human Material"" 2. The Mirror of Modernity 3. The Phenomenon of the Golden Bough 4. If I was a Horse 5. The Essence of Religion 6. On the Uselessness of Ritual 7. Einstein in The Outback 8. Real Knowledge of Real Worlds 9. Integrity of Science and Religion 10. Laying Tylor’s Ghost 11. Exorcising Freud 12. What’s Only Natural 13. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends 14. No One Believes in Things That Aren’t There 15. Being Reasonable 16. Invitations You Can’t Refuse 17. Nature Does Not Work Independently Of Man 18. Findings Postscript: Religion and Evolution"

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Author Information

Peter Metcalf is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, USA. He has conducted fieldwork in central Borneo over many years and written extensively about its peoples and cultures. He has also written about issues in comparative religion, especially as concerns death rituals worldwide and throughout history.

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