Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between

Download Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823249808
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between by : Jeremy Stolow

Download or read book Deus in Machina:Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between written by Jeremy Stolow and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore how two domains of human experience and action--religion and technology--are implicated in each other. Contrary to commonsense understandings of both religion (as an "otherworldly" orientation) and technology (as the name for tools, techniques, and expert knowledges oriented to "this" world), the contributors to this volume challenge the grounds on which this division has been erected in the first place. What sorts of things come to light when one allows religion and technology to mingle freely? In an effort to answer that question, Deus in Machina embarks upon an interdisciplinary voyage across diverse traditions and contexts where religion and technology meet: from the design of clocks in medieval Christian Europe, to the healing power of prayer in premodern Buddhist Japan, to 19th-century Spiritualist devices for communicating with the dead, to Islamic debates about kidney dialysis in contemporary Egypt, to the work of disability activists using documentary film to reimagine Jewish kinship, to the representation of Haitian Vodou on the Internet, among other case studies. Combining rich historical and ethnographic detail with extended theoretical reflection, Deus in Machina outlines new directions for the study of religion and/as technology that will resonate across the human sciences, including religious studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, history, anthropology, and philosophy.

Interplay of Things

Download Interplay of Things PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478021764
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Interplay of Things by : Anthony B. Pinn

Download or read book Interplay of Things written by Anthony B. Pinn and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Interplay of Things Anthony B. Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences and the boundaries between people and other things. Rather than considering religion in terms of institutions, doctrines, and creeds, Pinn shows how religion exposes the openness and porousness of all things and how they are always involved in processes of exchange and interplay. Pinn examines work by Nella Larsen and Richard Wright that illustrates an openness between things, and he traces how pop art and readymades point to the multidirectional nature of influence. He also shows how Ron Athey's and Clifford Owens's performance art draws out inherent interconnectedness to various cultural codes in ways that reveal the symbiotic relationship between art and religion as a technology. Theorizing that antiblack racism and gender- and class-based hostility constitute efforts to close off the porous nature of certain bodies, Pinn shows how many artists have rebelled against these attempts to counter openness. His analyses offer a means by which to understand the porous, unbounded, and open nature of humans and things.

The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Download The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000841863
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies by : Katharine D. Scherff

Download or read book The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies written by Katharine D. Scherff and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-03 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the history of altar decorations, this study of the visual liturgy grapples with many of the previous theoretical frameworks to reveal the evolution and function of these ritual objects. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book uses traditional art-historical methodologies and media technology theory to reexamine ritual objects. Previous analysis has not considered the in-between nature of these objects as deliberate and virtual conduits to the divine. The liturgy, the altarpiece, the altar environment, relics, and their reliquaries are media. In a series of case studies, several objects tell a different story about culture and society in medieval Europe. In essence, they reveal that media and media technologies generate and modulate the individual and collective structure of feelings of sacredness among assemblages of humans and nonhumans. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, early modern studies, and architectural history.

Digital Spirits in Religion and Media

Download Digital Spirits in Religion and Media PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351188852
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (511 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Digital Spirits in Religion and Media by : Alvin Eng Hui Lim

Download or read book Digital Spirits in Religion and Media written by Alvin Eng Hui Lim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many contemporary and popular forms of religious practice, digital technology and the spiritual are inseparable. Ranging from streaming broadcasts of spiritual possessions to screenings of mass prayer conferences in stadiums, spirits and divinities now have new forms in which they can materialise. By offering the notion of ‘digital spirits’, this book critically attends to the intersections of digital media and spiritual beings. It also puts forward a new performative perspective on how they interact. Taking cues from the work of Stewart Hoover and Heidi Campbell, among others, the book begins with an outline of the current debates around religion, performance and digital media. It then moves on to examine how mediality and religion, where embodied practices are carried out alongside virtual practices, work together in contemporary Asia. These case studies focus on lived religious practices in combination with various forms of media, and so help demonstrate that digital technology in particular reveals the layered processes of spirituality in practice. Gods and divinities have always relied on media to manifest, and this book is a fascinating exploration of how digital media has continued that tradition and taken it in new directions. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, digital media and performance studies.

What is Protestant Art?

Download What is Protestant Art? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004375392
Total Pages : 147 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis What is Protestant Art? by : Andrew T. Coates

Download or read book What is Protestant Art? written by Andrew T. Coates and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Protestant Art? explores the history of Protestant images from the Reformation to the present. The book analyses historical images such as prints, paintings, illustrations, and maps, as evidence of changing Protestant attitudes and visual practices.

Religion and Technology in India

Download Religion and Technology in India PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351204777
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Religion and Technology in India by : Knut A. Jacobsen

Download or read book Religion and Technology in India written by Knut A. Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion tends to flourish when technological developments create new possibilities for communication and representation, and simultaneously change as a consequence of these developments. This book explores intersections between religion and technology in India, at the present and in the colonial past, and how various forms of techno-religious intersections transform and open up for new religious practices, discourses, communities, and institutions. With focus on Indian contexts and religions, it discusses various empirical and theoretical aspects of how technological innovations create, alter, and negotiate religious spaces, practices and authorities. The book provides rich and multifaceted empirical examples of different ways in which technological practices relate to meanings, ideas, and practices of religions. The techno-religious intersections generate several questions about authority and power, the politics and poetics of identity, community and place, and how religious agency, information, and experience are mediated, commodified, and adjusted to new demands of societies. The chapters explore the Hindu, Jain, and Sikh traditions in relation to new technological developments and media, such as photography, new means of visualization, TV serials, mobile phones, and online communication. The book will be of interest to academics studying modern and contemporary India and South Asia, and especially the role of religion and technology.

The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements

Download The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190611529
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements by : James R. Lewis

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements written by James R. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of New Religious Movements (NRMs) is one of the fastest-growing areas of religious studies, and since the release of the first edition of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements in 2003, the field has continued to expand and break new ground. In this all-new volume, James R. Lewis and Inga B. Tøllefsen bring together established and rising scholars to address an expanded range of topics, covering traditional religious studies topics such as "scripture," "charisma," and "ritual," while also applying new theoretical approaches to NRM topics. Other chapters cover understudied topics in the field, such as the developmental patterns of NRMs and subcultural considerations in the study of NRMs. The first part of this book examines NRMs from a social-scientific perspective, particularly that of sociology. In the second section, the primary factors that have put the study of NRMs on the map, controversy and conflict, are considered. The third section investigates common themes within the field of NRMs, while the fourth examines the approaches that religious studies researchers have taken to NRMs. As NRM Studies has grown, subfields such as Esotericism, New Age Studies, and neo-Pagan Studies have grown as distinct and individual areas of study, and the final section of the book investigates these emergent fields.

The Thing about Religion

Download The Thing about Religion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469662841
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Thing about Religion by : David Morgan

Download or read book The Thing about Religion written by David Morgan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common views of religion typically focus on the beliefs and meanings derived from revealed scriptures, ideas, and doctrines. David Morgan has led the way in radically broadening that framework to encompass the understanding that religions are fundamentally embodied, material forms of practice. This concise primer shows readers how to study what has come to be termed material religion—the ways religious meaning is enacted in the material world. Material religion includes the things people wear, eat, sing, touch, look at, create, and avoid. It also encompasses the places where religion and the social realities of everyday life, including gender, class, and race, intersect in physical ways. This interdisciplinary approach brings religious studies into conversation with art history, anthropology, and other fields. In the book, Morgan lays out a range of theories, terms, and concepts and shows how they work together to center materiality in the study of religion. Integrating carefully curated visual evidence, Morgan then applies these ideas and methods to case studies across a variety of religious traditions, modeling step-by-step analysis and emphasizing the importance of historical context. The Thing about Religion will be an essential tool for experts and students alike. Two free, downloadable course syllabi created by the author are available online.

Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World

Download Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469651475
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World by : Babak Rahimi

Download or read book Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World written by Babak Rahimi and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pilgrimage is one of the most significant ritual duties for Muslims, entailing the visitation and veneration of sites associated with the Prophet Muhammad or saintly figures. As demonstrated in this multidisciplinary volume, the lived religion of pilgrimage, defined by embodied devotional practices, is changing in an age characterized by commerce, technology, and new sociocultural and political frameworks. Traveling to and far beyond the Hajj, the most well-known Muslim pilgrimage, the volume's contributors reveal and analyze emerging contemporary Islamic pilgrimage practices around the world, in minority- and majority-Muslim countries as well as in urban and rural settings. What was once a tiny religious attraction in a remote village, for example, may begin to draw increasing numbers of pilgrims to shrines and tombs as the result of new means of travel, thus triggering significant changes in the traditional rituals, and livelihoods, of the local people. Organized around three key themes—history and politics; embodiment, memory, and material religion; and communications—the book reveals how rituals, practices, and institutions are experienced in the context of an inexorable global capitalism. The volume contributors are Sophia Rose Arjana, Rose Aslan, Robert R. Bianchi, Omar Kasmani, Azim Malikov, Lewis Mayo, Julian Millie, Reza Masoudi Nejad, Paulo G. Pinto, Babak Rahimi, Emilio Spadola, Edith Szanto, and Brannon Wheeler.

The Myth of Disenchantment

Download The Myth of Disenchantment PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022640353X
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Myth of Disenchantment by : Jason A. Josephson-Storm

Download or read book The Myth of Disenchantment written by Jason A. Josephson-Storm and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the early human sciences and their deep connections to spiritualism dispenses with the myth that separates magic and modernity. Many theorists contend that the defining feature of modernity is our collective loss of faith in spirits, myths, and magic. But in The Myth of Disenchantment, Jason A. Josephson-Storm argues against this narrative, showing that attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than not. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. He demonstrates that the founding figures of these “mythless” disciplines were in fact profoundly enmeshed in the occult and spiritualist revivals of Britain, France, and Germany. It was in response to this milieu that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

The Media and Religious Authority

Download The Media and Religious Authority PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 027107793X
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Media and Religious Authority by : Stewart M. Hoover

Download or read book The Media and Religious Authority written by Stewart M. Hoover and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the availability and use of media platforms continue to expand, the cultural visibility of religion is on the rise, leading to questions about religious authority: Where does it come from? How is it established? What might be changing it? The contributors to The Media and Religious Authority examine the ways in which new centers of power and influence are emerging as religions seek to “brand” themselves in the media age. Putting their in-depth, incisive studies of particular instances of media production and reception in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America into conversation with one another, the volume explores how evolving mediations of religion in various places affect the prospects, aspirations, and durability of religious authority across the globe. An insightful combination of theoretical groundwork and individual case studies, The Media and Religious Authority invites us to rethink the relationships among the media, religion, and culture. The contributors are Karina Kosicki Bellotti, Alexandra Boutros, Pauline Hope Cheong, Peter Horsfield, Christine Hoff Kraemer, Joonseong Lee, Alf Linderman, Bahíyyah Maroon, Montré Aza Missouri, and Emily Zeamer, with an afterword by Lynn Schofield Clark.

Scientology in Popular Culture

Download Scientology in Popular Culture PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440832501
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (48 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Scientology in Popular Culture by : Stephen A. Kent

Download or read book Scientology in Popular Culture written by Stephen A. Kent and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multidisciplinary study of Scientology examines the organization and the controversies around it through the lens of popular culture, referencing movies, television, print, and the Internet—an unusual perspective that will engage a wide range of readers and researchers. For more than 60 years, Scientology has claimed alternative religious status with a significant number of followers, despite its portrayals in popular culture domains as being bizarre. What are the reasons for the vital connections between Scientology and popular culture that help to maintain or challenge it as an influential belief system? This book is the first academic treatment of Scientology that examines the movement in a popular-culture context from the perspective of several Western countries. It documents how the attention paid to Scientology by high-profile celebrities and its mention in movies, television, and print as well as on the Internet results in millions of people being aware of the organization—to the religious organization's benefit and detriment. The book leads with a background on Scientology and a discussion of science fiction concepts, pulps, and movies. The next section examines Scientology's ongoing relationship with the Hollywood elite, including the group's use of celebrities in its drug rehabilitation program, and explores movies and television shows that contain Scientology themes or comedic references. Readers will learn about how the Internet and the mainstream media of the United States as well as of Australia, Germany, and the UK have regarded Scientology. The final section investigates the music and art of Scientology.

Government Surveillance of Religious Expression

Download Government Surveillance of Religious Expression PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135139309X
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Government Surveillance of Religious Expression by : Kathryn Montalbano

Download or read book Government Surveillance of Religious Expression written by Kathryn Montalbano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent revelations about government surveillance of citizens have led to questions about whether there should be better defined boundaries around privacy. Should government officials have the right to specifically target certain groups for extended surveillance? United States municipal, territorial, and federal agencies have investigated religious groups since the nineteenth century. While critics of contemporary mass surveillance tend to invoke the infringement of privacy, the mutual protection of religion and public expression by the First Amendment positions them, along with religious expression, comfortably within in the public sphere. This book analyzes government monitoring of Mormons of the Territory of Utah in the 1870s and 1880s for polygamy, Quakers of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from the 1940s to the 1960s for communist infiltration, and Muslims of Brooklyn, New York, from 2002 to 2013 for suspected terrorism. Government agencies in these case studies attempted to understand how their religious beliefs might shape their actions in the public sphere. It follows that government agents did not just observe these communities, but they probed precisely what constituted religion itself alongside shifting legal and political definitions relative to their respective time periods. Together, these case studies form a new framework for discussions of the historical and contemporary monitoring of religion. They show that government surveillance is less predictable and monolithic than we might assume. Therefore, this book will be of great interest to scholars of United States religion, history, and politics, as well as surveillance and communication studies.

Handbook of Scientology

Download Handbook of Scientology PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004330542
Total Pages : 620 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Handbook of Scientology by : James R. Lewis

Download or read book Handbook of Scientology written by James R. Lewis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Scientology brings together a collection of fresh studies of the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religions.

Language and Religion

Download Language and Religion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 1614514321
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (145 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Language and Religion by : Robert Yelle

Download or read book Language and Religion written by Robert Yelle and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws on an interdisciplinary team of authors to advance the study of the religious dimensions of communication and the linguistic aspects of religion. Contributions cover: poetry, iconicity, and iconoclasm in religious language; semiotic ideologies in traditional religions and in secularism; and the role of materiality and writing in religious communication. This volume will provoke new approaches to language and religion.

Digital Existence

Download Digital Existence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351607170
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (516 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Digital Existence by : Amanda Lagerkvist

Download or read book Digital Existence written by Amanda Lagerkvist and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital Existence: Ontology, Ethics and Transcendence in Digital Culture advances debates on digital culture and digital religion in two complementary ways. First, by focalizing the themes ‘ontology,’ ‘ethics’ and ‘transcendence,’ it builds on insights from research on digital religion in order to reframe the field and pursue an existential media analysis that further pushes beyond the mandatory focus in mainstream media studies on the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of digitalization. Second, the collection also implies a broadening of the scope of the debate in the field of media, religion and culture – and digital religion in particular – beyond ‘religion,’ to include the wider existential dimensions of digital media. It is the first volume on our digital existence in the budding field of existential media studies.

Key Concepts in Practice

Download Key Concepts in Practice PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110547848
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Key Concepts in Practice by : Paul R. Katz

Download or read book Key Concepts in Practice written by Paul R. Katz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the study of modern Chinese religions has developed into a highly innovative yet challenging field. One of the main reasons for this involves an ongoing (and largely unresolved) debate regarding what methods and theories are appropriate for analyzing the wide range of beliefs and practices we encounter. This series of three volumes is based on the conviction that, in this critical period of research on modern Chinese religions, it is time for scholars to review the development of our field, reconsider its present state of theories and analytical models, and open a new chapter in the understanding of methodologies we employ. Our research is grounded on the need to re-evaluate concepts and practices that inform both the religious sphere and contemporary scholarship, including endogenous Chinese concepts and exogenous ideas from the West and Japan that have been foundational in shaping our knowledge of the Chinese religious landscape. In this third volume of our series, we examine a variety of key concepts through their praxis in modern Chinese lived religions.