Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

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

List of contents

Notes on Contributors
 
Chapter 1: The Persistence, Ubiquity, and Dynamicity of Materiality: Studying Religion and Materiality Comparatively 4
Manuel A. Vásquez
 
Section I: Religious Bodies 81
 
Chapter 2: The Incarnate Body and Blood in Christianity 82
Jessica A. Boon
 
Chapter 3: Perspectives on Rabbinic Constructions of Gendered Bodies 112
Gwynn Kessler
 
Chapter 4: The One and the Many: Ancestors and Sorcerers in Hohodene Worldview 169
Robin M. Wright
 
Chapter 5: Cognitive Science, Embodiment, and Materiality 202
Nathaniel F. Barrett
 
Section II: Practices and Performances 240
 
Chapter 6: From Bells to Bottus: Analyzing the Body and Materiality of Indian Dance in an American University Context 241
Harshita Mruthinti Kamath and Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger
 
Chapter 7: Spirit Incorporation in Candomblé 269
Paul Christopher Johnson
 
Chapter 8: Spiritual Warfare in Pentecostalism: Metaphors and Materialities 310
Simon Coleman
 
Chapter 9: Consider the Tourist 341
Thomas S. Bremer
 
Section III: Spatiality, Mobility, and Relationality 380
 
Chapter 10: Moving, Crossing, and Dwelling: Christianity and Place Pilgrimage 381
John Eade
 
Chapter 11: Hindu and Sikh Processions in Europe: Material Objects and Ritual Bodies on the Move 415
Knut A. Jacobsen
 
Chapter 12: Geopolitics, Space Sacralization, and Devotional Labor on the U.S.-Mexico Border 441
Elaine A. Peña
 
Chapter 13: The Imagination of Matter: Mesoamerican Trees, Cities, and Human Sacrifice 470
Davíd Carrasco
 
Chapter 14: Material Religion, Materialism, and Non-Human Animals 500
Anna L. Peterson
 
Section IV: Sacred Objects and Beings 530
 
Chapter 15: Assembling Inferences in Material Analysis 531
David Morgan
 
Chapter 16: Woven Beliefs: Textiles and Religious Practice in Africa 569
Victoria L. Rovine
 
Chapter 17: Beyond the Symbolism of the Headscarf: The Assemblage of Veiling and the Headscarf as a Thing 591
Banu Gökar1ksel and Anna J. Secor
 
Chapter 18: Indigenous Sacred Objects after NAGPRA: In and Out of Circulation 617
Greg Johnson
 
Chapter 19: Objects of Memory and Authority: Thinking through and beyond the "relic" in Sikh contexts 644
Anne Murphy
 
Section V: Religion, Food, and Comensality 671
 
Chapter 20: Religion, Agriculture, and Food: Three Case Studies 672
A. Whitney Sanford
 
Chapter 21: Vaishnava Vegetarianism: Scriptural and Theological Perspectives on the Diet of Devotion 711
Steven J. Rosen
 
Chapter 22: Prasada, Edible Grace 742
Andrea Pinkney
 
Chapter 23: To Eat and Be Eaten: Mesoamerican Human Sacrifice and Ecological Webs 780
Kay A. Read
 
Section VI: Media and Material Religion 813
 
Chapter 24: Cinema 814
S. Brent Plate
 
Chapter 25: Religion and Digital Media: Studying Materiality in Digital Religion 843
Heidi A Campbell and Louise Connelly
 
Chapter 26: Aural Media 873
Rosalind I. J. Hackett
 
Section VII: Economies and Governmentalities of Religion 910
 
Chapter 27: Colonialism, Orientalism and the Body 911
Sylvester A. Johnson
 
Chapter 28: Dharma[stra: Materiality in and of the Hindu Legal Code 949
Patrick Olivelle
 
Chapter 29: Religion and Ethnicity as Located and Localized 978
Terje Østebø
 
Chapter 30: Never Again: Religion, Commodities, and the State 1020
Kevin Lewis O'Neill
 
Index

About the author

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her publications include The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994), The Life of Hinduism (co-edited with John Stratton Hawley, 2007), and Hinduism (2009). Her research has been supported by the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment for the Humanities; the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation; the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian; and the Social Science Research Council.

Summary

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

Product details

• Authors: V Narayanan, Vasudha Narayanan
• Assisted by: Vasudh Narayanan (Editor), Vasudha Narayanan (Editor), Narayanan Vasudha (Editor)
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2019
• EAN: 9781118660102
• ISBN: 978-1-118-66010-2
• No. of pages: 624
• Series: Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion; WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO; Blackwell Companions to Religion
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Religionswissenschaft, Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft, Religion & Theology, Religion u. Theologie, Comparative & World Religions, Religionsästhetik, material religion