The Ritual Animal

preview-18
  • The Ritual Animal Book Detail

  • Author : Harvey Whitehouse
  • Release Date : 2021-11-25
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Genre : Religion
  • Pages : 251
  • ISBN 13 : 0192520970
  • File Size : 83,83 MB

The Ritual Animal by Harvey Whitehouse PDF Summary

Book Description: A radical exploration of how rituals have influenced history over thousands of years. From infancy, we copy those around us in order to be like others, to be one with the tribe. Other primates will copy behaviour that leads to transparent benefits, such as access to food, but only humans promiscuously copy actions that have no obvious instrumental purpose. The copying of causally opaque behaviour (rituals) has allowed cultural groups to proliferate over time and space. The frequency and emotional intensity of ritual performances constrains the scale and structure of cultural groups. Rare, traumatic rituals (e.g. painful initiations) produce very strong social cohesion in small, relational groups such as military battalions or local cults whereas daily and weekly rituals (e.g. collective praying in mosques, churches, and synagogues) produce diffuse cohesion in indefinitely expandable communities. This pioneering study presents a theory of how these two 'ritual modes' have influenced the course of human history over many thousands of years and continue to shape the groups we live in today. The resulting programme of research offers a radically new paradigm for the social sciences, one that bridges across disciplinary silos, samples the full diversity of the world's populations, and plumbs our richest sources of information about cultural systems, past and present. In doing so, leading anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse shows how we can modify the way we tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our day, from violent extremism to global heating. All the problems humanity creates are ultimately problems of cooperation. Solving these problems will require social glue. Whitehouse suggests various practical ways in which our growing knowledge about the role of ritual in group bonding can help us achieve a more peaceful and prosperous future, not only for ourselves but for all species who share the planet with us.

Disclaimer: www.yourbookbest.com does not own The Ritual Animal books pdf, neither created or scanned. We just provide the link that is already available on the internet, public domain and in Google Drive. If any way it violates the law or has any issues, then kindly mail us via contact us page to request the removal of the link.

The Ritual Animal

The Ritual Animal

File Size : 53,53 MB
Total View : 1740 Views
DOWNLOAD

A radical exploration of how rituals have influenced history over thousands of years. From infancy, we copy those around us in order to be like others, to be on

Modes of Religiosity

Modes of Religiosity

File Size : 28,28 MB
Total View : 6720 Views
DOWNLOAD

Religions--whatever else they may be--are configurations of cultural information reproduced across space and time. Beginning with this seemingly obvious fact of

Inside the Cult

Inside the Cult

File Size : 47,47 MB
Total View : 5794 Views
DOWNLOAD

For the past thirty years, adherents of a millenarian cult in Papua New Guinea, known as the Pomio Kivung, have been awaiting the establishment of a period of s

Theorizing Religions Past

Theorizing Religions Past

File Size : 17,17 MB
Total View : 3516 Views
DOWNLOAD

Historians bound by their singular stories and archaeologists bound by their material evidence donOt typically seek out broad comparative theories of religion.