Ritual and Violence

Ritual and Violence PDF Author: Graeme Murdock
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199654963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This collection of essays seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

Ritual and Violence

Ritual and Violence PDF Author: Graeme Murdock
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199654963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This collection of essays seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes

Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes PDF Author: Haagen D. Klaus
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477309632
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
Traditions of sacrifice exist in almost every human culture and often embody a society’s most meaningful religious and symbolic acts. Ritual violence was particularly varied and enduring in the prehistoric South American Andes, where human lives, animals, and material objects were sacrificed in secular rites or as offerings to the divine. Spectacular discoveries of sacrificial sites containing the victims of violent rituals have drawn ever-increasing attention to ritual sacrifice within Andean archaeology. Responding to this interest, this volume provides the first regional overview of ritual killing on the pre-Hispanic north coast of Peru, where distinct forms and diverse trajectories of ritual violence developed during the final 1,800 years of prehistory. Presenting original research that blends empirical approaches, iconographic interpretations, and contextual analyses, the contributors address four linked themes—the historical development and regional variation of north coast sacrifice from the early first millennium AD to the European conquest; a continuum of ritual violence that spans people, animals, and objects; the broader ritual world of sacrifice, including rites both before and after violent offering; and the use of diverse scientific tools, archaeological information, and theoretical interpretations to study sacrifice. This research proposes a wide range of new questions that will shape the research agenda in the coming decades, while fostering a nuanced, scientific, and humanized approach to the archaeology of ritual violence that is applicable to archaeological contexts around the world.

Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence

Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence PDF Author: Richard J. Chacon
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816540098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This groundbreaking multidisciplinary book presents significant essays on historical indigenous violence in Latin America from Tierra del Fuego to central Mexico. The collection explores those uniquely human motivations and environmental variables that have led to the native peoples of Latin America engaging in warfare and ritual violence since antiquity. Based on an American Anthropological Association symposium, this book collects twelve contributions from sixteen authors, all of whom are scholars at the forefront of their fields of study. All of the chapters advance our knowledge of the causes, extent, and consequences of indigenous violence—including ritualized violence—in Latin America. Each major historical/cultural group in Latin America is addressed by at least one contributor. Incorporating the results of dozens of years of research, this volume documents evidence of warfare, violent conflict, and human sacrifice from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, including incidents that occurred before European contact. Together the chapters present a convincing argument that warfare and ritual violence have been woven into the fabric of life in Latin America since remote antiquity. For the first time, expert subject-area work on indigenous violence—archaeological, osteological, ethnographic, historical, and forensic—has been assembled in one volume. Much of this work has heretofore been dispersed across various countries and languages. With its collection into one English-language volume, all future writers—regardless of their discipline or point of view—will have a source to consult for further research. CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza 1. Status Rivalry and Warfare in the Development and Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization Matt O’Mansky and Arthur A. Demarest 2. Aztec Militarism and Blood Sacrifice: The Archaeology and Ideology of Ritual Violence Rubén G. Mendoza 3. Territorial Expansion and Primary State Formation in Oaxaca, Mexico Charles S. Spencer 4. Images of Violence in Mesoamerican Mural Art Donald McVicker 5. Circum-Caribbean Chiefly Warfare Elsa M. Redmond 6. Conflict and Conquest in Pre-Hispanic Andean South America: Archaeological Evidence from Northern Coastal Peru John W. Verano 7. The Inti Raymi Festival among the Cotacachi and Otavalo of Highland Ecuador: Blood for the Earth Richard J. Chacon, Yamilette Chacon, and Angel Guandinango 8. Upper Amazonian Warfare Stephen Beckerman and James Yost 9. Complexity and Causality in Tupinambá Warfare William Balée 10. Hunter-Gatherers’ Aboriginal Warfare in Western Chaco Marcela Mendoza 11. The Struggle for Social Life in Fuego-Patagonia Alfredo Prieto and Rodrigo Cárdenas 12. Ethical Considerations and Conclusions Regarding Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence in Latin America Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza References About the Contributors Index

Elements of Ritual and Violence

Elements of Ritual and Violence PDF Author: Margo Kitts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108597718
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
Ritualized violence is by definition not haphazard or random, but seemingly intentional and often ceremonial. It has a long history in religious practice, as attested in texts and artifacts from the earliest civilizations. It is equally evident in the behaviors of some contemporary religious activists and within initiatory practices ongoing in many regions of the world. Given its longevity and cultural expanse, ritualized violence presumably exerts a pull deeply into the sociology, psychology, anthropology, theology, perhaps even ontology of its practitioners, but this is not transparent. This short volume will sketch the subject of ritualized violence, that is, it will summarize some established theories about ritual and about violence, and will ponder a handful of striking instantiations of their link.

Ritual, Emotion, Violence

Ritual, Emotion, Violence PDF Author: Elliott B. Weininger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429874782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Microsociologists seek to capture social life as it is experienced, and in recent decades no one has championed the microsociological approach more fiercely than Randall Collins. The pieces in this exciting volume offer fresh and original insights into key aspects of Collins’ thought, and of microsociology more generally. The introductory essay by Elliot B. Weininger and Omar Lizardo provides a lucid overview of the key premises this perspective. Ethnographic papers by Randol Contreras, using data from New York, and Philippe Bourgois and Laurie Kain Hart, using data from Philadelphia, examine the social logic of violence in street-level narcotics markets. Both draw on heavily on Collins’ microsociological account of the features of social situations that tend to engender violence. In the second section of the book, a study by Paul DiMaggio, Clark Bernier, Charles Heckscher, and David Mimno tackles the question of whether electronically mediated interaction exhibits the ritualization which, according to Collins, is a common feature of face-to-face encounters. Their results suggest that, at least under certain circumstances, digitally mediated interaction may foster social solidarity in a manner similar to face-to-face interaction. A chapter by Simone Polillo picks up from Collins’ work in the sociology of knowledge, examining multiple ways in which social network structures can engender intellectual creativity. The third section of the book contains papers that critically but sympathetically assess key tenets of microsociology. Jonathan H. Turner argues that the radically microsociological perspective developed by Collins will better serve the social scientific project if it is embedded in a more comprehensive paradigm, one that acknowledges the macro- and meso-levels of social and cultural life. A chapter by David Gibson presents empirical analyses of decisions by state leaders concerning whether or not to use force to deal with internal or external foes, suggesting that Collins’ model of interaction ritual can only partially illuminate the dynamics of these highly consequential political moments. Work by Erika Summers-Effler and Justin Van Ness seeks to systematize and broaden the scope of Collins’ theory of interaction, by including in it encounters that depart from the ritual model in important ways. In a final, reflective chapter, Randall Collins himself highlights the promise and future of microsociology. Clearly written, these pieces offer cutting-edge thinking on some of the crucial theoretical and empirical issues in sociology today.

Violence, Ritual, and the Wari Empire

Violence, Ritual, and the Wari Empire PDF Author: Tiffiny A. Tung
Publisher: Bioarchaeological Interpretati
ISBN: 9780813044736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"A ground-breaking study that provides one of the best case studies we have in the bioarchaeology of violence. A must-read for anyone interested in the origin and evolution of aggression and violence in human societies."--Debra L. Martin, University of Nevada "In this exciting new work, Dr. Tung provides the first comprehensive view of life and the bodies inside ancient Peru's Wari Empire. Situating the study of archaeological human remains where bioarchaeology and the contemporary archaeology intersect, Tung focuses on the lived experience of Wari inhabitants to explore the creation of bioarchaeological narratives, the ways that bodies become material culture, and the influence of imperial control."--Christina Torres-Rouff, Colorado College The Wari Empire thrived in the Peruvian Andes between AD 600 and 1000. This study of human skeletons reveals the biological and social impact of Wari imperialism on people's lives, particularly its effects on community organization and frequency of violence of both ruling elites and subjects. The Wari state was one of the first politically centralized civilizations in the New World that expanded dramatically as a product of its economic and military might. Tiffiny Tung reveals that Wari political and military elites promoted and valorized aggressive actions, such as the abduction of men, women, and children from foreign settlements. Captive men and children were sacrificed, dismembered, and transformed into trophy heads, while non-local women received different treatment relative to the men and children. By inspecting bioarchaeological data from skeletons and ancient DNA, as well as archaeological data, Tung provides a better understanding of how the empire's practices affected human communities, particularly in terms of age/sex structure, mortuary treatment, use of violence, and ritual processes associated with power and bodies. Tiffiny A. Tung is associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.

North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence

North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence PDF Author: Richard J. Chacon
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816530386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book presents clear evidence--from multiple academic disciplines--that indigenous populations engaged in warfare and ritual violence long before European contact.

Rituals of War

Rituals of War PDF Author: Zainab Bahrani
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Rituals of War is an investigation into the earliest historical records of violence and biopolitics. In Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq (ca. 3000–500 BC) rituals of war and images of violence constituted part of the magical technologies of warfare that formed the underlying irrational processes of war. In the book, three lines of inquiry are converged into one historical domain of violence, namely, war, the body, and representation. Building on Foucault’s argument in Discipline and Punish that the art of punishing must rest on a whole technology of representation, Zainab Bahrani investigates the ancient Mesopotamian record to reveal how that culture relied on the portrayal of violence and control as part of the mechanics of warfare. Moreover she takes up the more recent arguments of Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power and biopolitic to focus on the relationship of power, the body and violence in Assyro-Babylonian texts and monuments of war. Bahrani brings together and analyzes facets of war and sovereign power that fall under the categories of representation and display, the aesthetic, the ritualistic, and the supernatural. Besides the invention of the public monument of war, and the rituals of iconoclasm, destruction, and relocation of monuments in war, she investigates formulations of power through the body, narrative displays in battle, the reading of omens before the battle, and historical divination through the body and body parts. The author describes these as the magical technologies of war, the realm of the irrational that enables the ideologies of just war in the distant past as today.

From Blessing to Violence

From Blessing to Violence PDF Author: Maurice Bloch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521314046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This detailed description and analysis of Madagascar's Merina tribe and its ancient circumcision ritual is significant as a basis for the analysis of anthropological theories of ritual in general.

Blood and Beauty

Blood and Beauty PDF Author: Rex Koontz
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 1938770439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Warfare, ritual human sacrifice, and the rubber ballgame have been the traditional categories through which scholars have examined organized violence in the artistic and material records of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. This volume expands those traditional categories to include such concerns as gladiatorial-like boxing combats, investiture rites, trophy-head taking and display, dark shamanism, and the subjective pain inherent in acts of violence. Each author examines organized violence as a set of practices grounded in cultural understandings, even when the violence threatens the limits of those understandings. The authors scrutinize the representation of, and relationships between, different types of organized violence, as well as the implications of those activities, which can include the unexpected, such as violence as a means of determining and curing illness, and the use of violence in negotiation strategies.