Author: Allen Guttmann Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231133413 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
Examines the relationship between sports and society, including the degree to which modern sport expresses the characteristics of modern society, such as secularism, equality, specialization, rationalization, and bureaucracy.
Author: Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri Publisher: Sidestone Press ISBN: 9088902208 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 174
Book Description
‘Ritual Failure’ is a new concept in archaeology adopted from the discipline of anthropology. Resilient religious systems disappearing, strict believers and faithful practitioners not performing their rites, entire societies changing their customs: how does a religious ritual system transform, change or disappear, leaving only traces of its past glory? Do societies change and then their ritual? Or do customs change first, in turn provoking wider cultural shifts in society? Archaeology possesses the tools and methodologies to explore these questions over the long term; from the emergence of a system, to its peak, and then its decay and disappearance, and in relation to wider social and chronological developments. The collected papers in this book introduce the concept of ‘ritual failure’ to archaeology. The analysis explores ways in which ritual may have been instrumental in sustaining cultural continuity during demanding social conditions, or how its functionality might have failed – resulting in discontinuity, change or collapse. The collected papers draw attention to those turbulent social times of change for which ritual practices are a sensitive indicator within the archaeological record. The book reviews archaeological evidence and theoretical approaches, and suggests models which could explain socio-cultural change through ritual failure. The concept of ‘ritual failure’ is also often used to better understand other themes, such as identity and wider social, economic and political transformations, shedding light on the social conditions that forced or introduced change. This book will engage those interested in ritual theory and practices, but will also appeal to those interested in exploring new avenues to understanding cultural change. From transformations in the use of ritual objects to the risks inherent in practicing ritual, from ritual continuity in customs to sudden and profound change, from the Neolithic Near East to Roman Europe and Iron Age Africa, this book explores what happens when ritual fails.
Author: Deborah L. Stein Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520968883 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Hegemony of Heritage makes an original and significant contribution to our understanding of how the relationship of architectural objects and societies to the built environment changes over time. Studying two surviving medieval monuments in southern Rajasthan—the Ambika Temple in Jagat and the Ékalingji Temple Complex in Kailaspuri—the author looks beyond their divergent sectarian affiliations and patronage structures to underscore many aspects of common practice. This book offers new and extremely valuable insights into these important monuments, illuminating the entangled politics of antiquity and revealing whether a monument’s ritual record is affirmed as continuous and hence hoary or dismissed as discontinuous or reinvented through various strategies. The Hegemony of Heritage enriches theoretical constructs with ethnographic description and asks us to reexamine notions such as archive and text through the filter of sculpture and mantra.
Author: Craig Heimbichner Publisher: Feral House ISBN: 1936239159 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 361
Book Description
"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.
Author: Ann Fienup-Riordan Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 9780806126463 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 420
Book Description
This book brings together as complete a record of traditional Yupik rules and rituals as is possible in the late twentieth century. Incorporating elders' recollections of the system of ruled boundaries and ritual passages that guided their parents and grandparents a century ago, Ann Fienup-Riordan brings into focus the complex, creative Yupik world view - expressed by ceremonial exchanges and the cycling of names, gifts, and persons - which continues to shape daily life in communities along the Bering Sea coast. Her analysis is illustrated with many contemporary and historical photographs. Identifying "metaphors to live by, " Fienup-Riordan tells of "the Boy Who Went to Live with Seals" and "the Girl Who Returned from the Dead." She explains how in Yupik cosmology their stories illustrate relationships among human beings, animals, and the spirit world - the "boundaries and passages" between death and the renewal of life.
Author: Akinwumi Ogundiran Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 0253013917 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 419
Book Description
Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.
Author: C. Riley Augé Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1800735049 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
By bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understanding of how those behaviors may also be seen through less obvious evidential lines. Instruction and templates for recording, typologizing, classifying, and analyzing ritual or magico-religious material culture are also provided to guide researchers in the survey, collection, and cataloging processes. The bulleted formatting and topical range make this a highly accessible work, while providing an incredible wealth of information in a single volume.
Author: Allen Guttmann Publisher: ISBN: 9780231100434 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
An exploration of the ways in which modern sports have spread from their Western roots to all corners of the globe. Could this be another form of cultural imperialism?
Author: Ronald Hutton Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191578428 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 566
Book Description
Comprehensive and engaging, this colourful study covers the whole sweep of ritual history from the earliest written records to the present day. From May Day revels and Midsummer fires, to Harvest Home and Hallowe'en, to the twelve days of Christmas, Ronald Hutton takes us on a fascinating journey through the ritual year in Britain. He challenges many common assumptions about the customs of the past, and debunks many myths surrounding festivals of the present, to illuminate the history of the calendar year we live by today.
Author: Allen Guttmann
Author: Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri
Author: Deborah L. Stein
Author: Craig Heimbichner
Author: Ann Fienup-Riordan
Author: Akinwumi Ogundiran
Author: C. Riley Augé
Author: Allen Guttmann
Author: Luis Nicolau Parés
Author: Ronald Hutton