Description
Trade ReviewThis collection of essays addresses the knotty and important problem of the efficacy of ritual from a variety of perspectives spanning the disciplines of anthropology and theology. Thematically focused and substantively rich, the volume will have considerable appeal to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology of religion, history of religions, ritual studies, and theology. * Thomas J. Csordas, author of Body/Meaning/Healing and The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing *
...no reader of Magic, Ritual, and Witchcreaft is likely to regret the purchase of this engaging and valuable book. * Claire Fanger, Rice University *
Table of Contents1. Ritual and the Problem of Efficacy ; 2. Ritual Healing and the Investiture of the Babylonian King ; 3. Jesus and his Followers as Healers: Symbolic Healing in Early Christianity ; 4. Healing Rituals in the Mediaeval West ; 5. Excommunication in the Middle Ages: A meta-ritual and the many faces of its efficacy ; 6. The Work of Zar: Women and Spirit Possession in Northern Sudan ; 7. Ritual Humility in Modern Laboratories: Or, Why Ecuadorian IVF Practitioners Pray ; 8. Ritual, Medicine, and the Placebo Response ; 9. Bell, Bourdieu and Wittgenstein on Ritual Sense
