Arguments and Icons : Divergent Modes of Religiosity

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191584169
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis Arguments and Icons : Divergent Modes of Religiosity by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book Arguments and Icons : Divergent Modes of Religiosity written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-06-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do initiations in Papua New Guinea often subject novices to violence and terror? Why do some cargo cults lead to regional unity and others to regional divisions? How have features of cognitive processing in missionary Christianity contributed to new forms of identity among Melanesians? The theory of `modes of religiosity' which Whitehouse here develops answers these and a range of other questions about Melanesia with reference to a set of interconnections between styles of religious transmission, systems of memory, and patterns of political association. Although building his argument on detailed Melanesian ethnography, Whitehouse goes on to suggest that the theory of modes of religiosity may have wider applicability. Thus, in the final two chapters of this book, he explores such diverse topics as the spread of Reformed Christianity in sixteenth-century Europe, the interpretation of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, the genesis of tribal warfare, and the impact of literacy on social transmission and organization.

Modes of Religiosity

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 9780759106154
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Modes of Religiosity by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book Modes of Religiosity written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religions--whatever else they may be--are configurations of cultural information reproduced across space and time. Beginning with this seemingly obvious fact of religious transmission, Harvey Whitehouse goes on to construct a testable theory of how religions are created, passed on, and changed. At the center of his theory are two divergent 'modes of religiosity: ' the imagistic and the doctrinal. Drawing from recent advances in cognitive science, Whitehouse's theory shows how religions tend to coalesce around one of these two poles depending on how religious behaviors are remembered. In the 'imagistic mode, ' rituals have a lasting impact on people's minds, haunting not only our memories but influencing the way we ruminate on religious topics. These psychological features are linked to the scale and structure of religious communities, fostering small, exclusive, and ideologically heterogeneous ritual groupings or factions. In the 'doctrinal mode', on the other hand, religious knowledge is primarily spread through intensive and repetitive teaching; religious communities are contrastingly large, inclusive, and centrally regulated. While these tendencies have long been recognized in the history of the study of religion, the modes of religiosity theory is unique in that it explains why these tendencies exist. More importantly, Whitehouse does not give the final word, but invites us to join a series of collaborative networks among anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and psychologists, currently trying to falsify, confirm, or refine the theory. Are you tired of the flood of descriptions and interpretations of religions which offer no clear strategy for evaluation, comparison, and testing? Modes of Religiosity can provide you with a new way to think when you think about religion.

Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism

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Author :
Publisher : CUP Archive
ISBN 13 : 9780521432887
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (328 download)

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Book Synopsis Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism by : Pascal Boyer

Download or read book Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism written by Pascal Boyer and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1993-03-04 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In closely focused essays, a group of anthropologists debate the particular nature of religious concepts and categories.

Prey Into Hunter

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521423120
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (231 download)

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Book Synopsis Prey Into Hunter by : Maurice Bloch

Download or read book Prey Into Hunter written by Maurice Bloch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Maurice Bloch synthesises a radical theory of religion.

Ecstatic Religion

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Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415305082
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Ecstatic Religion by : I. M. Lewis

Download or read book Ecstatic Religion written by I. M. Lewis and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Ritual and Memory

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Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 0759115443
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (591 download)

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Book Synopsis Ritual and Memory by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book Ritual and Memory written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004-08-18 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographers of religion have created a vast record of religious behavior from small-scale non-literate societies to globally distributed religions in urban settings. So a theory that claims to explain prominent features of ritual, myth, and belief in all contexts everywhere causes ethnographers a skeptical pause. In Ritual and Memory, however, a wide range of ethnographers grapple critically with Harvey Whitehouse's theory of two divergent modes of religiosity. Although these contributors differ in their methods, their areas of fieldwork, and their predisposition towards Whitehouse's cognitively-based approach, they all help evaluate and refine Whitehouse's theory and so contribute to a new comparative approach in the anthropology of religion.

Theorizing Religions Past

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Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 9780759106215
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Theorizing Religions Past by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book Theorizing Religions Past written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of archaeologists and historians examine the modes of religiosity theory for its usefulness in explaining the origins and history of religions.

The Ritual Animal

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192520970
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ritual Animal by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book The Ritual Animal written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical exploration of how rituals have influenced history over thousands of years. From infancy, we copy those around us in order to be like others, to be one with the tribe. Other primates will copy behaviour that leads to transparent benefits, such as access to food, but only humans promiscuously copy actions that have no obvious instrumental purpose. The copying of causally opaque behaviour (rituals) has allowed cultural groups to proliferate over time and space. The frequency and emotional intensity of ritual performances constrains the scale and structure of cultural groups. Rare, traumatic rituals (e.g. painful initiations) produce very strong social cohesion in small, relational groups such as military battalions or local cults whereas daily and weekly rituals (e.g. collective praying in mosques, churches, and synagogues) produce diffuse cohesion in indefinitely expandable communities. This pioneering study presents a theory of how these two 'ritual modes' have influenced the course of human history over many thousands of years and continue to shape the groups we live in today. The resulting programme of research offers a radically new paradigm for the social sciences, one that bridges across disciplinary silos, samples the full diversity of the world's populations, and plumbs our richest sources of information about cultural systems, past and present. In doing so, leading anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse shows how we can modify the way we tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our day, from violent extremism to global heating. All the problems humanity creates are ultimately problems of cooperation. Solving these problems will require social glue. Whitehouse suggests various practical ways in which our growing knowledge about the role of ritual in group bonding can help us achieve a more peaceful and prosperous future, not only for ourselves but for all species who share the planet with us.

Cognitive Science and Ancient Israelite Religion

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108487785
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Cognitive Science and Ancient Israelite Religion by : Brett E. Maiden

Download or read book Cognitive Science and Ancient Israelite Religion written by Brett E. Maiden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent tools and findings from the cognitive sciences illuminate religious thought and behaviour in ancient Israel and the Bible. Primarily intended for scholars of the Bible and religion, it is also relevant to cognitive scientists, researchers, and graduate students interested in the intersection of cognition and culture.

Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity

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Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN 13 : 382589908X
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (258 download)

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Book Synopsis Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity by : Vlad Naumescu

Download or read book Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity written by Vlad Naumescu and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2007 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers original insights into the religious transformations taking place in postsocialist western Ukraine. Applying a cognitive theory based on two modes of religiosity, the doctrinal and the imagistic, author Vlad Naumescu reveals the mechanisms of reproduction and change that make the local eastern Christian tradition a living tradition of faith. He combines rich ethnographic materials with historical and theological sources to depict a religion in equilibrium between the two modes, maintaining revelation at the core of its doctrinal corpus. He argues that religion is a potential source for social change that empowers people to act upon reality and transform it. With his innovative exploration of the dynamics of an eastern Christian tradition, Naumescu makes a major contribution to the emerging anthropology of Christianity as well as to studies of postsocialism.

Theological Incorrectness

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780198044284
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (442 download)

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Book Synopsis Theological Incorrectness by : Jason Slone

Download or read book Theological Incorrectness written by Jason Slone and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-03 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't -- not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He argues that it exists because the mind is built in such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment -- religious ideas, for example -- does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't.

Inside the Cult

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Inside the Cult by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book Inside the Cult written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past thirty years, adherents of a millenarian cult in Papua New Guinea, known as the Pomio Kivung, have been awaiting the establishment of a period of supernatural bliss, heralded by the return of their ancestors bearing "cargo." The author of this book, Harvey Whitehouse, was taken for a reincarnated ancestor, and was able to observe the dynamics of the cult from within. From the stable mainstream of the cult, localized splinter groups periodically emerge, hoping to expedite the millennium; the core of this volume concerns the close study of one such group in two Baining villages. The two aspects of the cult studied here--on the one hand a large, uniform, and stable mainstream organization with a well-defined hierarchy demanding orthodoxy of views, and on the other hand a small-scale and temporary movement, emotional and innovatieve in its views--stand in sharp contrast one to the other, but are here seen as divergent manifestations of the same relifious ideology, implemented in differeing ways. This original theory of "modes of religiosity" which Whitehouse develops draws on recent findings in cognitive psychology to link styles of codification and cultural transmission to the political scale, structure, and ethos of religious communities.

An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351010956
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion by : Claire White

Download or read book An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion written by Claire White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing to fight—and die—for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses.

The Debated Mind

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000180867
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Debated Mind by : Harvey Whitehouse

Download or read book The Debated Mind written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a further development of the nature-nurture debate, this collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content and organization of culture. In the study of mental activity, can the effects of evolution and history be teased apart? Evolutionary psychologists argue that cultural transmission is constrained by our genetic inheritance. Few social and cultural anthropologists have found this argument to be relevant to their work and many would doubt its validity. This book uniquely pitches the arguments for innatism against ethnographic perspectives that call into question the theoretical foundations of orthodox evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Ultimately the aim of the debate is to create an original set of mutually compatible theories that will open up new areas for interdisciplinary research.

Anthropological Studies of Religion

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521339919
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis Anthropological Studies of Religion by : Brian Morris

Download or read book Anthropological Studies of Religion written by Brian Morris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987-02-27 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lucid outline of explanations of religious phenomena offered by such great thinkers as Hegel, Marx, and Weber.

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190270098
Total Pages : 670 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence by : Mark Juergensmeyer

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence written by Mark Juergensmeyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-11 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. The forty original essays in this volume include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The essays also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies. The contributors to this volume--innovative thinkers who are forging new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence--provide novel insights into this important field of studies. By mapping out the whole field of religion and violence, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence will prove an authoritative source for students and scholars for years to come.

Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317545494
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture by : Armin W. Geertz

Download or read book Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture written by Armin W. Geertz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture' brings together some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of cognitive science and comparative religion. The essays range across diverse fields: the neurological processes and possible genetic foundations of how language emerged; the possible phylogenetic routes in the development of language and culture; the complex interrelations between the ontogenesis and the sociogenesis of cognitive processes; the value of a combination of neurology, narratology and a reworked speech-act approach that focuses on narrative; how the psychology of ritual helps make narrative beliefs possible; religious narratives; emotional communication; the role of gossip as religious narrative; area studies of religious narrative and cognition in the Bible; Indian Epic literature; Australian Aboriginal mythology and ritual; modern religious forms such as New Age, Asatro, astrological narrative and virtual rituals in cyberspace.