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The odyssey experience : physical, social, psychological, and spiritual journeys / Neil J. Smelser.
De Gruyter University of California Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Smelser, Neil J.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Insight.
- Introspection.
- Life change events.
- Vision quests.
- Pilgrims and pilgrimages.
- Voyages and travels.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (287 p.)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, c2009.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- This bold and innovative book traces the phenomenon of the "odyssey" experience as it shapes, informs, and defines our lives. Drawing on an astonishing range of examples, Neil J. Smelser focuses on how such experiences enhance our lives and provide us with meaning and dignity. The odyssey experience, as Smelser advances it, is generic, widespread, and recurring. It is a finite period of disengagement from the routines of life and immersion into a simpler, transitory, often collective, usually intense period of involvement that culminates in some kind of regeneration. By examining a variety of topics as part of a larger, overarching phenomenon, Smelser transforms their study from the particular to the comparative. The Odyssey Experience thus reaches beyond a simple description of where and how transformations occur in daily life to offer a profound explanation for why they are there.
- Contents:
- Front matter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1. The Essentials of the Experience
- 2. Autobiographical Roots: Some Personal Odysseys
- 3. Religious Foundations and Their Derivatives
- 4. Secularized and Commercialized Odysseys
- 5. Some Miscellaneous, More or Less Invented Experiences
- 6. Some Coercive Odyssey Experiences
- 7. Additional Theoretical Reflections
- References
- Index
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-248) and index.
- Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
- ISBN:
- 9786612772542
- 9781282772540
- 1282772546
- 9780520943421
- 0520943422
- OCLC:
- 773565077
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