Description
Book SynopsisReligion: An Anthropological Perspective provides a critical view of religion focusing upon important but overlooked topics such as religion, cognition, and prehistory; science, rationality, and religion; altered states of consciousness, entheogens and religious experience; religion and the paranormal; magic and divination; religion and ecology; fundamentalism; and religion and violence. In addition, this book offers a unique and concise coverage of traditional topics of the anthropology of religion such as shamanism and witchcraft (past and present), ritual, myth, religious symbols, and revitalization movements. A vast range of findings from ethnography, ethnology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, prehistory, history, and cognitive science are brought to bear on the subject. Written in clear jargon-free prose, this book provides an accessible and comprehensive yet critical view of the anthropology of religion both for graduate and undergraduate students and general audiences
Table of ContentsContents: Anthropology and Religion – Religion, Cognition, and Prehistory – Shamanism – Altered States of Consciousness and Religion – Entheogens and Religious Experience – Witchcraft: Evil in Human Form – Magic and Divination – Religion and the Paranormal – Religion: Organization and Evolutionary Patterns – Religion and Ecology – Ritual: The Practical Dimension of Religion – Myth: The Narrative Dimension of Religion – Symbols: The Representational Dimension of Religion – Revitalization Movements and the Origins of Religion – Fundamentalism – Religion and Violence.
