Author: Eliza McFeely
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466894105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
A bold new study of the Zuni, of the first anthropologists who studied them, and of the effect of Zuni on America's sense of itself The Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its desert pueblo in what is now New Mexico. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists-among the first in this new discipline-came to Zuni to study it and, they believed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture before it was destroyed, which they were sure would happen. Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin were the three most important of these early students of Zuni, and although modern anthropologists often disparage and ignore their work-sometimes for good, sometimes for poor reasons-these pioneers gave us an idea of the power and significance of Zuni life that has endured into our time. They did not expect the Zuni themselves to endure, but they have, and the complex relation between the Zuni as they were and are and the Zuni as imagined by these three Easterners is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important new book. Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin are themselves remarkable subjects, not just as anthropology's earliest pioneers but as striking personalities in their own right, and McFeely gives ample consideration, in her colorful and absorbing study, to each of them. For different reasons, all three found professional and psychological satisfaction in leaving the East for the West, in submerging themselves in an alien and little-known world, and in bringing back to the nation's new museums and exhibit halls literally thousands of Zuni artifacts. Their doctrines about social development, their notions of "salvage anthropology," their cultural biases and predispositions are now regarded with considerable skepticism, but nonetheless their work imprinted Zuni on the American imagination in ways we have yet to measure. It is the great merit of McFeely's fascinating work that she puts their intellectual and personal adventures into a just and measured perspective; she enlightens us about America, about Zuni, and about how we understand each other.
The Zuni and the American Imagination
Author: Eliza McFeely
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466894105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
A bold new study of the Zuni, of the first anthropologists who studied them, and of the effect of Zuni on America's sense of itself The Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its desert pueblo in what is now New Mexico. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists-among the first in this new discipline-came to Zuni to study it and, they believed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture before it was destroyed, which they were sure would happen. Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin were the three most important of these early students of Zuni, and although modern anthropologists often disparage and ignore their work-sometimes for good, sometimes for poor reasons-these pioneers gave us an idea of the power and significance of Zuni life that has endured into our time. They did not expect the Zuni themselves to endure, but they have, and the complex relation between the Zuni as they were and are and the Zuni as imagined by these three Easterners is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important new book. Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin are themselves remarkable subjects, not just as anthropology's earliest pioneers but as striking personalities in their own right, and McFeely gives ample consideration, in her colorful and absorbing study, to each of them. For different reasons, all three found professional and psychological satisfaction in leaving the East for the West, in submerging themselves in an alien and little-known world, and in bringing back to the nation's new museums and exhibit halls literally thousands of Zuni artifacts. Their doctrines about social development, their notions of "salvage anthropology," their cultural biases and predispositions are now regarded with considerable skepticism, but nonetheless their work imprinted Zuni on the American imagination in ways we have yet to measure. It is the great merit of McFeely's fascinating work that she puts their intellectual and personal adventures into a just and measured perspective; she enlightens us about America, about Zuni, and about how we understand each other.
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466894105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
A bold new study of the Zuni, of the first anthropologists who studied them, and of the effect of Zuni on America's sense of itself The Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its desert pueblo in what is now New Mexico. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists-among the first in this new discipline-came to Zuni to study it and, they believed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture before it was destroyed, which they were sure would happen. Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin were the three most important of these early students of Zuni, and although modern anthropologists often disparage and ignore their work-sometimes for good, sometimes for poor reasons-these pioneers gave us an idea of the power and significance of Zuni life that has endured into our time. They did not expect the Zuni themselves to endure, but they have, and the complex relation between the Zuni as they were and are and the Zuni as imagined by these three Easterners is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important new book. Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin are themselves remarkable subjects, not just as anthropology's earliest pioneers but as striking personalities in their own right, and McFeely gives ample consideration, in her colorful and absorbing study, to each of them. For different reasons, all three found professional and psychological satisfaction in leaving the East for the West, in submerging themselves in an alien and little-known world, and in bringing back to the nation's new museums and exhibit halls literally thousands of Zuni artifacts. Their doctrines about social development, their notions of "salvage anthropology," their cultural biases and predispositions are now regarded with considerable skepticism, but nonetheless their work imprinted Zuni on the American imagination in ways we have yet to measure. It is the great merit of McFeely's fascinating work that she puts their intellectual and personal adventures into a just and measured perspective; she enlightens us about America, about Zuni, and about how we understand each other.
The Southwest in the American Imagination
Author: Sylvester Baxter
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816516186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zu–is with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into all of southwestern prehistory. Drawing on materials housed in half a dozen institutions and now brought together for the first time, this projected seven-volume work presents a cultural history of the Hemenway Expedition and early anthropology in the American Southwest, told in the voices of its participants and interpreted by contemporary scholars. Taken as a whole, the series comprises a thorough study and presentation of the cultural, historical, literary, and archaeological significance of the expedition, with each volume posing distinct themes and problems through a set of original writings such as letters, reports, and diaries. Accompanying essays guide readers to a coherent understanding of the history of the expedition and discuss the cultural and scientific significance of these data in modern debates. This first volume, The Southwest in the American Imagination, presents the writings of Sylvester Baxter, a journalist who became Cushing's friend and publicist in the early 1880s and who traveled to the Southwest and wrote accounts of the expedition. Included are Baxter's early writings about Cushing and the Southwest, from 1881 to 1883, which reported enthusiastically on the anthropologist's work and lifestyle at Zu–i before the expedition. Also included are published accounts of the Hemenway Expedition and its scientific promise, from 1888 to 1889, drawing on Baxter's central role in expedition affairs as secretary-treasurer of the advisory board. Series co-editor Curtis Hinsley provides an introductory essay that reviews Baxter's relationship with Cushing and his career as a journalist and civic activist in Boston, and a closing essay that inquires further into the lasting implications of the "invention of the Southwest," arguing that this aesthetic was central to the emergence and development of southwestern archaeology. Seen a century later, the Hemenway Expedition provides unusual insights into such themes as the formation of a Southwestern identity, the roots of museum anthropology, gender relations and social reform in the late nineteenth century, and the grounding of American nationhood in prehistoric cultures. It also conveys an intellectual struggle, ongoing today, to understand cultures that are different from the dominant culture and to come to grips with questions concerning America's meaning and destiny.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816516186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zu–is with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into all of southwestern prehistory. Drawing on materials housed in half a dozen institutions and now brought together for the first time, this projected seven-volume work presents a cultural history of the Hemenway Expedition and early anthropology in the American Southwest, told in the voices of its participants and interpreted by contemporary scholars. Taken as a whole, the series comprises a thorough study and presentation of the cultural, historical, literary, and archaeological significance of the expedition, with each volume posing distinct themes and problems through a set of original writings such as letters, reports, and diaries. Accompanying essays guide readers to a coherent understanding of the history of the expedition and discuss the cultural and scientific significance of these data in modern debates. This first volume, The Southwest in the American Imagination, presents the writings of Sylvester Baxter, a journalist who became Cushing's friend and publicist in the early 1880s and who traveled to the Southwest and wrote accounts of the expedition. Included are Baxter's early writings about Cushing and the Southwest, from 1881 to 1883, which reported enthusiastically on the anthropologist's work and lifestyle at Zu–i before the expedition. Also included are published accounts of the Hemenway Expedition and its scientific promise, from 1888 to 1889, drawing on Baxter's central role in expedition affairs as secretary-treasurer of the advisory board. Series co-editor Curtis Hinsley provides an introductory essay that reviews Baxter's relationship with Cushing and his career as a journalist and civic activist in Boston, and a closing essay that inquires further into the lasting implications of the "invention of the Southwest," arguing that this aesthetic was central to the emergence and development of southwestern archaeology. Seen a century later, the Hemenway Expedition provides unusual insights into such themes as the formation of a Southwestern identity, the roots of museum anthropology, gender relations and social reform in the late nineteenth century, and the grounding of American nationhood in prehistoric cultures. It also conveys an intellectual struggle, ongoing today, to understand cultures that are different from the dominant culture and to come to grips with questions concerning America's meaning and destiny.
The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada
Author: Heather Igloliorte
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000608565
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Book Description
This companion consists of chapters that focus on and bring forward critical theories and productive methodologies for Indigenous art history in North America. This book makes a major and original contribution to the fields of Indigenous visual arts, professional curatorial practice, graduate-level curriculum development, and academic research. The contributors expand, create, establish and define Indigenous theoretical and methodological approaches for the production, discussion, and writing of Indigenous art histories. Bringing together scholars, curators, and artists from across the intersecting fields of Indigenous art history, critical museology, cultural studies, and curatorial practice, the companion promotes the study and dissemination of Indigenous art and stimulates new conversations on such key areas as visual sovereignty and self-determination; resurgence and resilience; land-based, embodied, and nation-specific knowledges; epistemologies and ontologies; curatorial and museological methodologies; language; decolonization and Indigenization; and collaboration, consultation, and mentorship.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000608565
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Book Description
This companion consists of chapters that focus on and bring forward critical theories and productive methodologies for Indigenous art history in North America. This book makes a major and original contribution to the fields of Indigenous visual arts, professional curatorial practice, graduate-level curriculum development, and academic research. The contributors expand, create, establish and define Indigenous theoretical and methodological approaches for the production, discussion, and writing of Indigenous art histories. Bringing together scholars, curators, and artists from across the intersecting fields of Indigenous art history, critical museology, cultural studies, and curatorial practice, the companion promotes the study and dissemination of Indigenous art and stimulates new conversations on such key areas as visual sovereignty and self-determination; resurgence and resilience; land-based, embodied, and nation-specific knowledges; epistemologies and ontologies; curatorial and museological methodologies; language; decolonization and Indigenization; and collaboration, consultation, and mentorship.
Southwestern Homelands
Author: William Kittredge
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 142620910X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
For part of each of the last twenty years, much-loved essayist and fiction writer William Kittredge has ventured to the storied desert landscape of the American Southwest and immersed himself in the region's wide-ranging wonders and idiosyncrasies. Here Kittredge brings all this experience to bear as he takes us on a rewarding tour of the territory that runs from Santa Fe to Yuma, and from the Grand Canyon on south through Phoenix and Tucson to Nogales. It is a region where urban sprawl abuts desert expanse, where Native American pueblos compete for space with agribusiness cotton plantations, and where semi-defunct mining towns slowly give way to new-age hippie gardening and crafts enclaves. As part-time resident and full-time observer, William Kittredge acquaints us with one of the country's most vital and perpetually evolving regions. Populated with die-hard desert rats on the banks of the Colorado, theoretical physicists in Albuquerque, Hopi mothers and their daughters, and renegade punk-rock kids sleeping in the streets, Southwestern Homelands is a book as much about the legacies of a territory's colorful past as it is about the alternately exciting and daunting complexities of its immediate future.
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 142620910X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
For part of each of the last twenty years, much-loved essayist and fiction writer William Kittredge has ventured to the storied desert landscape of the American Southwest and immersed himself in the region's wide-ranging wonders and idiosyncrasies. Here Kittredge brings all this experience to bear as he takes us on a rewarding tour of the territory that runs from Santa Fe to Yuma, and from the Grand Canyon on south through Phoenix and Tucson to Nogales. It is a region where urban sprawl abuts desert expanse, where Native American pueblos compete for space with agribusiness cotton plantations, and where semi-defunct mining towns slowly give way to new-age hippie gardening and crafts enclaves. As part-time resident and full-time observer, William Kittredge acquaints us with one of the country's most vital and perpetually evolving regions. Populated with die-hard desert rats on the banks of the Colorado, theoretical physicists in Albuquerque, Hopi mothers and their daughters, and renegade punk-rock kids sleeping in the streets, Southwestern Homelands is a book as much about the legacies of a territory's colorful past as it is about the alternately exciting and daunting complexities of its immediate future.
Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Author: Darlis A. Miller
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806138329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
A woman in a man's world among the Pueblos of the Southwest
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806138329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
A woman in a man's world among the Pueblos of the Southwest
Coming of Age in Chicago
Author: Ira Jacknis
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803284470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Book Description
Coming of Age in Chicago explores a watershed moment in American anthropology, when an unprecedented number of historians and anthropologists of all subfields gathered on the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition fairgrounds, drawn together by the fair's focus on indigenous peoples. Participants included people making a living with their research, sporadic backyard diggers, religiously motivated researchers, and a small group who sought a "scientific" understanding of the lifeways of indigenous peoples. At the fair they set the foundation for anthropological inquiry and redefined the field. At the same time, the American public became aware, through their own experiences at the fair, of a global humanity, with reactions that ranged from revulsion to curiosity, tolerance, and kindness. Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox combine primary historical texts, modern essays, and rarely seen images from the period to create a volume essential for understanding the significance of this event. These texts explore the networking of thinkers, planners, dreamers, schemers, and scholars who interacted in a variety of venues to lay the groundwork for museums, academic departments, and expeditions. These new relationships helped shape the profession and the trajectory of the discipline, and they still resonate more than a century later.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803284470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Book Description
Coming of Age in Chicago explores a watershed moment in American anthropology, when an unprecedented number of historians and anthropologists of all subfields gathered on the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition fairgrounds, drawn together by the fair's focus on indigenous peoples. Participants included people making a living with their research, sporadic backyard diggers, religiously motivated researchers, and a small group who sought a "scientific" understanding of the lifeways of indigenous peoples. At the fair they set the foundation for anthropological inquiry and redefined the field. At the same time, the American public became aware, through their own experiences at the fair, of a global humanity, with reactions that ranged from revulsion to curiosity, tolerance, and kindness. Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox combine primary historical texts, modern essays, and rarely seen images from the period to create a volume essential for understanding the significance of this event. These texts explore the networking of thinkers, planners, dreamers, schemers, and scholars who interacted in a variety of venues to lay the groundwork for museums, academic departments, and expeditions. These new relationships helped shape the profession and the trajectory of the discipline, and they still resonate more than a century later.
With Good Intentions
Author: Celia Haig-Brown
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842490
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
With Good Intentions examines the joint efforts of Aboriginal people and individuals of European ancestry to counter injustice in Canada when colonization was at its height, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These people recognized colonial wrongs and worked together in a variety of ways to right them, but they could not stem the tide of European-based exploitation. The book is neither an apologist text nor an attempt to argue that some colonizers were simply "well intentioned." Almost all those considered here -- teachers, lawyers, missionaries, activists -- had as their overall goal the Christianization and civilization of Canada's First Peoples. By discussing examples of Euro-Canadians who worked with Aboriginal peoples, With Good Intentions brings to light some of the lesser-known complexities of colonization.
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842490
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
With Good Intentions examines the joint efforts of Aboriginal people and individuals of European ancestry to counter injustice in Canada when colonization was at its height, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These people recognized colonial wrongs and worked together in a variety of ways to right them, but they could not stem the tide of European-based exploitation. The book is neither an apologist text nor an attempt to argue that some colonizers were simply "well intentioned." Almost all those considered here -- teachers, lawyers, missionaries, activists -- had as their overall goal the Christianization and civilization of Canada's First Peoples. By discussing examples of Euro-Canadians who worked with Aboriginal peoples, With Good Intentions brings to light some of the lesser-known complexities of colonization.
Matter, Magic, and Spirit
Author: David Murray
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The spiritual and religious beliefs and practices of Native Americans and African Americans have long been sources of fascination and curiosity, owing to their marked difference from the religious traditions of white writers and researchers. Matter, Magic, and Spirit explores the ways religious and magical beliefs of Native Americans and African Americans have been represented in a range of discourses including anthropology, comparative religion, and literature. Though these beliefs were widely dismissed as primitive superstition and inferior to "higher" religions like Christianity, distinctions were still made between the supposed spiritual capacities of the different groups. David Murray's analysis is unique in bringing together Indian and African beliefs and their representations. First tracing the development of European ideas about both African fetishism and Native American "primitive belief," he goes on to explore the ways in which the hierarchies of race created by white Europeans coincided with hierarchies of religion as expressed in the developing study of comparative religion and folklore through the nineteenth century. Crucially this comparative approach to practices that were dismissed as conjure or black magic or Indian "medicine" points as well to the importance of their cultural and political roles in their own communities at times of destructive change. Murray also explores the ways in which Indian and African writers later reformulated the models developed by white observers, as demonstrated through the work of Charles Chesnutt and Simon Pokagon and then in the later conjunctions of modernism and ethnography in the 1920s and 1930s, through the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Zitkala Sa, and others. Later sections demonstrate how contemporary writers including Ishmael Reed and Leslie Silko deal with the revaluation of traditional beliefs as spiritual resources against a background of New Age spirituality and postmodern conceptions of racial and ethnic identity.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The spiritual and religious beliefs and practices of Native Americans and African Americans have long been sources of fascination and curiosity, owing to their marked difference from the religious traditions of white writers and researchers. Matter, Magic, and Spirit explores the ways religious and magical beliefs of Native Americans and African Americans have been represented in a range of discourses including anthropology, comparative religion, and literature. Though these beliefs were widely dismissed as primitive superstition and inferior to "higher" religions like Christianity, distinctions were still made between the supposed spiritual capacities of the different groups. David Murray's analysis is unique in bringing together Indian and African beliefs and their representations. First tracing the development of European ideas about both African fetishism and Native American "primitive belief," he goes on to explore the ways in which the hierarchies of race created by white Europeans coincided with hierarchies of religion as expressed in the developing study of comparative religion and folklore through the nineteenth century. Crucially this comparative approach to practices that were dismissed as conjure or black magic or Indian "medicine" points as well to the importance of their cultural and political roles in their own communities at times of destructive change. Murray also explores the ways in which Indian and African writers later reformulated the models developed by white observers, as demonstrated through the work of Charles Chesnutt and Simon Pokagon and then in the later conjunctions of modernism and ethnography in the 1920s and 1930s, through the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Zitkala Sa, and others. Later sections demonstrate how contemporary writers including Ishmael Reed and Leslie Silko deal with the revaluation of traditional beliefs as spiritual resources against a background of New Age spirituality and postmodern conceptions of racial and ethnic identity.
The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing
Author: Frank Hamilton Cushing
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Presents the previously unpublished account, by the great anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, of the origins and early months of the Hemenway Expedition to the American Southwest in the late 19th century, which sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuni Indians.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Presents the previously unpublished account, by the great anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, of the origins and early months of the Hemenway Expedition to the American Southwest in the late 19th century, which sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuni Indians.
The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion
Author: James A Beckford
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446206521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 769
Book Description
"In their introduction to this Handbook, the editors affirm: ′Many sociologists have come to realise that it makes no sense now to omit religion from the repertoire of social scientific explanations of social life′. I wholeheartedly agree. I also suggest that this wide-ranging set of essays should become a starting-point for such enquiries. Each chapter is clear, comprehensive and well-structured - making the Handbook a real asset for all those engaged in the field." - Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Serious social scientists who care about making sense of the world can no longer ignore the fact that religious beliefs and practices are an important part of this world... This Handbook is a valuable resource for specialists and amateurs alike. The editors have done an exceptionally fine job of incorporating topics that illuminate the range and diversity of religion and its continuing significance throughout the world." - Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University At a time when religions are increasingly affecting, and affected by, life beyond the narrowly sacred sphere, religion everywhere seems to be caught up in change and conflict. In the midst of this contention and confusion, the sociology of religion provides a rich source of understanding and explanation. This Handbook presents an unprecedentedly comprehensive assessment of the field, both where it has been and where it is headed. Like its many distinguished contributors, its topics and their coverage are truly global in their reach. The Handbook′s 35 chapters are organized into eight sections: basic theories and debates; methods of studying religion; social forms and experiences of religion; issues of power and control in religious organizations; religion and politics; individual religious behaviour in social context; religion, self-identity and the life-course; and case studies of China, Eastern Europe, Israel, Japan, and Mexico. Each chapter establishes benchmarks for the state of sociological thinking about religion in the 21st century and provides a rich bibliography for pursuing its subject further. Overall, the Handbook stretches the field conceptually, methodologically, comparatively, and historically. An indispensable source of guidance and insight for both students and scholars. Choice ′Outstanding Academic Title′ 2009
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446206521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 769
Book Description
"In their introduction to this Handbook, the editors affirm: ′Many sociologists have come to realise that it makes no sense now to omit religion from the repertoire of social scientific explanations of social life′. I wholeheartedly agree. I also suggest that this wide-ranging set of essays should become a starting-point for such enquiries. Each chapter is clear, comprehensive and well-structured - making the Handbook a real asset for all those engaged in the field." - Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Serious social scientists who care about making sense of the world can no longer ignore the fact that religious beliefs and practices are an important part of this world... This Handbook is a valuable resource for specialists and amateurs alike. The editors have done an exceptionally fine job of incorporating topics that illuminate the range and diversity of religion and its continuing significance throughout the world." - Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University At a time when religions are increasingly affecting, and affected by, life beyond the narrowly sacred sphere, religion everywhere seems to be caught up in change and conflict. In the midst of this contention and confusion, the sociology of religion provides a rich source of understanding and explanation. This Handbook presents an unprecedentedly comprehensive assessment of the field, both where it has been and where it is headed. Like its many distinguished contributors, its topics and their coverage are truly global in their reach. The Handbook′s 35 chapters are organized into eight sections: basic theories and debates; methods of studying religion; social forms and experiences of religion; issues of power and control in religious organizations; religion and politics; individual religious behaviour in social context; religion, self-identity and the life-course; and case studies of China, Eastern Europe, Israel, Japan, and Mexico. Each chapter establishes benchmarks for the state of sociological thinking about religion in the 21st century and provides a rich bibliography for pursuing its subject further. Overall, the Handbook stretches the field conceptually, methodologically, comparatively, and historically. An indispensable source of guidance and insight for both students and scholars. Choice ′Outstanding Academic Title′ 2009