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The Anthropology of Religion book cover

1st Edition

The Anthropology of Religion

By Peter Metcalf Copyright 2023
224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book describes how anthropologists in the twentieth century went about documenting the religions of those independent peoples who still lived beyond the frontiers of the global economy and the world religions. It begins by examining the enormous popularity of the newly invented field of anthropology in the nineteenth century as a site of multiple intellectual developments. Its climax was... Read more

Introducing the Independent Thinkers

1. "Such Turbulent Human Material"

Part I: Nineteenth-Century Beginnings

2. The Mirror of Modernity

3. The Phenomenon of the Golden Bough

4. If I was a Horse

Part II: Definitions

5. The Essence of Religion

6. On the Uselessness of Ritual

Part III: Religion and Science

7. Einstein in The Outback

8. Real Knowledge of Real Worlds

9. Integrity of Science and Religion

Part IV: Dismissing Diversity

10. Laying Tylor’s Ghost

11. Exorcising Freud

Part V: Looking for Meanings

12. What’s Only Natural

13. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

Part VI: Ritual and Rationality

14. No One Believes in Things That Aren’t There

15. Being Reasonable

Part VII: Powers

16. Invitations You Can’t Refuse

17. Nature Does Not Work Independently Of Man

18. Findings

Postscript: Religion and Evolution

Biography

Peter Metcalf is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, USA. He has conducted fieldwork in central Borneo over many years and written extensively about its peoples and cultures. He has also written about issues in comparative religion, especially as concerns death rituals worldwide and throughout history.

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