This book examines the significance of the material dimensions of religion and culture. By looking at how scholars have researched religious materiality in the past, and focusing especially upon the variety of ways objects are handled in contemporary religious life, the reader will discover some insight into the interplay between the material and the immaterial. Case studies analyze the use of things in rituals and sacred places as well as ways in which they are appropriated for religious and academic instruction. The book attempts to reinterpret what the materiality in religion and culture might signify in light of multidisciplinary methodological approaches and helps to gain some ground on the abstract perspective of religions. (Series: Marburg Religious Science in Discourse / Marburger Religionswissenschaft im Diskurs, Vol. 2) [Subject: Religious Studies, Sociology]

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality provides a thoughtfully organized, inclusive, and vibrant project of the multiple ways in which religion and materiality intersect. The contributions explore the way that religion is shaped by, and has shaped, the material world, embedding beliefs, doctrines, and texts into social and cultural contexts of production, circulation, and consumption. The Companion not only contains scholarly essays but has an accompanying website to demonstrate the work of performers, architects, and expressive artists, ranging from musicians and dancers to religious practitioners. These examples offer specific illustrations of the interplay of religion and materiality in everyday life. The project is organized from a comparative perspective, highlighting examples and case studies from traditions originating in both East and West. To summarize, the volume: Brings together the leading figures, theories and ideas in the field in a systematic and comprehensive way Offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing together religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, geography, the cognitive sciences, ecology, and media studies Takes a comparative perspective, covering all the major faith traditions

Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture. The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vásquez.

Employing frameworks of lived religion and materiality, this book provides the first full-length study of personal religious experience in the Greek Archaic and Classical periods. Rask analyzes archeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence to highlight the role of individuals as vital actors and makers of Greek religion. A range of perspectives, such as those of Archaic mariners and Late Classical weaving women, show that religion infused the daily lives of ancient Greeks. Chapters visit the many spaces where people engaged in religious activities, from household kitchens to international emporia, as well as shrines both large and small. The book also interrogates devotional activities such as making votives and engaging in lifelong relationships with divinities, arguing for the emotionally rich character of Greek lived religion. Not only do these considerations demonstrate underexplored ways for reconstructing aspects of Greek religion, but also allow us to rethink familiar subjects such as votive portraits and epiphany from new angles. Personal Experience and Materiality in Greek Religion is of interest to students and scholars working on ancient Greek religion and archeology, as well as anyone interested in daily life and lived experience in the ancient world.

The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama is the first book to present a detailed examination of early modern theatrical properties informed by the complexity of post-Reformation religious practice. Although English Protestant reformers set out to destroy all vestiges of Catholic idolatry, public theater companies frequently used stage properties to draw attention to the remnants of traditional religion as well as the persistent materiality of post-Reformation worship. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama explores the relationship between popular culture and theatrical performance by considering the social history and dramatic function of these properties, addressing their role as objects of devotion, idolatry, and remembrance on the professional stage. Rather than being aligned with identifiably Catholic or Protestant values, the author reveals how religious stage properties functioned as fulcrums around which more subtle debates about the status of Christian worship played out. Given the relative lack of existing documentation on stage properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama employs a wide range of source materials-including inventories published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes-to account for the material presence of these objects on the public stage. By combining historical research on popular religion with detailed readings of the scripts themselves, the book fills a gap in our knowledge about the physical qualities of the stage properties used in early modern productions. Tracing the theater's appropriation of highly charged religious properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama provides a new framework for understanding the canonization of early modern plays, especially those of Shakespeare.

In the seventeenth century Prague was the setting for a complex and shifting spiritual world. By studying the city's material culture, this book presents a bold alternative understanding of early modern religion in central Europe.

This book examines material and multi-sensorial expressions of Shiʿi Islam in diverse, and understudied demographic and geographic contexts.It engages with conceptual debates and makes several propositions that push the frontiers of scholarship on Islamic and Religious Studies, Material Religion, Heritage Studies, and Anthropology and Sociology of Religion.The contributions presented in this volume demonstrate how material things and less thing-like materialities make the praesentia and potentia of the Sacred tangible, how they cultivate intimate relations between human and more-than-human beings, and how they act as links and gateways to the Elsewhere and Otherworldly. The volume posits that materialities of religion are integral to processes of heritagization shaped by competing social and political actors involved in the construction and canonization of religious—in this case, Shiʿi—heritage.

This is the first book to provide an introduction to contemporary cultural approaches to the study of religion. This book makes sophisticated ideas accessible at an introductory level, and examines the analytic tools of scholars in religious studies, as well as in related disciplines that have shaped the field including anthropology, history, literature, and critical studies in race, sexuality, and gender. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and includes: · the biographical and historical context of each theorist · their approaches and key writings · analysis and evaluation of each theory · suggested further reading. Part One: Comparative Approaches considers how major features such as taboo, texts, myths and ritual work across religious traditions by exploring the work of Mary Douglas, Phyllis Trible, Wendy Doniger and Catherine Bell. Part Two: Examining Particularities analyzes the comparative approach through the work of Alice Walker, Charles Long and Caroline Walker Bynum, who all suggest that the specifics of race, body, place and time must be considered. Part Three: Expanding Boundaries examines Gloria Anzaldúa's language of religion, as well as the work of Judith Butler on performative, queer theories of religion, and concludes with Saba Mahmood, whose work considers postcolonial religious encounters, secularism, and the relationship between “East” and “West.” Reflecting the cultural turn and challenging the existing canon, this is the anthology instructors have been waiting for. For primary texts by the theorists discussed, please consult The Bloomsbury Reader in Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Sarah J. Bloesch and Meredith Minister.

Following in the very successful tradition of Critical Terms for Literary Studies and Critical Terms for Art History, this book attempts to provide a revitalized, self-aware vocabulary with which this bewildering religious diversity can be accurately described and responsibly discussed. Leading scholars working in a variety of traditions demonstrate through their incisive discussions that even our most basic terms for understanding religion are not neutral but carry specific historical and conceptual freight.

The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe marks the arrival of early modern material culture studies as a vibrant, fully-established field of multi-disciplinary research. The volume provides a rounded, accessible collection of work on the nature and significance of materiality in early modern Europe – a term that embraces a vast range of objects as well as addressing a wide variety of human interactions with their physical environments. This stimulating view of materiality is distinctive in asking questions about the whole material world as a context for lived experience, and the book considers material interactions at all social levels. There are 27 chapters by leading experts as well as 13 feature object studies to highlight specific items that have survived from this period (defined broadly as c.1500–c.1800). These contributions explore the things people acquired, owned, treasured, displayed and discarded, the spaces in which people used and thought about things, the social relationships which cluster around goods – between producers, vendors and consumers of various kinds – and the way knowledge travels around those circuits of connection. The content also engages with wider issues such as the relationship between public and private life, the changing connections between the sacred and the profane, or the effects of gender and social status upon lived experience. Constructed as an accessible, wide-ranging guide to research practice, the book describes and represents the methods which have been developed within various disciplines for analysing pre-modern material culture. It comprises four sections which open up the approaches of various disciplines to non-specialists: ‘Definitions, disciplines, new directions’, ‘Contexts and categories’, ‘Object studies’ and ‘Material culture in action’. This volume addresses the need for sustained, coherent comment on the state, breadth and potential of this lively new field, including the work of historians, art historians, museum curators, archaeologists, social scientists and literary scholars. It consolidates and communicates recent developments and considers how we might take forward a multi-disciplinary research agenda for the study of material culture in periods before the mass production of goods.