Research Catalog

Title

Religion, anthropology, and cognitive science / edited by Harvey Whitehouse, James Laidlaw.

Publication

Durham, N.C. : Carolina Academic Press, c2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Whitehouse, Harvey
• Laidlaw, James.

Description

xxiv, 286 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

• "Since its inception the discipline of anthropology has asked many more questions about the nature and origins of religion than it has been able to answer convincingly. While the striking universality, yet also the equally striking diversity of religion in human societies - explained so confidently by Enlightenment scholars and the first generations of anthropologists - have continued to exert a general fascination, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed declining ambitions among anthropologists of being able to explain these phenomena. This book tests the claims that a radically new perspective - that of cognitive, science - may be used to provide convincing new explanations.
• Why are beliefs about gods, ghosts, and ancestors so similar in widely different societies? What if anything is the connection between religion and witchcraft and magic? Why does ritual play the role it does in human life generally, and in religion in particular? This book presents and assesses the answers to such questions offered by the cognitive science of religion, and discusses possible futures for the relationship between anthropology and cognitive science."--Jacket.

Series Statement

Ritual studies monograph series

Uniform Title

Carolina Academic Press ritual studies monographs.

Subject

• Ethnology > Religious aspects
• Cognition and culture
• Religion
• Godsdienst
• Antropologische aspecten
• Cognitiewetenschap

Genre/Form

Aufsatzsammlung.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction / James Laidlaw & Harvey Whitehouse -- Anthropology and anthropomorphism in religion / Stewart Elliott Guthrie -- Durkheimian anthropology and religion : going in and out of each other's bodies / Maurice Bloch -- Malinowski and magical ritual / Jesper Sørensen -- How "natives" don't think : the apotheosis of overinterpretation / Jonathan A. Lanman -- Witchcraft and sorcery / Emma Cohen -- Ancestors and the afterlife / Rita Astuti -- Gods / Justin L. Barrett -- A well-disposed social anthropologist's problems with the 'cognitive science of religion' / James Laidlaw -- Towards and integration of ethnography, history, and the cognitive science of religion / Harvey Whitehouse.

ISBN

• 9781594601071 (alk. paper)
• 1594601070 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2007021262

OCLC

• 167763914
• SCSB-10652053

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library