Religion and Society

Advances in Research

Editors:
Simon Coleman, University of Toronto
Sondra L. Hausner, University of Oxford

Reviews Editors:
Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Seville, Spain (EMERGIA grant, ref.no.: EMC21_00043)
Eugenia Roussou, CRIA, ISCTE-IUL, University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal

Due to a marked increase in submisssions we may not respond to you right away. We thank you in advance for your patience.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion, Religious Studies, Sociology of Religion

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Latest Issue Table of Contents

Volume 14 (2023): Issue 1 (Sep 2023)

Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
I. Portrait: Mayfair Yang
Portrait
Portrait
II. Articles
III. Debate
A School of Thought in Christian Anthropology
A School of Thought in Christian Anthropology
IV. Response
Pali and Monastic Reform
Pali and Monastic Reform
V. Author Meets Critics
VI. Special Section: An Anthropology of Nonreligion? Edited by Stefan Binder and Mascha Schulz
Reviews

Religion and Society: Advances in Research
Volume 15
Table of Contents

Dialogues with the Living and the Dead: Anthropological Legacies, Locations, and Languages
Sondra L. Hausner and Simon Coleman

I. PORTRAIT: Peter Brown
Anthropology and Religion
Peter Brown

Long-Distance Eaves-dropping
Kate Cooper

Peter Brown at Princeton
Christian C. Sahner

Listening In with Respect: Anthropology and Religion in Peter Brown’s History
Greta Austin

Peter Brown
Francis Robinson

Saints and Exemplars in Late Antiquity and Beyond: On Peter Brown
Andreas Bandak

II. Rappaport Lecture and Associated Commentaries
Drinking Secularism: A Critique of Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?
Irfan Ahmad

Is Critique Sober? A Response to Irfan Ahmad’s Rappaport Lecture, “Drinking Secularism”
Anand Vivek Taneja

Contesting Coloniality in Adjudicating between the Two Ahmads
Usaama al-Azami

From “Being Islamic” to “Becoming Muslim”
Marloes Janson

Response to Anand Taneja, Marloes Jansen, and Usaama al-Azami
Irfan Ahmad

III. Articles
Excesses, Resisting Interpretation, and the Negative in Three Latin American Imaginaries
Diana Espírito Santo

Religiosity, Productivity, and Community-Building: Buddhism in a Bhutanese Diasporic Community in Australia
Dendup Chophel

Going the Way of the Dodo Bird: Timeless Hope, a Skill Cultivated through Religious Practice
Anna I. Corwin and Katherine Treviño-Yoson

A Working Typology of Transcendence in Anthropology
Jenia Gorbanenko

IV. Special Section: Talal Asad
Formations of the Secular, 20 Years On
Basit Kareem Iqbal

Thinking about Secularism with Asad, Twenty Years after Formations
Sohaib Khan

Remember the Land
Brent Eng

On Pain and Passibility, or the Temporalities of Ensoulment
Aaron F. Eldridge

Commensuration, Pain, and the Politics of Number
Basit Kareem Iqbal

Suffering Subjects: Human Rights and the Geopolitics of Concern
Candace Lukasik

Solidarity and the Secular: Palestine, ‘British Values,’ and European Community
Muneeza Rizvi

Badan (After): Law in the Aftermath of the Nation-State in Yemen
Ashwak Hauter

Reconfigurations of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt: Working at the Limits of Anthropology
Jean-Michel Landry

V. Special Section: The Body in Urban Rituals
Introduction: Gendered Bodies, Somatic Rituals, Embodied Cities
Natalie Lang and Indira Arumugam

Dancing before Christ and Chinese Citizens: Protestant Calisthenics and Religious Space in Contemporary China
Michel Chambon

Mediating Gendered Bodies, Culture, and Urban Spaces: Transgender Funeral Performance in Southern Vietnam
Huong Thu Nguyen

Entangled Intimacies: Negotiating Kinship and Religious Embodiments among Tamil Hindu Women in Singapore
Ranjana Raghunathan

The Hindu Body as a Site of Contested Narratives: Fire, Religion, and Embodied Practice in London
Ann R. David

Religion, the City, and the Body: Embodied Urban Memory and the Hindu Fire-Walking Festival in Singapore
Natalie Lang

VI. Reviews
Book Reviews
CORWIN, Anna I., Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well, 202 pp., bibliography, index. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021. Hardback, $150, ISBN 9781978822283.
Samuel Huard

La secularización en España. Rupturas y cambios religiosos desde la sociología histórica. By Rafael Ruiz Andrés. Madrid: Cátedra, 2022. 328 pp. €16.50 paper / 11.49 ePub.
Zakaria Sajir

SNODGRASS, Jeffrey, The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games, 200 pp., ills., bibliography, index. California: University of California Press, 2023. Hardpack, $95.00. ISBN: 9780520384354.
Vivian Gonzalez

BERES, Derek, Matthew REMSKI, and Julian WALKER, Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, 370 pp., acknowledgments, notes, index. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023. $30. ISBN: 9781541702981.
Giovanna Parmigiani

COPEMAN, Jacob, LONGKUMER, Arkotong and Koonal DUGGAL, eds., Gurus and Media: Sound, Image, Machine, Text, and the Digital. xvii, 453 pp., 55 colour plates, index. London: University College London Press, 2023. Paperback 60 $. ISBN: 978-18-00-08555-8. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10177425/1/Gurus-and-Media.pdf (Open Access PDF).
Daniela Bevilacqua

GAITANIDIS, Ioannis, Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion?, xii, 245 pp., 8 b/w ills., 3 graphs, bibliography, index. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Hardback, $115; softcover, $35.95. ISBN: 978-1-350-26261-4.
Justin B. Stein

MOHAN, URMILA ed. 2024. The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices. New York: Routledge. 242 Pages, 43 B/W Illustrations. Hardback £135 / ISBN: 9781032498812. eBook £35.99 / ISBN: 9781003409731.
Leah Comeau

ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana. Spirited Histories: Technologies, Media, and Trauma in Paranormal Chile, 212 pp., 11b/w ills., bibliography, index. London and New York: Routledge, 2024,
Routledge. Paperback, $54.99. ISBN: 9780367691813.
Matan Shapiro

Author’s response to Matan Shapiro’s book review of Spirited Histories: Technologies, Media, and Trauma in Paranormal Chile.
Diana Espírito Santo

PÉREZ, Elizabeth. 2022. The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 84 pages. £17.00 (Paperback). ISBN 9781009031530.
Stephan Palmié

Author’s response to Stephan Palmié’s book review of The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract.
Elizabeth Pérez

PALMIÉ, Stephan. 2023. Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 288 pages. [ISBN: 978-0-226-82592-2 (cloth) / $99, 978-0-226-82594-6 (paper) / $30, 978-0-226-82593-9 (e-book) / $29.99].
Elizabeth Pérez

Author’s response to Elizabeth Pérez’s book review of Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa.
Stephan Palmié

Film Review
Christian SUHR, dir., Light Upon Light. 78 mins. In Arabic, English and Danish with English and French subtitles, 2023. Available through Documentary Educational Resources.
Pedro Pestana Soares

Volume 15 / 2024, 1 issue per volume (autumn)

Aims & Scope

Religion and Society: Advances in Research responds to the need for a rigorous, in-depth review of current work in the expanding sub-discipline of the anthropology of religion. In addition, this important, peer-reviewed annual aims to provide a dynamic snapshot of developments in the study of religion as a whole and encourages interdisciplinary perspectives.

Each volume contains a Portrait section that profiles a senior scholar of religion, with invited essays on the scholar's work by authorities in their respective subfields. In the Articles section, contributions provide overviews of a given topic with critical, "positioned" views of the subject and of relevant research. In the Debate section, scholars of religion reflect on a high-profile issue or event, and the Author Meets Critics section invites discussants to comment on a recently published volume, followed by a response from the author. Other sections cover teaching, news, and—vitally—reviews of new books and ethnographic films.

Indexing/Abstracting

Religion and Society: Advances in Research is indexed/abstracted in:

  • ATLA Religion Database (American Theological Library Association)
  • Bibliometric Research Indicator List (BFI)
  • Emerging Sources Citation Index (Web of Science)
  • European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)
  • IBR – International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature on the Humanities and Social Sciences (De Gruyter)
  • IBZ – International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (De Gruyter)
  • MLA International Bibliography Religion and Philosophy (Gale)
  • Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers
  • Scopus (Elsevier)

Editors
Simon Coleman, University of Toronto, Canada
Sondra L. Hausner, University of Oxford, UK

Reviews Editors
Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Seville, Spain (EMERGIA grant, ref.no.: EMC21_00043)
Eugenia Roussou, CRIA, ISCTE-IUL, University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal

Editorial Board
Fenella Cannell,  London School of Economics, UK
Rosalind Hackett, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
Michael Houseman, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France
Hubert Knoblauch, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Filippo Osella, University of Sussex, UK
Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge, UK
Ramon Sarró, University of Oxford, UK
Muhammad Q. Zaman, Princeton University, USA

Advisory Board
Olufunke Adeboye, University of Lagos, Nigeria
David Berliner, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Fiona Bowie, King's College, London, UK
Andrew Buckser, SUNY-Plattsburgh, USA
Michael Carrithers, Durham University, UK
Subhadra Mitra Channa, University of Delhi, India
Matthew Engelke, Columbia University, USA
Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University, USA
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Webb Keane, University of Michigan, USA
Michal Kravel-Tovi, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Michael Lambek, University of Toronto, Canada
Tanya Luhrmann, Stanford University, USA
Gordon Lynch, University of Kent, UK
Maya Mayblin, University of Edinburgh, UK
Birgit Meyer, University of Utrecht, Netherlands
David Morgan, Duke University, USA
Stephan Palmié, University of Chicago, USA
Ursula Rao, The Max Planck Institute, Germany
Roberta Ricucci, University of Turin, Italy
Benjamin Soares, University of Florida, USA
Pamela J. Stewart, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Andrew Strathern, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Linda Woodhead, King’s College London, UK

Manuscript Submission

Due to a marked increase in submisssions we may not respond to you right away. We thank you in advance for your patience.

Please review the submission and style guidelines carefully before submitting.

Please submit articles, reviews, and other contributions as Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (rtf) files by e-mail to the editors:

Simon Coleman at simon.coleman@utoronto.ca and Sondra Hausner at sondra.hausner@theology.ox.ac.uk

Book Reviewers, please read the letter from the Book Reviews Editors.

Articles and profiles should be approximately 7,000 words (including notes and references), although longer articles may be considered. Approximate word count for other submissions are as follows:

  • Responses to articles or profiles: 1,000 words
  • News and conferences: 5,000 words
  • Debate: 3,000 words
  • Teaching the Anthropology of Religion: 3,000 words
  • Reflections on a text: 1,000 words each and author responses 2,000 words
  • Book reviews: 800 words

Have other questions? Please refer to the Berghahn Info for Authors page for general information and guidelines including topics such as article usage and permissions for Berghahn journal article authors.

Special Issue Proposal

License Agreement

As part of the Berghahn Open Anthro initiative, articles in this journal are published open access under a Creative Commons license. As a contributor to a Berghahn Books Journal, you are responsible for completing, signing, and returning one of the signed license agreements for each author with your submitted article. Submit forms to copyright@berghahnjournals.com.

By default Authors will use the CC BY-NC-ND - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-noDerivs License, if you require a different license or have other queries please contact copyright@berghahnjournals.com.

Ethics Statement

Authors published in Religion and Society: Advances in Research (ARRS) certify that their works are original and their own. The editors certify that all materials, with the possible exception of editorial introductions, book reviews, and some types of commentary, have been subjected to blind peer review by qualified scholars in the field. While the publishers and the editorial board make every effort to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinions, or statements appear in this journal, they wish to make clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor(s) concerned. For a more detailed explanation concerning these qualifications and responsibilities, please see the complete ARRS ethics statement.

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Religion and Society is a part of the Berghahn Open Anthro subscribe-to-open initiative. Launched in 2020, BOA-S2O has successfully converted a collection of 16 anthropology journals to full Open Access using S2O as its equitable and sustainable model of choice.

The Return of the Animists

Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies

01 Mar 2010
Redeem Token

The ethnography of lowland South American societies has occupied a central place in recent debates concerning what has been called the 'ontological turn' in anthropology. The concepts of 'animism' and 'perspectivism', which have been revigorated through studies of Amerindian ontologies, figure increasingly in the ethnographies of non-Amerindian peoples and in anthropological theory more generally. This article traces the theoretical and empirical background of these concepts, beginning with the influence of Lévi-Strauss's work on the anthropology of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and proceeding with their impact on Amazonian ethnography. It then investigates the problems that two alternative traditions—one combining a cognitivist with a pragmaticist approach, the other a phenomenological one—pose to recent studies of Amazonian ontologies that rely on the concepts of animism and perspectivism. The article concludes by considering how animism and perspectivism affect our descriptions of Amerindian society and politics, highlighting the new challenges that studies of Amerindian ontologies have begun to address.

The Material Turn in the Study of Religion

Author:
Sonia Hazard
01 Dec 2013
Redeem Token

Material things and phenomena have come to vie with belief and thought as worthy subjects of inquiry in the interdisciplinary study of religion. Yet, to the extent that we are justified in speaking of a “material turn”, no consensus has arisen about what materiality is or does. This article offers a preliminary sketch of the diverse terrain of material religion studies, delineating three dominant approaches to religious materiality as well as an emerging alternative. It argues that the dominant approaches—respectively characterized by an emphasis on symbolism, material disciplines, and phenomenological experience—continue to privilege the human subject while material things themselves struggle to come into sharp focus. That is, they remain anthropocentric and beholden to the biases against materiality deeply entrenched in the study of religion. Such biases may be negotiated more successfully via the emerging alternative “new materialism”.

Religion, Space, and Place

The Spatial Turn in Research on Religion

Author:
Kim Knott
01 Mar 2010
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Following a consideration of the impact of the late twentieth-century spatial turn on the study of religion by geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and religious studies scholars, two trends are distinguished: the poetics of place and the sacred; and politics, religion, and the contestation of space. Discussion of these reveals substantially different approaches to religion, space, and place—one phenomenological, the other social constructivist. The spatial turn has been extremely fruitful for research on religion, bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines, and connecting not only to traditional areas such as sacred space and pilgrimage, but to new ones such as embodiment, gender, practice and religious-secular engagements.

Taking Animism Seriously, but Perhaps Not Too Seriously?

Author:
Rane Willerslev
01 Dec 2013
Redeem Token

How do we take indigenous animism seriously in the sense proposed by Viveiros de Castro? In this article, I pose this challenge to all the major theories of animism, stretching from Tylor and Durkheim, over Lévi-Strauss to Ingold. I then go on to draw a comparison between Žižek's depiction of the cynical milieu of advanced capitalism in which ideology as “false consciousness” has lost force and the Siberian Yukaghirs for whom ridiculing the spirits is integral to their game of hunting. Both know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still they go along with it; both are ironically self-conscious about not taking the ruling ethos at face value. This makes me suggest an alternative: perhaps it is time for anthropology not to take indigenous animism too seriously.

Portrait

Jean Comaroff

01 Dec 2012
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Colonial frontiers, we have long been told, put conventional categories at risk. I grew up on one such frontier, itself an anachronism in the late-twentieth-century world—apartheid South Africa, where many of the key terms of liberal modernity were scandalously, publically violated. Religion was one of them. Some have argued that the act of separating the sacred from the secular is the founding gesture of liberal modern state making (Asad 2003: 13). In this, South Africa was a flagrant exception. There, the line between faith and politics was always overtly contested, always palpably porous. Faith-based arguments were central to politics at its most pragmatic, to competing claims of sovereignty and citizenship, to debates about the nature of civilization or the content of school curricula. As a settler colony, South Africa had long experimented with ways to ‘modernize racial domination’ (Adam 1971) in the interests of capitalist production, frequently with appeals to theology. After 1948, in contrast with the spirit of a decolonizing world, the country fell under the sway of Afrikaner rulers of overtly Calvinist bent. They set about formalizing a racial division of labor that ensured that black populations, the Children of Ham, remained economically subservient and politically marginal.