Description
Book Synopsis As we enter the 21st century, it becomes increasingly difficult to envisage a world detached from religion or an anthropology blind to its study. Yet, how people become religious is still poorly studied. This volume gathers some of the most distinguished scholars in the field to offer a new perspective for the study of religion, one that examines the works of transmission and innovation through the prism of learning. They argue that religious culture is socially and dynamically constructed by agents who are not mere passive recipients but engaged in active learning processes. Finding a middle way between the social and the cognitive, they see learning religions not as a mechanism of “downloading” but also as a social process with its relational dimension.
Trade Review “This volume demonstrates that a formidable barrier divides social and the cognitive anthropologists. Sperber, Bloch, Whitehouse, and even the very Durkheimian Mary Douglas have been encouraging a merger between cognitive studies, hermeneutics, and ethnography, while others have been more reticent or antagonistic…Either way, this work has helped to advance the discussion.” · Anthropos
“This volume is a valuable contribution to an emergent field of study, and will appeal to scholars who seek new interdisciplinary approaches.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. On Learning Religion: An Introduction
David Berliner and Ramon Sarró
Chapter 2. Learning to Believe: A Preliminary Approach
Carlo Severi
Chapter 3. Menstrual Slaps and First Blood Celebrations: Inference, Simulation and the Learning of Ritual
Michael Houseman
Chapter 4. The Accidental in Religious Instruction: Ideas and Convictions
David Parkin
Chapter 5. On Catching Up With Oneself: Learning to Know That One Means What One Does
Michael Lambek
Chapter 6. How Do You Learn to Know That it is God Who Speaks?
T.M. Luhrmann
Chapter 7. How to Learn in an Afro-Brazilian Spirit Possession Religion: Ontology and Multiplicity in Candomblé
Marcio Goldman
Chapter 8. Learning to be a Proper Medium: Middle-Class Womanhood and Spirit Mediumship at Christian Rationalist Séances in Cape Verde
João Vasconcelos
Chapter 9. Copyright and Authorship: Ritual Speech and the New Market of Words in Toraja
Aurora Donzelli
Chapter 10. Learning Faith: Young Christians and Catechism
Laurence Hérault
Chapter 11. What is Interesting about Chinese Religion
Charles Stafford
Chapter 12. The Sound of Witchcraft: Noise as Mediation in Religious Transmission
Michael Rowlands
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
