{"title":"Bloomsbury Advances In Religious Studies","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore cutting-edge scholarship in religious studies with this Bloomsbury series. Delve into diverse perspectives, from ancient traditions to contemporary issues, for an enriching intellectual journey.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"redefining-shamanisms-book-david-gordon-wilson-9781472579041","title":"Redefining Shamanisms","description":"Spiritualism and mediumship are often regarded as the product of lingering superstition in the Victorian era, and as having limited relevance in modern Anglo-American society. Scholarship to date which has considered Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition has focussed on analysing the phenomenon in terms of spirit possession only.   This volume analyses the development of shamanism (communication with the spiritual world) as a concept within North American English-speaking scholarship, with particular focus on Mircea Eliade's influential cross-cultural presentation of shamanism. By re-examining the work of Sergei Shirokogoroff, one of Eliade's principal sources, the traditional Evenki shamanic apprenticeship is compared and identified with the new Spiritualist apprenticeship.  The author demonstrates that Spiritualism is best understood as a traditional shamanism, as distinct from contemporary appropriations or neo-shamanisms. He argues that shamanism is the outcome of an apprenticeship in the management of psychic experiences, and which follows the same pattern as that of the apprentice medium. In doing so, the author offers fresh insights into the mechanisms that are key to sustaining mediumship as a social institution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49532519285009,"sku":"GOR013439092","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52683607277841,"sku":"NLS9781472579041","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1472579046.jpg?v=1750758518"},{"product_id":"problem-with-interreligious-dialogue-book-muthuraj-swamy-9781350048591","title":"The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue","description":"Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and ‘interreligious dialogue’. By challenging the assumption that ‘world religions’ operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict.   Offering a critique of the idea of ‘dialogue’ as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is ‘elitist’ and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions.    Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49581527466257,"sku":"GOR013590712","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52477124346129,"sku":"NLS9781350048591","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350048593.jpg?v=1777371377"},{"product_id":"individualized-religion-book-claire-wanless-9781350182509","title":"Individualized Religion","description":"Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores individualized religion in and around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Claire Wanless demonstrates that counter to the claims of secularization theorists, the combination of informal structures and practices can provide a viable basis for socially significant religious activity that can sustain itself. The subjects of this research claim a variety of religious identities and practices, and are suspicious of religious institutions, hierarchies, rules and dogmas. Yet they participate actively in an overlapping and cross-linking informal network of practice communities and other associations. Their engagements propagate and sustain a core ideology that prioritizes subjectivity, locates authority at the level of the individual, and also predicates itself on ideals of sharing, mutuality and community. Providing a new theory of religious association, this book is a nuanced counterpoint to the secularization thesis in the UK and points the way to new research on individual religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50697855467793,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50697858941201,"sku":"NGR9781350182509","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52147720913169,"sku":"NLS9781350182509","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350182508.jpg?v=1777371080"},{"product_id":"american-evangelicals-book-ashlee-quosigk-9781350175587","title":"American Evangelicals","description":"Ashlee Quosigk explores the diversity of opinions within the largest religious group in the US – Evangelical Christians – on the topic of Islam.   Evangelicals are often characterized as monolithically antagonistic toward Muslims. This book challenges that stereotype, exposing the sharp divides that exist among Evangelicals on Islam and examines why there is division. Drawing on qualitative research on two congregations in the US, as well as on popular Evangelical leaders, this book details the surprisingly diverse views Evangelicals hold on Muhammad, the Qur’an, interfaith dialogue, syncretism, and politics. This research is invaluable for providing a better understanding of what Evangelicals think, and why.   This book also offers insight into why conflict exists and why Evangelicals differ, while advancing culture war theory and qualitative methods. Specifically, it explores differences in moral authority (assumptions that guide one’s perceptions of the world) among Evangelicals and explains how these differences influence their views on Islam. The findings are relevant to religious relations worldwide as everyone appeals to moral authority, irrespective of their geographic location.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50697894822161,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50697897017617,"sku":"NGR9781350175587","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52404866089233,"sku":"NLS9781350175587","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350175587.jpg?v=1777370714"},{"product_id":"rethinking-classical-yoga-and-buddhism-book-karen-obrienkop-9781350229990","title":"Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism","description":"This book revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called ‘yoga’ in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O’Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st – 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history.   Buddhist traditions were just as concerned as Hindu traditions with meditative disciplines of yoga. By exploring the intertextuality of the Patanjalayogasastra with texts such as Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosabhasya and Asanga’s Yogacarabhumisastra, this book highlights and clarifies many ideologically Buddhist concepts and practices in Patanjala yoga.   Karen O’Brien-Kop demonstrates that ‘classical yoga’ was co-constructed systemically by both Hindu and Buddhist thinkers who were drawing on the same conceptual metaphors of the period. This analysis demystifies early yoga-meditation as a timeless ‘classical’ practice and locates it in a specific material context of agrarian and urban economies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50697976119569,"sku":"NGR9781350229990","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52487320994065,"sku":"NLS9781350229990","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350229997.jpg?v=1777371635"},{"product_id":"neo-spiritual-aesthetics-book-lina-aschenbrenner-9781350272873","title":"Neo-Spiritual Aesthetics","description":"Tracing embodied transformation in the context of Gaga, the Israeli dance improvisation practice, this book demystifies what Lina Aschenbrenner coins as “neo-spiritual aesthetics.” This book takes the reader on an analytical journey through a Gaga class, outlining the effective aesthetics of Gaga as an example for the broader field of neo-spiritualities. It distinguishes a threefold effect of Gaga practice—from a momentary extraordinary experience, to a lasting therapeutic effect, and finally Gaga’s worldview potential. It situates the effect in an assemblage of interrelating aesthetics of environment, movement, and bodies.    The book shows why seemingly leisure time activities such as Gaga form fruitful research objects to an academic study of religion and opens up research on neo-spiritual practices. In understanding the sensory effect of practice and its cultural and social implications, the book follows an Aesthetics of Religion approach. It departs from the idea that cognition is embodied and that the body is thus central to understanding cultural and social phenomena. Drawing upon a wide array of data gathered in the context of Gaga at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv, the book weaves together different methods of discourse, ritual, movement, body knowledge, and narrative analysis, while acknowledging insights from neuroscience and cognitive science.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50698236264721,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50698238624017,"sku":"NGR9781350272873","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52433173610769,"sku":"NLS9781350272873","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350272876.jpg?v=1777371536"},{"product_id":"neo-spiritual-aesthetics-book-lina-aschenbrenner-9781350272965","title":"Neo-Spiritual Aesthetics","description":"Tracing embodied transformation in the context of Gaga, the Israeli dance improvisation practice, this book demystifies what Lina Aschenbrenner coins as “neo-spiritual aesthetics.” This book takes the reader on an analytical journey through a Gaga class, outlining the effective aesthetics of Gaga as an example for the broader field of neo-spiritualities. It distinguishes a threefold effect of Gaga practice—from a momentary extraordinary experience, to a lasting therapeutic effect, and finally Gaga’s worldview potential. It situates the effect in an assemblage of interrelating aesthetics of environment, movement, and bodies.    The book shows why seemingly leisure time activities such as Gaga form fruitful research objects to an academic study of religion and opens up research on neo-spiritual practices. In understanding the sensory effect of practice and its cultural and social implications, the book follows an Aesthetics of Religion approach. It departs from the idea that cognition is embodied and that the body is thus central to understanding cultural and social phenomena. Drawing upon a wide array of data gathered in the context of Gaga at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv, the book weaves together different methods of discourse, ritual, movement, body knowledge, and narrative analysis, while acknowledging insights from neuroscience and cognitive science.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50698914103569,"sku":"NGR9781350272965","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618752131345,"sku":"NLS9781350272965","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350272965.jpg?v=1750825167"},{"product_id":"rethinking-classical-yoga-and-buddhism-book-bettina-schmidt-9781350230033","title":"Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism","description":"This book revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called ‘yoga’ in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O’Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st – 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history.   Buddhist traditions were just as concerned as Hindu traditions with meditative disciplines of yoga. By exploring the intertextuality of the Patanjalayogasastra with texts such as Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosabhasya and Asanga’s Yogacarabhumisastra, this book highlights and clarifies many ideologically Buddhist concepts and practices in Patanjala yoga.   Karen O’Brien-Kop demonstrates that ‘classical yoga’ was co-constructed systemically by both Hindu and Buddhist thinkers who were drawing on the same conceptual metaphors of the period. This analysis demystifies early yoga-meditation as a timeless ‘classical’ practice and locates it in a specific material context of agrarian and urban economies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50886835994897,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50886836322577,"sku":"NGR9781350230033","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52687563751697,"sku":"NLS9781350230033","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350230030.jpg?v=1751467500"},{"product_id":"one-nation-many-faiths-book-liam-t-sutherland-9781350425866","title":"One Nation, Many Faiths","description":"This book examines the understudied role of the interfaith movement in institutionalizing religious pluralism in the public life of contemporary societies through the case study of Interfaith Scotland. It analyzes the organization and their literature, demonstrating the ways in which they have cultivated a particular model of religious pluralism compatible with a secular civic-cultural nationalism. It places this case into a comparative discussion of the interfaith movement as an emerging global phenomenon.   In this case study, the author considers how Interfaith Scotland presents ‘religions’ as equivalent, compatible bodies of ethical teachings through selective appeals to textual traditions or in some cases, their construction. It has also depended on conforming to the ‘world religions paradigm’, where it is only religions with global reach and cohesive characteristics which require representation.   Liam Sutherland discusses how Interfaith Scotland encouraged a common, seemingly ‘apolitical’ attachment to Scotland’s democratic institutions and cultural heritage, especially in relation to the question of independence. This case study sheds light on the wider relationship between the global interfaith movement and nationalism – both in protecting religions against prejudice and exclusion but also pursuing integrationist goals.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51627378245905,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51627378540817,"sku":"NGR9781350425866","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52659751616785,"sku":"NLS9781350425866","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350425869.jpg?v=1750857215"},{"product_id":"post-materialist-religion-book-mika-t-lassander-9781472509925","title":"Post-Materialist Religion","description":"Post-Materialist Religion discusses the transformations of the individual's worldview in contemporary modern societies, and the role general societal value change plays in these. In doing so, Mika Lassander brings into conversation sociological theories of secularisation and social-psychological theories of interpersonal relations, the development of morality, and the nature of basic human values. The long-term decline of traditional religiosity in Europe and the emerging ethos that can be described as post-secular have brought religion and values back into popular discussion. One important theme in these discussions is about the links between religion and values, with the most common assumption being that religions are the source of individuals’ values. This book argues for the opposite view, suggesting that religions, or people’s worldviews in general, reflect the individual’s priorities.   Mika Lassander argues that the transformation of the individual's worldview is a direct consequence of the social and economical changes in European societies since the Second World War. He suggests that the decline of traditional religiosity is not an indication of linear secularisation or of forgetting traditions, but an indication of the loss of relevance of some aspects of the traditional institutional religions. Furthermore, he argues that this is not an indication of the loss of ethical value base, but, rather, a change in the value base and consequently the transformation of the legitimating framework of this value base.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52089429786897,"sku":"NLS9781472509925","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781472509925.jpg?v=1777370364"},{"product_id":"religion-and-the-inculturation-of-human-rights-in-ghana-book-abamfo-ofori-atiemo-9781441199478","title":"Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana","description":"It has been maintained that the secular nature of modern human rights makes them incompatible with the religious orientation of African and non-Western societies. However, in view of the resilience of religion in the global and local public sphere, it is important to explore how religion can contribute to the promotion and enjoyment of human rights.  Based on fieldwork conducted in Ghana, Abamfo Ofori Atiemo here establishes a convergence between human rights and local religious and cultural values in African societies. He argues that human rights represent universal 'dream values'. This allows for a cultural embedding of human rights in Ghana and other non-Western societies. He argues that 'dream values' are usually presented in religious language and proclaimed, for example, by prophets and seers or expressed in certain forms of taboo, proverbs or legal norms. He employs the concept of inculturation, adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to non-Christian cultures, as a hermeneutical tool for developing a model to understand the encounter between universal human rights and local cultures.  Offering a new model for explaining the relation between religion and human rights, Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana offers a novel perspective on the links between global trends and local cultures underpinned by strong currents of religious ideas.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52089489031441,"sku":"NLS9781441199478","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781441199478.jpg?v=1756907414"},{"product_id":"cosmologies-of-mental-health-book-francis-ethelbert-kwabena-beny-9781350463479","title":"Cosmologies of Mental Health","description":"This open access book is based on a unique body of data on a hitherto understudied field of Pentecostal prayer camps and mental health in Ghana.   The book investigates and presents empirically grounded cases of persons with mental illness and how they deploy religious resources at prayer camps in Ghana in dealing with their illness. Particularly, the book explores perceived causes of mental illness and how such perceptions influence health seeking behaviours. The book illustrates how the perceived causes of mental illness and the healing practices found at prayer camps in Ghana that are meant to deal with the illness appeal very much to Ghanaians because they resonate with indigenous worldviews.  Through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of in-depth-interviews with persons afflicted with mental illness and practitioners, this book points out the varied ways in which prayer camps have become a source of authoritative knowledge in Ghana’s medical pluralistic society, serving as an “informal” health sector in the provision of health care to persons with mental illnesses. It further highlights the network of relationships between prayer camps and hospitals as new ground of training in “cultural competence” for clinicians in their field of practice in psychiatry. The book proposes the intermediate continuum approach as a new framework or lens for examining the broader role of religion and culture in mental health care. The approach aims at providing a common ground to merge the differences in previous approaches in the studies of culture and mental health and thereby undo the tensions, conflicts, and controversies inherent in such approaches.   The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Åbo Akademi University.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52101146607889,"sku":"NGR9781350463479","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350463479.jpg?v=1770372966"},{"product_id":"dynamic-cosmos-book-matan-shapiro-9781350299368","title":"The Dynamic Cosmos","description":"This edited volume applies the analytic notions of paradox and play to the ethnographic manifestation of spirits, angels, and demons in different locations around the world. The 10 case studies conceptualize the co-presence of humans and entities with terms that do not exclude spiritual reasoning on the one hand, and social explanations on the other. Through in-depth descriptions of localized possession cosmologies, the different chapters collectively propose path-breaking methodological directions in this field, which incorporate ethnographic theories of simultaneity into anthropological theories of religion, kinship, and ritual.  Framed by an introduction written by the editors and an afterword by Michael Lambek, a leading authority in possessions studies, the volume contains cutting edge analyses that will provide readers with new tools to evaluate previously unstudied aspects of spirit possession; all of which stem from the fantastic forms of human movement that accompany the phenomenality of paradoxes in mundane reality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52126673535249,"sku":"NLS9781350299368","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350299368.jpg?v=1757477757"},{"product_id":"secular-assemblages-book-marek-sullivan-9781350272361","title":"Secular Assemblages","description":"In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and power. While existing works of secular intellectual history, especially Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes, Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past. From Descartes’s last work Les Passions de l’Âme (1649) to Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with crucial implications for our current ‘postsecular’ and ‘postliberal’ moment.   Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the secular, identifying a distinctively secular—yet impassioned—form of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet’s racial profile in Voltaire’s Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example, functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people’s sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist, Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131321839889,"sku":"NLS9781350272361","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350272361.jpg?v=1777371406"},{"product_id":"religion-material-culture-and-archaeology-book-julian-droogan-9781441195777","title":"Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology","description":"Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology offers a new understanding of the materiality of religion. By drawing on the field of archaeological theory and method, the relationship between religion and material culture is explored. It is argued that the material elements of religious life have been largely neglected by the discipline of religious studies, while at the same time religion has been traditionally seen as problematic for archaeologists. Why do we not talk of the discipline of the archaeology of religion, in the same way we do the anthropology of religion, or the sociology of religion?  The volume considers the historical problems of approaching the material elements of religious life and bridges the methodological gap between religious studies and archaeology by proposing a new way of understanding the materiality of religion – as active, engaged and projecting a level of autonomous social agency. Finally, the critical examination of archaeological approaches to the materiality of religion is furthered through the consideration of non-archaeological ways of examining the social roles that material culture plays in human life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131543580945,"sku":"NLS9781441195777","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781441195777.jpg?v=1757510972"},{"product_id":"individualized-religion-book-claire-wanless-9781350234123","title":"Individualized Religion","description":"Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores individualized religion in and around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Claire Wanless demonstrates that counter to the claims of secularization theorists, the combination of informal structures and practices can provide a viable basis for socially significant religious activity that can sustain itself. The subjects of this research claim a variety of religious identities and practices, and are suspicious of religious institutions, hierarchies, rules and dogmas. Yet they participate actively in an overlapping and cross-linking informal network of practice communities and other associations. Their engagements propagate and sustain a core ideology that prioritizes subjectivity, locates authority at the level of the individual, and also predicates itself on ideals of sharing, mutuality and community. Providing a new theory of religious association, this book is a nuanced counterpoint to the secularization thesis in the UK and points the way to new research on individual religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52136656273681,"sku":"NLS9781350234123","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350234123.jpg?v=1777370709"},{"product_id":"critical-study-of-non-religion-book-christopher-r-cotter-9781350325791","title":"The Critical Study of Non-Religion","description":"This book acts as a bridge between the critical study of ‘religion’ and empirical studies of ‘religion in the real world’. Chris Cotter presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh’s Southside which blurs the boundary between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. In doing so, Cotter demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake.  This book details an approach that avoids constructing ‘religion’ as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating ‘non-religious’ subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be essential reading for those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-\/religious landscape.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52139698618641,"sku":"NLS9781350325791","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350325791.jpg?v=1777370577"},{"product_id":"secular-assemblages-book-marek-sullivan-9781350123670","title":"Secular Assemblages","description":"In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and power. While existing works of secular intellectual history, especially Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes, Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past. From Descartes’s last work Les Passions de l’Âme (1649) to Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with crucial implications for our current ‘postsecular’ and ‘postliberal’ moment.   Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the secular, identifying a distinctively secular—yet impassioned—form of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet’s racial profile in Voltaire’s Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example, functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people’s sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist, Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52149879996689,"sku":"NLS9781350123670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350123670.jpg?v=1770717668"},{"product_id":"sense-of-belonging-book-stephen-friend-9781350278202","title":"A Sense of Belonging","description":"Exploring the relationship between identity and religion in British Fishing Communities during the 19th and early 20th centuries, this volume focuses on three communities in the UK: Scarborough, Filey and Grimsby.  The study offers a brief overview of the development of these communities and outlines the nature of the relationship between institutionalised and popular religion. It explores religion as a range of discourses or narratives that provide us with a way of viewing this matrix of meaning that has had a significant influence on the construction and maintenance of identity. It also examines the role of ritual and performance, both of which have been shown to play an important part in the daily lives of community members, not least in helping to provide and reinforce a sense of security, stability and belonging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52152047468817,"sku":"NLS9781350278202","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350278202.jpg?v=1770718019"},{"product_id":"spirits-and-trance-in-brazil-book-bettina-e-schmidt-9781350057920","title":"Spirits and Trance in Brazil","description":"Bettina E. Schmidt explores experiences usually labelled as spirit possession, a highly contested and challenged term, using extensive ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and home to a range of religions which practice spirit possession. The book is enriched by excerpts from interviews with people about their experiences. It focuses on spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions and spiritism, as well as discussing the notion of exorcism in Charismatic Christian communities.   Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experience is divided into three sections which present the three main areas in the study of spirit possession. The first section looks at the social dimension of spirit possession, in particular gender roles associated with spirit possession in Brazil and racial stratification of the communities. It shows how gender roles and racial composition have adapted alongside changes in society in the last 100 years. The second section focuses on the way people interpret their practice. It shows that the interpretations of this practice depend on the human relationship to the possessing entities. The third section explores a relatively new field of research, the Western discourse of mind\/body dualism and the wide field of cognition and embodiment.   All sections together confirm the significance of discussing spirit possession within a wider framework that embraces physical elements as well as cultural and social ones. Bringing together sociological, anthropological, phenomenological and religious studies approaches, this book offers a new perspective on the study of spirit possession.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52331131896081,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331132485905,"sku":"NLS9781350057920","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350057920.jpg?v=1777371019"},{"product_id":"orthodox-christianity-new-age-spirituality-and-vernacular-religion-book-eugenia-roussou-9781350152793","title":"Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion","description":"This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity.    Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the ‘evil eye’ produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture.    The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52333548437777,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52333549093137,"sku":"NLS9781350152793","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350152793.jpg?v=1777371065"},{"product_id":"free-zone-scientology-book-aled-thomas-9781350182547","title":"Free Zone Scientology","description":"In this novel academic study, Aled Thomas analyses modern issues surrounding boundaries and fluidity in contemporary Scientology. By using the Scientologist practice of ‘auditing’ as a case study, this book explores the ways in which new types of ‘Scientologies’ can emerge. The notion of Free Zone Scientology is characterised by its horizontal structure, in contrast to the vertical-hierarchy of the institutional Church of Scientology. With this in mind, Thomas explores the Free Zone as an example of a developing and fluid religion, directly addressing questions concerning authority, leadership and material objects.  This book, by maintaining a double-focus on the top-down hierarchy of the Church of Scientology and the horizontal-fluid nature of the Free Zone, breaks away from previous research on new religions, which have tended to focus either on new religions as indices of broad social processes, such as secularization or globalization, or as exemplars of exotic processes, such as charismatic authority and brainwashing. Instead, Thomas adopts auditing as a method of providing an in-depth case study of a new religion in transition and transformation in the 21st century. This opens the study of contemporary and new religions to a series of new questions around hybrid religions (sacred and secular), and acts as a framework for the study of similar movements formed in recent decades.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52333559251217,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52333560267025,"sku":"NLS9781350182547","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350182547.jpg?v=1777371077"},{"product_id":"ufos-conspiracy-theories-and-the-new-age-book-david-g-robertson-9781474253208","title":"UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age","description":"How—and why— were UFOs so prevalent in both conspiracy theories and the New Age milieu in the post-Cold War period? In this ground-breaking book, David G. Robertson argues that UFOs symbolized an uncertainty about the boundaries between scientific knowledge and other ways of validating knowledge, and thus became part of a shared vocabulary.   Through historical and ethnographic case studies of three prominent figures—novelist and abductee Whitley Strieber; environmentalist and reptilian proponent David Icke; and David Wilcock, alleged reincarnation of Edgar Cayce—the investigation reveals that millennial conspiracism offers an explanation as to why the prophesied New Age failed to arrive—it was prevented from arriving by malevolent, hidden others. Yet millennial conspiracism constructs a counter-elite, a gnostic third party defined by their special knowledge.  An overview of the development of UFO subcultures from the perspective of religious studies, UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age is an innovative application of discourse analysis to the study of present day alternative religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52336348954897,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52336349970705,"sku":"NLS9781474253208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781474253208.jpg?v=1758163041"},{"product_id":"religion-and-the-inculturation-of-human-rights-in-ghana-book-abamfo-ofori-atiemo-9781472589934","title":"Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana","description":"It has been maintained that the secular nature of modern human rights makes them incompatible with the religious orientation of African and non-Western societies. However, in view of the resilience of religion in the global and local public sphere, it is important to explore how religion can contribute to the promotion and enjoyment of human rights.  Based on fieldwork conducted in Ghana, Abamfo Ofori Atiemo here establishes a convergence between human rights and local religious and cultural values in African societies. He argues that human rights represent universal 'dream values'. This allows for a cultural embedding of human rights in Ghana and other non-Western societies. He argues that 'dream values' are usually presented in religious language and proclaimed, for example, by prophets and seers or expressed in certain forms of taboo, proverbs or legal norms. He employs the concept of inculturation, adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to non-Christian cultures, as a hermeneutical tool for developing a model to understand the encounter between universal human rights and local cultures.  Offering a new model for explaining the relation between religion and human rights, Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana offers a novel perspective on the links between global trends and local cultures underpinned by strong currents of religious ideas.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52404081197329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52404081787153,"sku":"NLS9781472589934","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781472589934.jpg?v=1758763188"},{"product_id":"phenomenology-of-indigenous-religions-book-james-l-cox-9781350250727","title":"A Phenomenology of Indigenous Religions","description":"This book compiles James L. Cox’s most important writings on a phenomenology of Indigenous Religions into one volume, with a new introduction and conclusion by the author. Cox has consistently exemplified phenomenological methods by applying them to his own field studies among Indigenous Religions, principally in Zimbabwe and Alaska, but also in Australia and New Zealand. Included in this collection are his articles in which he defines what he means by the category ‘religion’ and how this informs his precise meaning of the classification ‘Indigenous Religions’.  These theoretical considerations are always illustrated clearly and concisely by specific studies of Indigenous Religions and their dynamic interaction with contemporary political and social circumstances. This collection demonstrates the continued relevance of the phenomenological method in the study of religions by presenting the method as dynamic and adaptable to contemporary social contexts and as responsive to intellectual critiques of the method.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52404160528657,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52404161052945,"sku":"NLS9781350250727","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350250727.jpg?v=1777370509"},{"product_id":"spirituality-and-alternativity-in-contemporary-japan-book-ioannis-gaitanidis-9781350262614","title":"Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan","description":"This book critically analyses the creation and effects of spirituality as both discourse and practice in Japan. It shows how the value of spirituality has been sustained by scholars who have wished for a more civic role for religion; by the publishing industry whose exponential growth in the 1980s fashioned those who later identified as the representatives of this “new spirituality culture”; by “spiritual therapists” who have sought to eke out a livelihood in an increasingly professionalized and regulated therapeutic field; and by the cruel optimism of an increasingly precarious workforce placing its hopes in the imagined alternative that the supirichuaru represents. Ioannis Gaitanidis offers a new transdisciplinary conceptualisation of ‘alternativity’ that can be applied across and beyond the disciplines of religious studies, media studies, popular culture studies and the anthropology\/sociology of medicine.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52424092221713,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52424092811537,"sku":"NLS9781350262614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350262614.jpg?v=1759150777"},{"product_id":"dynamic-cosmos-book-diana-santo-9781350298859","title":"The Dynamic Cosmos","description":"This edited volume applies the analytic notions of paradox and play to the ethnographic manifestation of spirits, angels, and demons in different locations around the world. The 10 case studies conceptualize the co-presence of humans and entities with terms that do not exclude spiritual reasoning on the one hand, and social explanations on the other. Through in-depth descriptions of localized possession cosmologies, the different chapters collectively propose path-breaking methodological directions in this field, which incorporate ethnographic theories of simultaneity into anthropological theories of religion, kinship, and ritual.  Framed by an introduction written by the editors and an afterword by Michael Lambek, a leading authority in possessions studies, the volume contains cutting edge analyses that will provide readers with new tools to evaluate previously unstudied aspects of spirit possession; all of which stem from the fantastic forms of human movement that accompany the phenomenality of paradoxes in mundane reality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52425105867025,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52425106751761,"sku":"NLS9781350298859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350298859.jpg?v=1777370878"},{"product_id":"orthodox-christianity-new-age-spirituality-and-vernacular-religion-book-eugenia-roussou-9781350225398","title":"Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion","description":"This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity.    Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the ‘evil eye’ produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture.    The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52430357528849,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52430358282513,"sku":"NLS9781350225398","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350225398.jpg?v=1759169507"},{"product_id":"sense-of-belonging-book-stephen-friend-9781350278240","title":"A Sense of Belonging","description":"Exploring the relationship between identity and religion in British Fishing Communities during the 19th and early 20th centuries, this volume focuses on three communities in the UK: Scarborough, Filey and Grimsby.  The study offers a brief overview of the development of these communities and outlines the nature of the relationship between institutionalised and popular religion. It explores religion as a range of discourses or narratives that provide us with a way of viewing this matrix of meaning that has had a significant influence on the construction and maintenance of identity. It also examines the role of ritual and performance, both of which have been shown to play an important part in the daily lives of community members, not least in helping to provide and reinforce a sense of security, stability and belonging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52432168616209,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52432170975505,"sku":"NLS9781350278240","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350278240.jpg?v=1759174501"},{"product_id":"free-zone-scientology-book-aled-thomas-9781350232990","title":"Free Zone Scientology","description":"In this novel academic study, Aled Thomas analyses modern issues surrounding boundaries and fluidity in contemporary Scientology. By using the Scientologist practice of ‘auditing’ as a case study, this book explores the ways in which new types of ‘Scientologies’ can emerge. The notion of Free Zone Scientology is characterised by its horizontal structure, in contrast to the vertical-hierarchy of the institutional Church of Scientology. With this in mind, Thomas explores the Free Zone as an example of a developing and fluid religion, directly addressing questions concerning authority, leadership and material objects.  This book, by maintaining a double-focus on the top-down hierarchy of the Church of Scientology and the horizontal-fluid nature of the Free Zone, breaks away from previous research on new religions, which have tended to focus either on new religions as indices of broad social processes, such as secularization or globalization, or as exemplars of exotic processes, such as charismatic authority and brainwashing. Instead, Thomas adopts auditing as a method of providing an in-depth case study of a new religion in transition and transformation in the 21st century. This opens the study of contemporary and new religions to a series of new questions around hybrid religions (sacred and secular), and acts as a framework for the study of similar movements formed in recent decades.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52433234198801,"sku":"NLS9781350232990","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53602027536657,"sku":"GOR014976636","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350232990.jpg?v=1777370822"},{"product_id":"american-evangelicals-book-ashlee-quosigk-9781350243231","title":"American Evangelicals","description":"Be inspired about one man's journey from rough beginnings that ultimately led him into a deep and meaningful relationship with God. Between the covers of this extraordinary book, you'll watch as tragic circumstances shape a young man into someone he doesn't want to be. This book isn't simply a story about someone's darkest moments. It's a message about God's goodness and forgiveness. It's a genuine demonstration of God's love and promises that all things are possible. These pages expand on the Gospel message and teach about salvation, the Holy Spirit, healing, prosperity, and the Kingdom of God. Suppose you're short on faith, questioning life, or need an inspiring push. In that case, this book is for you, and it will remind you of God's supernatural power and everlasting love for you.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52452322246929,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52452323066129,"sku":"NLS9781350243231","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350243231.jpg?v=1759364370"},{"product_id":"charismatic-healers-in-contemporary-africa-book-sandra-fancello-9781350295445","title":"Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa","description":"Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this open access book analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies.   Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of ‘epistemic anxiety’ of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.   Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.  The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Turin Lungo Dora and Institut des Mondes Africains.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52455454867729,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52455455588625,"sku":"NLS9781350295445","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350295445.jpg?v=1759374339"},{"product_id":"ufos-conspiracy-theories-and-the-new-age-book-david-g-robertson-9781350044982","title":"UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age","description":"How—and why— were UFOs so prevalent in both conspiracy theories and the New Age milieu in the post-Cold War period? In this ground-breaking book, David G. Robertson argues that UFOs symbolized an uncertainty about the boundaries between scientific knowledge and other ways of validating knowledge, and thus became part of a shared vocabulary.   Through historical and ethnographic case studies of three prominent figures—novelist and abductee Whitley Strieber; environmentalist and reptilian proponent David Icke; and David Wilcock, alleged reincarnation of Edgar Cayce—the investigation reveals that millennial conspiracism offers an explanation as to why the prophesied New Age failed to arrive—it was prevented from arriving by malevolent, hidden others. Yet millennial conspiracism constructs a counter-elite, a gnostic third party defined by their special knowledge.  An overview of the development of UFO subcultures from the perspective of religious studies, UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age is an innovative application of discourse analysis to the study of present day alternative religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52477249323281,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52477250535697,"sku":"NLS9781350044982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350044982.jpg?v=1759845317"},{"product_id":"spirits-and-trance-in-brazil-book-bettina-e-schmidt-9781474255677","title":"Spirits and Trance in Brazil","description":"Bettina E. Schmidt explores experiences usually labelled as spirit possession, a highly contested and challenged term, using extensive ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and home to a range of religions which practice spirit possession. The book is enriched by excerpts from interviews with people about their experiences. It focuses on spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions and spiritism, as well as discussing the notion of exorcism in Charismatic Christian communities.   Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experience is divided into three sections which present the three main areas in the study of spirit possession. The first section looks at the social dimension of spirit possession, in particular gender roles associated with spirit possession in Brazil and racial stratification of the communities. It shows how gender roles and racial composition have adapted alongside changes in society in the last 100 years. The second section focuses on the way people interpret their practice. It shows that the interpretations of this practice depend on the human relationship to the possessing entities. The third section explores a relatively new field of research, the Western discourse of mind\/body dualism and the wide field of cognition and embodiment.   All sections together confirm the significance of discussing spirit possession within a wider framework that embraces physical elements as well as cultural and social ones. Bringing together sociological, anthropological, phenomenological and religious studies approaches, this book offers a new perspective on the study of spirit possession.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52583640432913,"sku":"NLS9781474255677","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781474255677.jpg?v=1777370511"},{"product_id":"charismatic-healers-in-contemporary-africa-book-sandra-fancello-9781350295483","title":"Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa","description":"Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this open access book analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies.   Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of ‘epistemic anxiety’ of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.   Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.  The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Turin Lungo Dora and Institut des Mondes Africains.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52587525734673,"sku":"NLS9781350295483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350295483.jpg?v=1761056500"},{"product_id":"problem-with-interreligious-dialogue-book-muthuraj-swamy-9781474256407","title":"The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue","description":"Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and ‘interreligious dialogue’. By challenging the assumption that ‘world religions’ operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict.   Offering a critique of the idea of ‘dialogue’ as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is ‘elitist’ and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions.    Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52591267348753,"sku":"NLS9781474256407","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781474256407.jpg?v=1761063662"},{"product_id":"acute-religious-experiences-book-richard-saville-smith-9781350272958","title":"Acute Religious Experiences","description":"This book engages the problem of how, in the 21st century, we are to speak about experiences of the extraordinary\/anomalous\/extreme which occur on a transhistorical and transcultural basis.  Critical re-readings of seminal texts show how 20th-century theoreticians in the humanities sought to erase madness from their irrational subjects. This propensity to sanitize madness in the study of religions was mirrored by the instinct of psychiatrists to degrade religious experiences by reducing mad consciousness to psychosis or dissociation. Richard Saville-Smith introduces explanatory pluralism as a way of recognizing these disciplinary biases and mad studies as a way of negotiating this understanding. The disproportionate significance of madness in shaping the fabric of the human story can then be recovered from both erasure and dismissal to be given the recognition previously denied - as acute religious experiences.  Acute Religious Experiences divides into three sections, beginning with re-readings of William James’s pathological programme, Rudolf Otto’s numinous, T. K. Oesterreich’s possession, Mircea Eliade’s shamanism, Walter Stace’s mysticism, Walter Pahnke’s psychedelic experience, and Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences. These ideas are shown to constitute the beginnings of a fractured discourse on the irrational. In part two, contemporary psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and Foucault’s History of Madness are re-read to reposition madness as not necessarily pathological. This opens the way for the identification of acute religious experiences as a new holistic and post-colonial approach through which religious data can be organized and addressed on a comparative basis. In part three, The Gospel of Mark is re-read as a case study to demonstrate the novel insights which flow from the identification of acute religious experiences.   Richard Saville-Smith  draws on his own experiences of madness and his PhD from the School of Divinity at The University of Edinburgh to elucidate his research.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52594415698193,"sku":"NLS9781350272958","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52815581249809,"sku":"CIN1350272957VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350272958.jpg?v=1761069339"},{"product_id":"post-materialist-religion-book-mika-t-lassander-9781474276221","title":"Post-Materialist Religion","description":"Post-Materialist Religion discusses the transformations of the individual's worldview in contemporary modern societies, and the role general societal value change plays in these. In doing so, Mika Lassander brings into conversation sociological theories of secularisation and social-psychological theories of interpersonal relations, the development of morality, and the nature of basic human values. The long-term decline of traditional religiosity in Europe and the emerging ethos that can be described as post-secular have brought religion and values back into popular discussion. One important theme in these discussions is about the links between religion and values, with the most common assumption being that religions are the source of individuals’ values. This book argues for the opposite view, suggesting that religions, or people’s worldviews in general, reflect the individual’s priorities.   Mika Lassander argues that the transformation of the individual's worldview is a direct consequence of the social and economical changes in European societies since the Second World War. He suggests that the decline of traditional religiosity is not an indication of linear secularisation or of forgetting traditions, but an indication of the loss of relevance of some aspects of the traditional institutional religions. Furthermore, he argues that this is not an indication of the loss of ethical value base, but, rather, a change in the value base and consequently the transformation of the legitimating framework of this value base.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52655316435217,"sku":"NLS9781474276221","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781474276221.jpg?v=1762220011"},{"product_id":"redefining-shamanisms-book-david-gordon-wilson-9781441159502","title":"Redefining Shamanisms","description":"Spiritualism and mediumship are often regarded as the product of lingering superstition in the Victorian era, and as having limited relevance in modern Anglo-American society. Scholarship to date which has considered Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition has focussed on analysing the phenomenon in terms of spirit possession only.   This volume analyses the development of shamanism (communication with the spiritual world) as a concept within North American English-speaking scholarship, with particular focus on Mircea Eliade's influential cross-cultural presentation of shamanism. By re-examining the work of Sergei Shirokogoroff, one of Eliade's principal sources, the traditional Evenki shamanic apprenticeship is compared and identified with the new Spiritualist apprenticeship.  The author demonstrates that Spiritualism is best understood as a traditional shamanism, as distinct from contemporary appropriations or neo-shamanisms. He argues that shamanism is the outcome of an apprenticeship in the management of psychic experiences, and which follows the same pattern as that of the apprentice medium. In doing so, the author offers fresh insights into the mechanisms that are key to sustaining mediumship as a social institution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52665625248017,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52665626493201,"sku":"NLS9781441159502","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781441159502.jpg?v=1762277812"},{"product_id":"community-and-worldview-among-paraiyars-of-south-india-book-anderson-h-m-jeremiah-9781441178817","title":"Community and Worldview among Paraiyars of South India","description":"This volume presents a detailed ethnographic study of rural Paraiyar communities in South India, focusing on their religions and cultural identity. Formerly known as Dalits, or Untouchables, these are a largely socially marginalised group living within a dynamic and complex social matrix dominated by the caste system and its social and religious implications in India.   Through examining Paraiyar Christian communities, the author provides a comprehensive understanding of Paraiyar religious worldviews within the dominant Hindu religious worldview. In contrast to existing research, this volume places the Paraiyars within their wider social context, ascribed and achieved identity, religious symbolism and ritual and negotiation of social boundaries.  In arguing that the Paraiyars help us to understand religion as 'lived', the author removes the concept 'religion' from the reified forms it so often obtains in textbooks. Instead, Jeremiah demonstrates that it is only in local and specific contexts, as opposed to essentialised notions, that 'religion' either makes any sense or that theories concerning it can be tested.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52665771753745,"sku":"NLS9781441178817","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781441178817.jpg?v=1762278197"},{"product_id":"religion-material-culture-and-archaeology-book-julian-droogan-9781472570871","title":"Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology","description":"Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology offers a new understanding of the materiality of religion. By drawing on the field of archaeological theory and method, the relationship between religion and material culture is explored. It is argued that the material elements of religious life have been largely neglected by the discipline of religious studies, while at the same time religion has been traditionally seen as problematic for archaeologists. Why do we not talk of the discipline of the archaeology of religion, in the same way we do the anthropology of religion, or the sociology of religion?  The volume considers the historical problems of approaching the material elements of religious life and bridges the methodological gap between religious studies and archaeology by proposing a new way of understanding the materiality of religion – as active, engaged and projecting a level of autonomous social agency. Finally, the critical examination of archaeological approaches to the materiality of religion is furthered through the consideration of non-archaeological ways of examining the social roles that material culture plays in human life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52667466023185,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52667466875153,"sku":"NLS9781472570871","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781472570871.jpg?v=1762282619"},{"product_id":"community-and-worldview-among-paraiyars-of-south-india-book-anderson-h-m-jeremiah-9781472576101","title":"Community and Worldview among Paraiyars of South India","description":"This volume presents a detailed ethnographic study of rural Paraiyar communities in South India, focusing on their religions and cultural identity. Formerly known as Dalits, or Untouchables, these are a largely socially marginalised group living within a dynamic and complex social matrix dominated by the caste system and its social and religious implications in India.   Through examining Paraiyar Christian communities, the author provides a comprehensive understanding of Paraiyar religious worldviews within the dominant Hindu religious worldview. In contrast to existing research, this volume places the Paraiyars within their wider social context, ascribed and achieved identity, religious symbolism and ritual and negotiation of social boundaries.  In arguing that the Paraiyars help us to understand religion as 'lived', the author removes the concept 'religion' from the reified forms it so often obtains in textbooks. Instead, Jeremiah demonstrates that it is only in local and specific contexts, as opposed to essentialised notions, that 'religion' either makes any sense or that theories concerning it can be tested.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52667672756497,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52667673542929,"sku":"NLS9781472576101","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781472576101.jpg?v=1762283123"},{"product_id":"acute-religious-experiences-book-richard-saville-smith-9781350272910","title":"Acute Religious Experiences","description":"This book engages the problem of how, in the 21st century, we are to speak about experiences of the extraordinary\/anomalous\/extreme which occur on a transhistorical and transcultural basis.  Critical re-readings of seminal texts show how 20th-century theoreticians in the humanities sought to erase madness from their irrational subjects. This propensity to sanitize madness in the study of religions was mirrored by the instinct of psychiatrists to degrade religious experiences by reducing mad consciousness to psychosis or dissociation. Richard Saville-Smith introduces explanatory pluralism as a way of recognizing these disciplinary biases and mad studies as a way of negotiating this understanding. The disproportionate significance of madness in shaping the fabric of the human story can then be recovered from both erasure and dismissal to be given the recognition previously denied - as acute religious experiences.  Acute Religious Experiences divides into three sections, beginning with re-readings of William James’s pathological programme, Rudolf Otto’s numinous, T. K. Oesterreich’s possession, Mircea Eliade’s shamanism, Walter Stace’s mysticism, Walter Pahnke’s psychedelic experience, and Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences. These ideas are shown to constitute the beginnings of a fractured discourse on the irrational. In part two, contemporary psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and Foucault’s History of Madness are re-read to reposition madness as not necessarily pathological. This opens the way for the identification of acute religious experiences as a new holistic and post-colonial approach through which religious data can be organized and addressed on a comparative basis. In part three, The Gospel of Mark is re-read as a case study to demonstrate the novel insights which flow from the identification of acute religious experiences.   Richard Saville-Smith  draws on his own experiences of madness and his PhD from the School of Divinity at The University of Edinburgh to elucidate his research.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52668409610513,"sku":"NLS9781350272910","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350272910.jpg?v=1762284942"},{"product_id":"spirituality-and-alternativity-in-contemporary-japan-book-ioannis-gaitanidis-9781350262652","title":"Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan","description":"This book critically analyses the creation and effects of spirituality as both discourse and practice in Japan. It shows how the value of spirituality has been sustained by scholars who have wished for a more civic role for religion; by the publishing industry whose exponential growth in the 1980s fashioned those who later identified as the representatives of this “new spirituality culture”; by “spiritual therapists” who have sought to eke out a livelihood in an increasingly professionalized and regulated therapeutic field; and by the cruel optimism of an increasingly precarious workforce placing its hopes in the imagined alternative that the supirichuaru represents. Ioannis Gaitanidis offers a new transdisciplinary conceptualisation of ‘alternativity’ that can be applied across and beyond the disciplines of religious studies, media studies, popular culture studies and the anthropology\/sociology of medicine.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52668546056465,"sku":"NLS9781350262652","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350262652.jpg?v=1762285287"},{"product_id":"phenomenology-of-indigenous-religions-book-james-l-cox-9781350250765","title":"A Phenomenology of Indigenous Religions","description":"This book compiles James L. Cox’s most important writings on a phenomenology of Indigenous Religions into one volume, with a new introduction and conclusion by the author. Cox has consistently exemplified phenomenological methods by applying them to his own field studies among Indigenous Religions, principally in Zimbabwe and Alaska, but also in Australia and New Zealand. Included in this collection are his articles in which he defines what he means by the category ‘religion’ and how this informs his precise meaning of the classification ‘Indigenous Religions’.  These theoretical considerations are always illustrated clearly and concisely by specific studies of Indigenous Religions and their dynamic interaction with contemporary political and social circumstances. This collection demonstrates the continued relevance of the phenomenological method in the study of religions by presenting the method as dynamic and adaptable to contemporary social contexts and as responsive to intellectual critiques of the method.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52670495686929,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52670496801041,"sku":"NLS9781350250765","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350250765.jpg?v=1762289977"},{"product_id":"critical-study-of-non-religion-book-christopher-r-cotter-9781350095243","title":"The Critical Study of Non-Religion","description":"This book acts as a bridge between the critical study of ‘religion’ and empirical studies of ‘religion in the real world’. Chris Cotter presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh’s Southside which blurs the boundary between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. In doing so, Cotter demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake.  This book details an approach that avoids constructing ‘religion’ as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating ‘non-religious’ subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be essential reading for those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-\/religious landscape.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52686532313361,"sku":"NLS9781350095243","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350095243.jpg?v=1777370329"},{"product_id":"one-nation-many-faiths-book-liam-sutherland-9781350425903","title":"One Nation, Many Faiths","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis book examines the understudied role of the interfaith movement in institutionalizing religious pluralism in the public life of contemporary societies through the case study of Interfaith Scotland.\u003c\/b\u003e It analyzes the organization and their literature, demonstrating the ways in which they have cultivated a particular model of religious pluralism compatible with a secular civic-cultural nationalism. It places this case into a comparative discussion of the interfaith movement as an emerging global phenomenon. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn this case study, the author considers how Interfaith Scotland presents 'religions' as equivalent, compatible bodies of ethical teachings through selective appeals to textual traditions or in some cases, their construction. It has also depended on conforming to the 'world religions paradigm', where it is only religions with global reach and cohesive characteristics which require representation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLiam Sutherland discusses how Interfaith Scotland encouraged a common, seemingly 'apolitical' attachment to Scotland's democratic institutions and cultural heritage, especially in relation to the question of independence. This case study sheds light on the wider relationship between the global interfaith movement and nationalism - both in protecting religions against prejudice and exclusion but also pursuing integrationist goals.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52799043010833,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52799043830033,"sku":"NGR9781350425903","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"story-in-religion-book-martin-d-stringer-9781350559394","title":"The Story in Religion","description":"Drawing on theories of myth and narratives from pop culture, this book develops a sociology of the story that shows how stories create meaning in contemporary religious practices in the West.   Martin Stringer shows how stories work in religion within the context of the story-saturated world of the 21st century through discussions of a wide range of theories of myth. He traces religious elements in the stories of film, television and literature to explore how a wide range of stories impact how we engage with, talk about and live religion. In this way, he shows that the myths at the heart of religious traditions are not the only stories that shape how religion is practised today.  Each of the ten chapters introduces an influential theory of myth, including those of Edward B. Tylor, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud, before applying this theory to a story or trope from folklore, literature or popular culture. In addition to these entertaining excursions into the worlds of Frankenstein, werewolves and superheroes, each chapter also provides a retelling of the classic fairy tale Snow White framed by the theory introduced in the chapter. In highlighting core themes from the different theories of myth, these ten different Snow Whites reveal the fluidity of stories and the theories we create about them.   In its bold combination of theories of myth, popular culture and religion, The Story in Religion shows how people use a range of stories to create identities, emotions and realities in their religious practices. In this way, the book alters how we think about meaning-making in religious contexts and in society more broadly.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52854244737297,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52854244835601,"sku":"NGR9781350559394","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350559394.jpg?v=1767094688"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-ch\/collections\/bloomsbury-advances-in-religious-studies-buchreihe.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}