The Pursuit of Certainty

Religious and Cultural Formulations
Herausgeber: James, Wendy

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The peoples of the world are now facing movement, mixing and displacement on a larger scale than ever before. We are witness to the rise of new forms of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Those based in the highly developed countries can extend global influence through wealth and sophisticated technology. Anthropology has inherited a tradition of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding: what light can it throw on the new pursuit of truth? With contributions from leading anthropologists from Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Britain, "The Pursuit of Certainty presents a dozen original case studies which explore this theme. This book demonstrates anthropology's relevance to the contemporary world and its turbulence providing a critical perspective on the new religious movements and current popular orthodoxies about society and culture. Complementing the text-led approaches of history or theology, each chapter offers insights from patient investigative fieldwork, illustrating the way the new ideologies interact with each other and with older ideas in the actual practices of communities. Apart from anthropologists, this volume will attract special attention from students of comparative religion, as well as from ethnic studies.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)
• Seitenzahl: 328
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. August 1995
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 640g
• ISBN-13: 9780415107907
• ISBN-10: 0415107903
• Artikelnr.: 21198220

Autorenporträt

Wendy James is University Lecturer in Social Anthropology and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: whatever happened to the Enlightenment? Part I Displacement
and the search for redefinition 1 Managing tradition: 'superstition' and
the making of national identity among Sudanese women refugees2 History and
the discourse of underdevelopment among the Alur of Uganda Part II Emerging
world forms 3 Race, culture and-what?: pluralist certainties in the United
States 4 Certain knowledge: the encounter of global fundamentalism and
local Christianity in urban south India 5 Inventing certainties: the dakwah
persona in Malaysia 6 Powerful knowledge in a global Sufi cult: reflections
on the poetics of travelling theories 7 Topophilia, Zionism and
'certainty': making a place out of the space that became Israel again Part
III Vernacular contexts of public reason and critique 8 The politics of
tolerance: Buddhists and Christians, truth and error in Sri Lanka 9
Changing certainties and the move to a 'global' religion: medical knowledge
and Islamization among Anii (Baseda) in the Republic of Bénin 10 Bourdieu
and the diviner: knowledge and symbolic power in Yoruba divination 11
Choking on the Quran: and other consuming parables from the western Indian
Ocean front Part IV Epilogue: a professional dilemma? 12 Cultural
certainties and private doubts