Ritual and religion in the making of humanity / Roy A. Rappaport.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rappaport, Roy A., author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology ; 110.

Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology ; 110

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ritual.

Religion.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiii, 535 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Ritual & Religion in the Making of Humanity

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.

Contents:

Foreword / Keith Hart

1. Introduction

2. The ritual form

3. Self-referential messages

4. Enactments of meaning

5. Word and act, form and substance

6. Time and liturgical order

7. Intervals, eternity, and communitas

8. Simultaneity and hierarchy

9. The idea of the sacred

10. Sanctification

11. Truth and order

12. The numinous, the Holy, and the divine

13. Religion in adaptation

14. The breaking of the Holy and its salvation.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

ISBN:

0-511-05231-6

0-511-81468-2

0-511-15173-X

0-511-01603-4

OCLC:

51240608