Rituals in an Unstable World: Contingency - Hybridity - Embodiment - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3631573936 ISBN 13: 9783631573938

Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissen, 2008

Synopsis

Refuting prophecies of an unstoppable increase in secularization, the fascination of religious rituals proofs to be unbroken in the late modern world. This book contests classical paradigms that reduce the rationale of rituals to normativity (Durkheim), intelligibility (Geertz) and dialectics (Turner). Instead, it shows that rituals assert their significance in the post-colonial and globalizing world by successfully negotiating structure and contingency, identity and hybridity, script and embodiment. Its case studies are dealing with a broad variety of ritual genres and expressions, including initiation ceremonies and spirit possession, new harvest ceremonies, cults of ancestors, deities and saints, ceremonial receptions, inaugurations and memorials, ritual theatre, carnival and ritual painting in contemporary Brazil, Germany, France, India, Japan, Taiwan, USA, Vietnam, and Yemen.

About this title

About the Author:

The Editors: Alexander Henn is Associate Professor at the Department for Religious Studies and the School of Global Studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix (USA). Klaus-Peter Koepping is Emeritus Professor of the University Heidelberg and currently visiting professor at Goldsmith College, Center for Cultural Studies, at the University of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissen
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 3631573936
• ISBN 13: 9783631573938
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342
• Editor: Henn Alexander, Koepping Klaus-Peter