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Ancestors Territoriality And Gods
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Book Synopsis Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods by : Ina Wunn
Download or read book Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods written by Ina Wunn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.
Book Synopsis Popular Religion in China by : Stephan Feuchtwang
Download or read book Popular Religion in China written by Stephan Feuchtwang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2001, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor was written to bring together both the previously unpublished and published results of fieldwork in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan and to put them into an historical, political, and theoretical context. The book presents Chinese popular religion as a distinctive institution and describes its content as an ‘imperial metaphor’. In doing so, it explores a wide range of topics, including both official and local cults, local festivals, Daoism, Ang Gong, the politics of religion, and political ritual.
Book Synopsis Evolutionary Processes in the Natural History of Religion by : Hansjörg Hemminger
Download or read book Evolutionary Processes in the Natural History of Religion written by Hansjörg Hemminger and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of religion by the humanities and social sciences has become receptive for an evolutionary perspective. Some proposals model the evolution of religion in Darwinian terms, or construct a synergy between biological and non-Darwinian processes. The results, however, have not yet become truly interdisciplinary. The biological theory of evolution in form of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) is only sparsely represented in theories published so far by scholars of religion. Therefore this book reverses the line of view and asks how their results assort with evolutionary biology: How can the subject area “religion” integrated into behavioral biology? How is theory building affected by the asymmetry between the scarce empirical knowledge of prehistoric religion, and the body of knowledge about extant and historic religions? How does hominin evolution in general relate to the evolution of religion? Are there evolutionary pre-adaptations? Subsequent versions of evolutionary biology from the original Darwinism to EES are used in interdisciplinary constructs. Can they be integrated into a comprehensive theory? The biological concept most often used is co-evolution, in form of a gene-culture co-evolution. However, the term denotes a process different from biological co-evolution. Important EES concepts do not appear in present models of religious evolution: e.g. neutral evolution, evolutionary drift, evolutionary constraints etc. How to include them into an interdisciplinary approach? Does the cognitive science of religion (CSR) harmonize with behavioral biology and the brain sciences? Religion as part of human culture is supported by a complex, multi-level behavioral system. How can it be modeled scientifically? The book addresses graduate students and researchers concerned about the scientific study of religion, and biologist interested in interdisciplinary theory building in the field.
Book Synopsis Chieftains into Ancestors by : David Faure
Download or read book Chieftains into Ancestors written by David Faure and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Official Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint. Chieftains into Ancestors describes the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture in the culturally diverse southwestern region of China. Contemplating the rhetorical question of how one can begin to rewrite the story of a conquered people whose past was never transcribed in the first place, the authors combine anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis to build a new regional history � one that recognizes the ethnic, religious, and gendered transformations that took place in China's nation-building process.
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology by : Jay R. Feierman
Download or read book The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology written by Jay R. Feierman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary approach to religion, religiosity and theology from their earliest beginnings to the present day. It uniquely brings together the natural sciences and theology to explore how religious practice emerged and developed through the four sections into which the book is organized: Evolutionary biology; Philosophical linguistics, psychology and neuroscience; Theology and Anthropology. The volume features an international panel of contributors who develop an innovative picture of religion as a culturally-created social institution; religiosity as a more personal and subjective anthropological element of people expressed through religion; and theology as the study of god. To survive in changing times, living systems — a good characterization of religion, religiosity and theology — all must adaptively evolve. This is a vital study of a rapidly burgeoning field. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies and theology as well as in the psychological, sociological, and anthropological study of religion.
Download or read book Religious Speciation written by Ina Wunn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a consecutive story on the evolution of religions. It starts with an analysis of evolution in biology and ends with a discussion of what a proper theory of religious evolution should look like. It discusses such questions as whether it is humankind or religion that evolves, how religions evolve, and what adaptation of religions means. Topics examined include inheritance and heredity, religio-speciation, hybridization, ontogenetics and epigenetics, phylogenetics, and systematics. Calling attention to unsolved problems and relating the evolutionary subject matter to appropriate material, the book integrates and interprets existing data. Based on the belief that an unequivocal stand is more likely to produce constructive criticism than evasion of an issue, the book chooses that interpretation of a controversial matter which seems most consistent with the emerging picture of the evolutionary process. “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” the evolutionary biologist and co-founder of the so-called New Synthesis in Evolutionary Biology, Theodosius Dobszhansky (1900-1975), wrote in his famous essay of 1973, opposing creationism in American society. Today, Dobszhansky’s statement is not only fully accepted in biology, but has become the scientific paradigm in disciplines such as psychology, archaeology and the study of religions. Yet in spite of this growing interest in evolutionary processes in religion and culture, the term "evolution" and the capability of an evolutionary account have to date still not been properly understood by scholars of the Humanities. This book closes that gap.
Book Synopsis Land of Our Fathers by : Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Download or read book Land of Our Fathers written by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-04-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biblical motif of a land divinely-promised and given to Abraham and his descendants is argued to be an ideological reflex of post-monarchic, territorial disputes between competing socio-religious groups. The important biblical motif of a Promised Land is founded upon the ancient Near Eastern concept of ancestral land: hereditary space upon which families lived, worked, died and were buried. An essential element of concept of ancestral land was the belief in the post-mortem existence of the ancestors, who were venerated with grave offerings, mortuary feasts, bone rituals and standing stones. The Hebrew Bible is littered with stories concerning these practices and beliefs, yet the specific correlation of ancestor veneration and certain biblical land claims has gone unrecognized. The book remedies this in presenting evidence for the vital and persistent impact of ancestor veneration upon land claims. It proposes that ancestor veneration, which formed a common ground in the experiences of various socio-religious groups in ancient Israel, became in the Hebrew Bible an ideological battlefield upon which claims to the land were won and lost.
Book Synopsis Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang Through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) (2 Vols) by : John Lagerwey
Download or read book Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang Through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) (2 Vols) written by John Lagerwey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 1281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together, and for the first time in any language, the 24 essays gathered in these volumes provide a composite picture of the history of religion in ancient China from the emergence of writing ca. 1250 BC to the collapse of the first major imperial dynasty in 220 AD. It is a multi-faceted tale of changing gods and rituals that includes the emergence of a form of “secular humanism” that doubts the existence of the gods and the efficacy of ritual and of an imperial orthodoxy that founds its legitimacy on a distinction between licit and illicit sacrifices. Written by specialists in a variety of disciplines, the essays cover such subjects as divination and cosmology, exorcism and medicine, ethics and self-cultivation, mythology, taboos, sacrifice, shamanism, burial practices, iconography, and political philosophy. Produced under the aegis of the Centre de recherche sur les civilisations chinoise, japonaise et tibétaine (UMR 8155) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris).
Book Synopsis History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community by : P. Sangren
Download or read book History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community written by P. Sangren and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1987-09-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a case study of history and culture in the Taiwanese town of Ta-ch'i and the group of rural villages that constitute its standard marketing community. However, its scope exceeds that of most community studies. The author attempts to construct a holistic view of Chinese culture from an analysis of the relationship between history and ritual in a particular locality. The author argues that social institutions and collective representations are dialectically connected in the process of social and cultural reproduction. He describes this dialectical process through an analysis of the key cultural concept of ling, the magical power attributed to ghosts, gods, and ancestors. In analyzing the symbolic logic of ling, he asserts that it can be fully understood only as a product of the reproduction of social institutions and as a manifestation of a native historical consciousness. Structuralist and Marxist insights are combined to explain how ling is best understood as both a cultural logic of symbolic relations and a material logic of social relations. The book is in three parts. Part I is a social and economic history that outlines what one might call an objectivist or positivist view of Ta-ch'i's history, describing events as they were, regardless of the perceptions of local participants. This material is a background to the synchronic sociological analysis of local territorial cults that constitutes Part II. In Part III, the author unsettles the objectivist assumptions of Part I by showing how the idiom of ling underlies Taiwanese constructions of history and identity and how the cultural construction of history dialectically reproduces society and creates history. The book is illustrated with 8 pages of photographs, 17 line drawings, and 9 maps.
Book Synopsis Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change by : Adam McKeown
Download or read book Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change written by Adam McKeown and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by recent work on diaspora and cultural globalization, Adam McKeown asks in this new book: How were the experiences of different migrant communities and hometowns in China linked together through common networks? Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change argues that the political and economic activities of Chinese migrants can best be understood by taking into account their links to each other and China through a transnational perspective. Despite their very different histories, Chinese migrant families, businesses, and villages were connected through elaborate networks and shared institutions that stretched across oceans and entire continents. Through small towns in Qing and Republican China, thriving enclaves of businesses in South Chicago, broad-based associations of merchants and traders in Peru, and an auspicious legacy of ancestors in Hawaii, migrant Chinese formed an extensive system that made cultural and commercial exchange possible.
Book Synopsis The Link with Nature and Divine Meditations in Asia by : Bernard Formoso
Download or read book The Link with Nature and Divine Meditations in Asia written by Bernard Formoso and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peasant societies in many parts of the world regulate their relationship with the natural environment through earth gods who anchor a group of families not in genealogical terms, as in the case of ancestors, but in ecological terms. The articles in this volume illustrate the role of, and the cultural activities surrounding, the earth gods in rural communities in Asian societies. More specifically, they show that, within the Asian context, it is possible to differentiate between two modes representing the earth gods and the relationship with nature, i.e., one that corresponds to state societies and the other to tribal ones.
Book Synopsis Path to the Ancestors Exploring Ancestor Worship Within Modern Germanic Heathenry by : Swain Wodening
Download or read book Path to the Ancestors Exploring Ancestor Worship Within Modern Germanic Heathenry written by Swain Wodening and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-08-30 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long has the topic of ancestor worship in modern Germanic Heathenry been largely overlooked. While many within Germanic Heathenry worship their ancestors, other than a few mentions in books, blog posts, web pages and small publications there has not been a work dedicated to the topic. This short book seeks to be a first of its kind and broach the topic. In many ways it is the tale of the path of Swain Wodening from dedicated worshiper of the Germanic gods to worshiper of the ancestors. Not much information exists on the topic so this book is full of personal experiences.
Book Synopsis Eight Human Skulls in a Dung Heap and More by : Annet Nieuwhof
Download or read book Eight Human Skulls in a Dung Heap and More written by Annet Nieuwhof and published by Barkhuis. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of ritual practice in the past is an accepted part of archaeological research these days. Yet, its theoretical basis is still not fully mature. This book aims at making a contribution to the study of ritual practice in the past by assembling a theoretical framework, which is tailored to the needs of archaeology, and which helps to identity and interpret the remains of rituals in the past. This framework is applied in a special archaeological region: the coastal area of the northern Netherlands, a former salt marsh area. In the past, people lived here on artificial dwelling mounds, so-called terps. Preservation conditions are excellent in this wetland area. This study makes use of the well-preserved remains of rituals in terps, to examine the role of ritual practice in the societies of the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age in this area.
Book Synopsis Religious Cognition in China by : Ryan G. Hornbeck
Download or read book Religious Cognition in China written by Ryan G. Hornbeck and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are human tendencies toward religious and spiritual thoughts, feelings, and actions outcomes of “natural” cognition? This volume revisits the “naturalness theory of religious cognition” through discussion of new qualitative and quantitative studies examining the psychological foundations of religious and spiritual expression in historical and contemporary China. Naturalness theory has been challenged on the grounds that little of its supporting developmental and experimental research has drawn on participants from predominantly secular cultural environments. Given China’s official secularity, its large proportion of atheists, and its alleged long history of dominant, nonreligious philosophies, can any broad claim for religion’s psychological “naturalness” be plausible? Addressing this empirical gap, the studies discussed in this volume support core naturalness theory predictions for human reasoning about supernatural agency, intelligent design, the efficacy of rituals, and vitalistic causality. And yet each study elucidates, expands upon, or even challenges outright the logical assumptions of the naturalness theory. Written for a non-specialist audience, this volume introduces the naturalness theory and frames the significance of these new findings for students and scholars of cultural psychology, the psychology of religion, the anthropology of religion, and Chinese Studies.
Book Synopsis System, Structure, and Contradiction by : Jonathan Friedman
Download or read book System, Structure, and Contradiction written by Jonathan Friedman and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of System, Structure, and Contradiction was an important step in merging the materialist determinism of the structuralist Marxists with the cultural, ideological approach favored by anthropologists. By reconciling these two traditionally warring schools of thought, the author provided a more nuanced understanding of the various factors that drive social change and social complexity. Though viewed through the lens of an ethnographic and historical case study of the Kachin of Burman, Friedman's theory has had a major impact on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, world-systems scholars, and Marxist theorists alike. This new edition of Friedman's much-cited work contains the full text of the original volume (never published in North America) along with two related articles by the author, and a comprehensive new introduction that brings his theoretical notions, and the debate over this book, to the present. A classic work of anthropological and social theory, it will be of interest to scholars and their advanced students in anthropology and related disciplines.
Book Synopsis The Land Called Holy by : Robert Louis Wilken
Download or read book The Land Called Holy written by Robert Louis Wilken and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on both primary texts and archaelogy, Wilken traces the Christian conception of a Holy Land from its origins inthe Hebrew Bible to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century.
Book Synopsis God's Family, God's Earth by : Kaoma, Kapya J.
Download or read book God's Family, God's Earth written by Kaoma, Kapya J. and published by Kachere Series. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the mounting ecological crisis has religious, political, and economic roots that enable and promote social and environmental harm. It presents the thesis that religious traditions, including their ethical expressions, can effectively address the crisis, ameliorate its effects, and advocate social and environmental betterment, now and in the future. The ecological overtones of African traditional religions and Christianity are examined along with a discussion on African morality. Recognition is given to the conflict between ecological values and religious teachings in an examination contrasting the awareness of socio-economic problems caused by overpopulation.
