The scope of this paper is to provide an analysis of the Epicurean theology in Lucretius’ poem. The epicurean discourse on gods seems to have three functions: therapeutical, theorical and ethical. ...After a description of those three functions, I challenge a strictly utilitarist interpretation of the epicurean theology and defend the interpretation of the epicurean gods as real bodies external to the mind.
Die biodynamische Landwirtschaft hat seit den 2000er Jahren Zulauf verbucht. Doch wie erleben die Wirtschaftenden selbst ihr Feld? Stéphanie Majerus nimmt die Entwicklungen des Demeter-Landbaus in ...Deutschland und der deutschsprachigen Schweiz ethnographisch in den Blick. Dabei fokussiert sie sowohl auf soziopolitische Eigenheiten, bewusstseinsphänomenologische Dynamiken und Mensch-Tier-Interaktionen als auch auf das partikulare Wissenschaftsverständnis der Anthroposoph*innen. Mit ihrer Studie schlägt sie darüber hinaus Brücken zur akademischen Bearbeitung der Anthroposophie - und bietet so religionsanthropologische Einblicke in die Spiritualität der Biodynamiker.
This book brings together leading international scholars with the aim of exploring ritual perspectives in the study of contemporary religions. It combines significant theoretical and methodological ...reflections and applies it to four main fields relevant to the study of contemporary religions: indigeneity; new spiritualities and ecology; lived religion (with Islam and Africa as case studies); and finally, religion and embodiment. The structure and content of the book takes its point of departure from the research topics and collegial network of the internationally acclaimed scholar of ritual studies, Professor Anne-Christine Hornborg. The book is dedicated to her.
Espiritualidad es un término de creciente popularidad y difícil de definir como muestran sus diversos usos. Sensible al contexto histórico y cultural, este artículo plantea un recorrido por su ...genealogía a través de la sociología y la antropología de la religión y también del campo de la salud, donde existe un renovado interés en los últimos años. Entre las transformaciones socioculturales que han ido moldeando el concepto de espiritualidad, se analiza especialmente el giro que supuso la Nueva Era en su emergencia como objeto de interés y categoría analítica para las ciencias sociales. Se examinan las relaciones porosas entre los términos religión y espiritualidad, a la luz de las limitaciones metodológicas y de los desafíos que aún presenta este campo de estudio. Por último, se exploran las aportaciones sobre espiritualidad desde el ámbito de la salud y se reflexiona en torno a los profesionales del cuidado espiritual en los equipos sanitarios.
Magic and witchcraft, classic topics in the anthropology of religion, involve everyday things such as ashes, ceramics, minerals, shell, and projectile points. In many cultures, people attribute ...agency to such artifacts, as well as architecture, begging the question what is the archaeological record of such animate beings? To understand past human lifeways more fully, we need to explore the formation processes associated with the interaction between people and other non-human actors. For example, what might we learn from a burned pueblo whose rooms contain ash, projectile points, crystals, and other items? In this paper we argue that deposits in ritually closed pueblos of the North American Southwest, like many other Neolithic villages, likely contain purposely deposited objects in an effort to neutralize the anima left in these places and to prophylactically protect their former inhabitants from future witchcraft. We present Cottonwood Spring Pueblo, New Mexico, as a case study.
ABSTRACT
Much contemporary work in the anthropology of religion explores how human experience of the divine is mediated. One question rarely asked, however, is why people distance the divine from ...themselves in the first place, such that complex practices of mediation are necessary to make it present. An answer to this question is provided by Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss in their book Sacrifice, which I read as a key precursor to current work on religious mediation. Hubert and Mauss focus on how religious mediations model and shape social mediations. I demonstrate the usefulness of an approach to mediation that draws on their work by examining a shift from sacrifice to possession as forms of mediation among Pentecostal converts in Papua New Guinea. I also show that this approach can help us further develop broader anthropological theories of mediation and social life. religion, mediation, sacrifice, possession, Pentecostalism, Papua New Guinea
Planti ol saveman husat i stadi ol kainkain lotu, ol i tok olsem: long olgeta kain lotu ol bilipman i save ting ol god na tewel samting i stap longwe liklik. Tasol dispela lain saveman ol i no save askim: bilong wanem ol god save stap longwe na ol bilipman i mas hatwok long i stap klostu na toktok wantaim ol god? Long tingting bilong mi, wanpela buk bilong Henri Hubert na Marcel Mauss, ol i kolim Sacrifice, em inap long helpim yumi bekim dispela askim. Hubert na Mauss tok olsem, wei bilong wokim koneksen wantaim god, em i save sanap olsem wanpela piksa i soim wei bilong wokim koneksen namel long ol manmeri. Sapos yumi bihainim dispela tingting bilong Hubert na Mauss, dispela em inap long helpim yumi kisim save long wei bilong lotu bilong ol Pentekostal, na long wanem as planti ol i save lusim wok bilong givim ol ofa i go long god na ol i save go insait long wok bilong kisim spirit (ol i kolim ‘possession’ taim spirit i kisim ol). Na tu, mi ting olsem dispela luksave long koneksen wantaim ol god samtink inap em helpim yumi tingting gut long ol kainkain koneksen i stap namel long ol manmeri. ol kainkain lotu, koneksen wantaim god, wok bilong givim ol ofa i go long god, wok bilong kisim spirit, ol Pentekostal Kristen, Papua Niugini
Religious practices are commonly treated as evidence for something else, such as beliefs. There are a number of problems with privileging beliefs or ideas when trying to define religion. An ...alternative is to rethink the relationship between the materiality of religious activity and the ideas that have sometimes been taken to define 'religion'. This approach may also be a productive way to look at religious practices across widely differing contexts without eliminating their fundamentally historical character. /// Les pratiques religieuses sont habituellement envisagées comme des preuves d'autre chose, par exemple de croyances. Or le fait de privilégier les croyances ou les idées pour tenter de définir la religion pose plusieurs problèmes. Une autre approche consiste à repenser la relation entre la matérialité de l'activité religieuse et les idées qui ont parfois été employées pour définir la "religion". Cette approche peut être un moyen productif d'examiner les pratiques religieuses à travers des contextes très différents, sans éliminer leur caractère fondamentalement historique.
Through engagement with a range of recent publications, this article offers a mini-ethnography of wonder discourses in the anthropology of ontology, leading to a rethink of the concept of religion. ...It has sometimes been suggested that science and religion are antithetical orientations to the experience of wonder: whereas science seeks to banish wonder by replacing it with knowledge, religion remains open to wonder in the face of the unknowable. With this criterion of difference in view, this article identifies certain trends in the anthropology of ontology that appear to enjoin and pursue open-ended wonder in ways that might be read as constituting anthropology as religious science. This coincidence of supposed opposites recommends, I conclude, a relational account of religion. A partir d'une lecture de plusieurs publications récentes, le présent article présente une mini-ethnographie des discours sur l'émerveillement dans l'anthropologie de l'ontologie qui conduit à repenser le concept de religion. On a parfois suggéré que la science et la religion étaient des approches antithétiques de l'expérience de l'émerveillement : alors que la science cherche à bannir l'émerveillement en le remplaçant par le savoir, la religion reste ouverte à l'émerveillement face à l'inconnaissable. Compte tenu de cette différence, l'article identifie certaines tendances dans l'anthropologie de l'ontologie qui semblent susciter et rechercher un émerveillement en forme de questionnement ouvert, d'une manière qui pourrait, selon son interprétation, instituer l'anthropologie comme une science religieuse. En conclusion, cette coïncidence de contraires supposés milite pour que soit fait un compte-rendu de la religion sous un angle relationnel.
Secular humanists in the United Kingdom regularly think about, talk about, and act in relation to religion, especially Christianity. In this article, I address the relationships between secular ...humanism and Christianity by drawing on fieldwork with a local humanist group affiliated with the British Humanist Association. In line with many moderns, as indeed with many kinds of Christians, these secular humanists often want to sever ties with the past—in this case, with what they understand to be Christianity’s religious elements. At the same time, they want to preserve those aspects of Christianity they understand to be human, not religious. These engagements with and articulations of Christianity can be helpful not only for understanding contemporary secular-humanist formations but also some of the debates that have framed the anthropology of Christianity over the past decade.
IS THERE A SECULAR BODY? HIRSCHKIND, CHARLES
Cultural anthropology,
11/2011, Letnik:
26, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this essay, I want to follow out one line of inquiry into secularism and the secular opened up—if in different ways—by the pioneering works of William Connolly and Talal Asad: namely, the extent ...to which the development of secularism has historically entailed—among its various dimensions—a unique configuration of the human sensorium. For both of these scholars secularism must be approached, not simply through the doctrine of separation of church and state, not through the sociology of social differentiation and religion decline, but, rather, in terms of the cultivation of the distinct sensibilities, affects, and embodied dispositions that undergird secular forms of appraisal and practice. In my discussion, I ask, what answers do we find in the work of these two scholars to the question, What is a secular body?, and what might these answers—or refusals to answer—tell us about the practical and conceptual contours of the secular and secularism?
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