Book Description
This collection of articles explores the relationship between the structure and culture of religion and various aspects of social life in the United States. Based on both classic and contemporary research in the sociology of religion, it highlights a variety of research methods and theoretical approaches in exploring the ways in which religious values, beliefs and practices shape the world outside of church, synagogue, or mosque walls while simultaneously being shaped by the non-religious forces operating in that world. Many readings from drawn popular sources--e.g., newspapers and magazines--and although many of the readings are about religion in the Christian tradition, there are also readings about religion outside the American context (e.g., Poland, England, El Salvador, Nicaragua), and beyond the Christian tradition (e.g., Judaism, alternative religions, Hindu traditions). Classic Sociological Definitions Of Religion; Belief And Ritual; Religious Experience; Race, Ethnicity And Religion; Gender And Religion; Social Class And Religion; Sexual Identity And Religion; The Secularization Debate; Religious Organizations, Institutions And Authority; Alternative Religions; Media And Religion; Politics And Religion; Science And Religion; Social Movements And Religion. For anyone interested in the sociology of religion or religious perspectives on social issues.
Customer Reviews:
Great, but too expensive.......2004-02-15
If it weren't for the price, this would be the single best introduction to the anthropology of religion yet composed. In fact, even with the price, it's the best. Too bad about the price....
In essence, the volume is a compendium of classic works on the anthropology of religion, from across the twentieth century. Everybody's here, jammed in hugger-mugger. The organization is thematic, and you can certainly argue that the particular themes are weak or that the works chosen don't always fit them, but really it's the sheer breadth of the articles that makes the volume so useful.
If you are interested in the anthropology of religion, the table of contents will stun you. You already have some of these articles xeroxed somewhere -- but where? You may have made copies for your students, or put them on reserve. But then you have to do it again, because chances are the reserve desk has lost them, or some stinker student has taken the copies away so only he can study for the exam.
If this book cost, let's say, $50, you could simply assign it and save the trouble. You'd probably require the students to read half the articles, and the rest would serve admirably for additional background reading or alternative viewpoints. Leach, Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Frazer, Radcliffe-Brown, Homans, Turner, Ortner, Geertz, etc. etc.
If you are a professional and don't own this, go buy it: you'll thank me later, when the bills are paid. Try reading it cover to cover: I promise you will learn something, however expert you are, simply by being confronted with this mass of great work in the field.
My only criticism, really, is that it's so exclusively anthropolgical in a strictly disciplinary sense. Eliade and his ilk simply don't show up on the horizon, nor the developments that arose from his influence (e.g. Jonathan Z. Smith). Beyond that, I have nothing but praise for the book.
Pity it's so damn expensive!
Book Description
Since the publication of its first edition in 1990, Unequal Sisters has been considered one of the most influential and groundbreaking works in the field of women's studies. Bringing together a broad, multicultural view, it presents the best scholarship available on the issues of race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and class in its attempt to provide a more accurate and more inclusive history of women in the United States.
Now, featuring more than twenty new essays and works by a number of exciting young scholars, this third edition maintains the essential themes and strong emphasis on women of color of earlier editions, but will incorporate many new developments in women's history: emerging views on American women in global perspective, considerations of masculinity, explorations of women of privilege, and increased emphasis on lesbians and Jewish women. Addressing questions regarding the rise of multiculturalism its impact on women's history, political changes, and the hope for a more equitable future-Unequal Sisters continues to dominate the field of women's studies as an unequaled source of brilliant writing, groundbreaking scholarship, and timely commentary on what it means to be a woman in the United States today.
Contributors: Joyce Antler, Yamila Azize-Vargas, Mary H. Blewett, Jeanne Boydston, James F. Brooks, Elsa Barkley Brown, Antonia I. Castañeda, Ellen Carol DuBois, Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Linda Gordon, Melanie Gustafson, Ramón Gutiérrez, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Nancy A. Hewitt, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Daniel Horowitz, Kumari Jayawardena, Susan Lee Johnson, Gail Paradise Kelly, Elizabeth Lapovosky Kennedy, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Tessie Liu, Valerie Matsumoto, Joanne Meyerowitz, Alice Yang Murray, Annelise Orleck, Peggy Pascoe, Kathy Peiss, Theda Perdue, Barbara M. Posadas, Vicki L. Ruiz, Rickie Solinger, Brenda Stevenson, Rebecca Tsosie, Devra Anne Weber, Judy Yung
Customer Reviews:
A virtual life saver.......2001-06-01
Were it not for this book, I seriously doubt I would have passed my women's history course. The editors were able to compile an impresive selection of scholarship that explained what my instructor could not.
Women's accheivements struggles and setbacks could not be properly examined unless one made a serious committment to understanding the interrelated issues of race, class, disability and sexual orientation in relation to gender and the predominant traits of the larger society. While the early women's history movement has been faulted for being predominantly middle class heterosexual and white, this book attempts to build a more complete future by giving a voice to the issues.
I wish everybody had access to this substantive piece of literature because it provides an excellent introductory and supplementary framework for research and even political organizing. While primarily intended for use in history courses, I believe it could be adapted for political science, sociology or even psychology.
A powerful presentation........2000-04-06
The third edition of this superb multicultural reader in U.S. women's history provides an essential work of powerful resources blending voices new to this edition with excellent feminist perspectives. Unequal Sisters includes over twenty new essays written by women in the six years since the last edition, with contributors ranging from Joyce Antler and Ellen Carol Dubois to Vicki L. Ruiz. A powerful presentation.
Book Description
A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings within the anthropology of religion. Editor Michael Lambek has taken care to avoid reifying the category of religion and the various topics often subsumed within it. Indeed, a major contribution by anthropologists has been to challenge these kinds of categories, which stem from Western thought and language, Christianity, and ethnocentric views of non-Western people. This Reader includes material whose theme is religion in a straightforward and obvious sense, as well as contributions that expand how we might look at religion - and the horizons of what we mean by religion - linking it to broader questions of culture and politics.Designed for maximum utility, the volume includes a general introduction as well as an extensive bibliography indexed according to both ethnographic region and religious topics and practices, in order to enhance its accessibility. Each section and individual entry in the volume includes brief prefatory remarks by the editor and suggestions for further reading.
Customer Reviews:
The best anthology on the market, at least for the price.......2005-07-01
As an anthropologist who teaches a course on the anthropology of religion, I looked at all the available anthologies, as well as textbooks. This is by far the best anthology, especially for the price. Some are up to $100, which is an awful lot to ask an undergrad to spend. Even compared to those, which can be large and dense, this one stands out for a particular reason.
Most of its competitors present their offerings in a kind of mechanical and sequential way: "here is a section on myth, here is a section on ritual, etc." After using Lambek's text for the second time, I really began to appreciate how his book has a trajectory. It is really "up to something." Unlike the others, he is subtly developing a perspective, and the selections contribute almost universally to that perspective. I think even the students began to realize what he was trying to accomplish and approved of it.
The book is not perfect. It is heavy on ritual and short on some other topics. It does little or nothing with specialists, and nothing at all with altered states of consciousness/hallucinogens. Some of the selections are probably too hard for undergrads, and the piece by Wittgenstein, while he is important, does not convey enough of his thinking to be particularly helpful.
I understand a new edition is forthcoming. I know that I will be using it and encourage others to do so as well.
Book Description
At a time in our post-9/11 world when fundamentalist forces appear to dominate Islam, a vibrant and consequential discourse has emerged from many prominent writers seeking to change the direction of Muslim thought. This timely volume, representing a broad cross-section of this reformist trend in countries ranging from Malaysia to Algeria and Morocco, brings together the writings of thirteen of the most renowned and influential Muslim thinkers alive today. Individually and collectively, they argue for reforms in Islamic theology and jurisprudence and for reinterpretations of popular notions of Islam that are consistent with and supportive of the tenets of modern life. Their essays include broad overviews of Islam, its core principles, and the complex relationship between Islam, democracy, and civil rights; three works by Muslim feminist intellectuals; and more. The volume also places the life, career, and arguments of each thinker in national and historical context.
Copub: I.B. Tauris
Book Description
Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Robert N. Bellah is a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he has examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices. The Robert Bellah Reader brings together twenty-eight of Bellah’s seminal essays. While the essays span a period of more than forty years, nearly half of them were written in the past decade, many in the past few years.
The Reader is organized around four central concerns. It seeks to place modernity in theoretical and historical perspective, drawing from major figures in social science, historical and contemporary, from Aristotle and Rousseau through Durkheim and Weber to Habermas and Mary Douglas. It takes the United States to be in some respects the type-case of modernity and in others the most atypical of modern societies, analyzing its common faith in individual freedom and democratic self-government, and its persistent paradoxes of inequality, exclusion, and empire. The Reader is also concerned to test the axiomatic modern assumption that rational cognition and moral evaluation, fact and value, are absolutely divided, arguing instead that they overlap and interact much more than conventional wisdom in the university today usually admits. Finally, it criticizes modernity’s affirmation that faith and knowledge stand even more utterly at odds, arguing instead that their overlap and interaction, obvious in every premodern society, animate the modern world as well.
Through such critical and constructive inquiry this Reader probes many of our deepest social and cultural quandaries, quandaries that put modernity itself, with all its immense achievements, at mortal risk. Through the practical self-understanding such inquiry spurs, Bellah shows how we may share responsibility for the world we have made and seek to heal it.
Book Description
Womanspirit Rising
The classic anthology on feminist spirituality --
Now with an update preface in which the editors discuss its initial reception and continuing impact.
Customer Reviews:
very good for the time it was writen.......2006-10-23
writen in 1979, i suppose the world was in a very different place in terms of the feminist dialectic. this book has a very significant focus on christian and judiac tradition, so if you are interested in a more thorough read for our contempory diverse world, you may find more to be desired. however, this book does have some great strengths. the articles that are writen about feminist perspectives on christianity and judiasm are very insightful and well writen. and this book is worth having and reading for "part 4- creating new traditions" alone. i do refer to this book from time to time when doing research and find it elequent and inspiring, despite its narrow focus. perhaps a revised edition that includes more diverse contributions from feminists of other major religions like islam, hinduism, and budhism, ect. is long overdue.
Feminist Spirituality at its finest!.......2001-07-21
I was introduced to this book in a feminist spirituality class, taught by a methodist (woman) minister. This and its sequel, Weaving the Visions, helped change my spiritual life. It affirmed the feminine face of God for me, and it did help me to know there are others out there seeking the Femininity of God. That we all have our own, bizarre path to the Divine One; be it one sex or another. This book opens up to a world of feminist thought and ritual; how different feminists, scholars and religious leaders experience divinity and come to terms with it. There are Christians, Jews and Pagans here. An excerpt from "The Color Purple" which Christ seems to favor in other publications. Truly a wonderful work of art for women. A feminist must have.
A must have for those interested in feminist studies!.......1999-06-30
This book and its successor, Weaving the Visions, are the keystones of my library of feminist religious studies. The contributors expose us to feminist critiques of religion from many perspectives and backgrounds. This book is an uplifting source of inspiration for men and women alike. At the same time, it remains a pinnacle of scholarship in its field. I would highly recommend it to anyone with even a remote interest in feminist religious thought!
Book Description
Written by feminist scholars over a period of nearly thirty years, the selected readings are wide-ranging in content, offer a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural perspective, and reflect the work of scholars working within religious studies as well as other disciplines.
The introductory essays link the sections and are packed with useful information on resources, issues, and the debates. The book illustrates how debates about feminism within the study of religions have been impacted by broader theoretical discussions and provides evidence that feminist scholars working on religion have made their own contribution to feminist theory.
Amazon.com
From Scott Savage, editor of the Luddite, Quaker, and Amish magazine The Plain Reader, comes an illuminating anthology of the same name. In essays sure to enlighten and inspire even the most urban and technologically-reliant readers, the writers collected here offer a window into a pared-down life, as they search for (and find) a sense of home, intimacy, and community through the act of simplification. Discussing everything from creating a community through shared labor on a farm to reconnecting with children through home schooling and the purging of radios and televisions to using midwives in place of obstetricians and medical technology, these essays offer alternatives to corporate and electronic America, while resisting the urge to proselytize. Written with heart, thought, and good intention, The Plain Reader may very well be the late 20th century's multi-voiced answer to Henry David Thoreau's Walden. --Kera Bolonik
Book Description
"If information highways are the wave of the future then I will build information country roads on which the traveller can reach the truth faster by going slower. . . ."
On these same country roads, far from the intrusions of modern technology, the Amish, Quakers, and other "plain folk" live their unencumbered lives, close to the land, in peaceful, smoothly-run communities. The thought-provoking, often challenging essays in The Plain Reader are written by men and women who rarely speak outside the borders of their local townships, and provide us with unique perspectives on life stripped down to necessity. Originally published in Plain Magazine, these pieces are sure to inspire reflection.
Reading about a garden cooperative in Connecticut, the raising of a home with only plaster and straw in hand, a fascinating trip to New York City through Amish eyes, compels each of us wonder: Can I too survive without television or that high-tech appliance cluttering my kitchen counter? Am I just a cog in the wheel of the global economy? Is isolation from one another and from the earth the simple destiny of humankind? Each rich, personal essay in this provocative collection offers solace, wisdom, joy, and quiet space for contemplation.
Customer Reviews:
The meek are not stupid........2006-10-17
Measure twice, cut once. This proverb is a sample of the master carpenter's wisdom, which I would not disregard. But there is perhaps even a better wisdom for such tasks.
I knew an uneducated man, formal education ended in the sixth grade, a good part of his youth behind a mule, and in his young manhood giving service under General McArthur in Pacific island warfare. I don't think he weighed 130 pounds dry at age 65. But he taught me an immense amount as a master carpenter in his late years, overlooking my efforts while working in his home shop, helping me directly to improve my own home and its furniture.
What Virgil taught me was, cut twice, first on scrap then on final. He kept a bucket of scrap pieces of wood ready to run through the table saw, jointer, or router, before running through the final production piece in the work.
There are delicate refinements which only the observant and humble souls initially acquire. When they share these with us, we are immensely blessed.
Ten stars and Priceless wisdom.......2003-02-25
This is one of those days when I am feeling terribly blessed because I was able to buy a copy of The Plain Reader Essays on Making a Simple Life - Edited by Scott Savage. This is one of those books if you can find a copy I recommend you buy it. It is out of print, so I think the only places you can find a copy are via used books or small new booksellers who may have a copy stuck away somewhere.
So what makes this book a gem? Well, for one thing it is a series of articles on a variety of topics, written by a lot of simple living folks on subjects that those seeking or living a simple life will really appreciate. One might even say its a great book to have next to your bedside so you can read something short, and encouraging before going to sleep.
A Mix.......2002-03-12
The Plain Reader is a collection of articles that once appeared in the magazine "Plain". Its authors are comprised of individuals with varying philosophies on the virtues of a simple life. Some articles are written by Quakers, Amish and Brethren. There are also articles by homesteaders, authors of several books, and others.
Since the authors come from so many different backgrounds, the articles aren't always compatible. For example, several of the articles are extremely anti-technology, anti-electricity, anti-competition, anti-public school education, etc., whereas others espouse the use of some of these things in moderation.
To me, extremism in any direction is the antithesis of simplicity, which, after all, is what this book is supposed to be about. Still, the book is correctly subtitled "Essays on Making a Simple Life" - it is essays by different people, with different backgrounds and different beliefs about what constitutes a simple life. It is an educational read, not only about simplicity, but also about how certain groups view the rest of the world.
Wonderful writing and thought provoking.......2001-09-12
A wonderful view of the world without all the gadgets we think are necessary. A great way to live and belong in the world. As a Christian I think we could do without alot of the junk the world thinks we need. Thanks for a great book.
A gentle challenge.......2001-07-22
This selection of essays should be on the bedside table -- and read -- by everyone who claims to want to simplify their life. The truth is, many of us (Baby Boomers, Yuppies, BoBos et al) would like to live a simple life, provided we could still have all the amenities we've grown accustomed to -- cars (but nothing flashy), television (but not cable, of course), movies (art on film), designer clothes (but simple ones), gourmet food (we'll grow the herbs ourselves), computers/Internet access (well, it's just a modern typewriter/telephone and what a research tool!)
Savage and his friends claim that the techno life most of us lead is actually simpler than the lives they lead. In the techno life, we can do away with too much interaction with others. We separate ourselves with complications. We can live in virtual reality, paring down the complications (human beings) into abstracts. We can have friends around the world, although we might not know our neighbors names. We can amuse ourselves, filling our time with fantastic games, entertaining TV, music from around the world. What's wrong with that? It may be that life is so short, and we are spreading ourselves so thin, with all the possibilities at our finger tips, we may be missing real life completely.
They claim the simple life is actually the more complicated life, with all the mess and difficulties of living in a small community, having to rely on neighbors (who we might not even like) for help, raising our own foods, finding ways to entertain ourselves and our families that might involve planting, sewing, talking, writing, singing, and being in the moment (without the new agey spin to it).
Without lecturing, this collection of articles from The Plain Reader newspaper (subscribers are limited to 5,000 in order to keep it small and hand-made) motivates, illuminates and educates us.
Although the authors are generally Luddites, Quakers, Mennonites and other plain living folks, living sans TV, Nintendo, radio, daily newspapers, ownership of automobiles, etc., the articles are not judgmental of those of us still living in the consumer world. And let's be honest -- as much as we claim we want the simple life, here we are, you and I, writing and reading reviews, and buying books over the Internet! We're mentioned in the book, sympathetically.
In an interview with Jerry Mander, the Plain editor says, "..but I have never had anyone say to me, 'No, no get away from me. These issues aren't important to me. I like being a machine.' On the contrary, in every case where I've spoken heart-to-heart about my concerns, they've turned around and said, 'You know, I, too, have a real sense of unease about what I'm doing. I think I do watch too much television. I do feel controlled by it,' etc.
Now if I were to wag my finger at them, or organize activities to "wake them up," appealing to their minds, they would simply hold more tightly to their stake in the dominant culture. When I tell them my fears and failings, I've not had a single person fail to respond. And so I do believe this is how we're going to reach people. Our magazine reaches people by dissolving their fear, by encouraging others with what we're doing."
And so this book encourages us, with examples of what the plain folk, some once Bobos like thee and me, are doing. It almost pains me to read it, for I fall far short of the pure and simple thoughts in here. And yet there's hope -- I may not give up everything, but I can question, and make changes in how I live my life.
Mary Ann Laiser writes of The Media-Free Family; Bill Duesing has thoughts on "Leaving Money Behind; and Art Gish speaks of 'Food We Can Live With."
Even if you're not ready to leave it all behind, this is a wonderful book to read. So thought provoking, it may inspire you to question some of what you're doing, what you're allowing your children to do (I'm speaking to myself, here!) and how even small changes can be made. We bought one copy, but now we need more to pass along!
Can be read bit by bit, or at one sitting. Use a marker, or bookmarks. The woodcut illustrations by Mary Azarian are simple, but beautiful (better even than the cover.)
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Books Index
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General
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| Books
Religion in Society: A Sociology of Religion (8th Edition)
Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments
Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader: An Ethnographic Reader
Religion: The Social Context
Religion in America (5th Edition)
