Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity: 110 (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 110) - Softcover

Rappaport, Roy A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521296900 ISBN 13: 9780521296908

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

A comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance and a study of its main component, ritual.

About this title

Review

'Once in a great while there appears a book that alters the dimensions of the intellectual field to which it speaks. This is such a book. In it, the author marshals insights drawn from ethnography and ecology, the cybernetics of communication, comparative religion and semiotics to establish the centrality of ritual for what it means to be human. In clear and elegant prose, Roy Rappaport calls into question many of the ways we think about the world. The result is an intellectual adventure of the first magnitude' Eric Wolf

'Roy Rappaport's book is an admirable blend of rich information and analytical power. It is a committed and challenging reflection on the importance of religion and the constructive power of rituals for a post-modern world, seen in the light of it pre-modern and modern history. A courageous work in a period of over specialized scholarship, I have never read such a comprehensive and penetrating treatise on rituals.' Hans Kung, Universität Tubingen

'Invoking concepts from fields as diverse as speech-acts theory and cybernetics, Rappaport constructs one of the fullest and richest theories of ritual to be found ... Roy Rappaport writes with both clarity and passion ... the grandeur of Rappaport's effort to demonstrate the centrality of ritual and of religion is most impressive.' The Times Literary Supplement

'This is a massive volume, full of great philosophical complexity and possibly the most detailed epistemological analysis of the phenomenon of rituals.' Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Book Description

This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. It is both a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance and a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521296900
• ISBN 13: 9780521296908
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 564