Prey into Hunter - The Politics of Religious Experience (Hardcover, New)

Maurice Bloch has for many years been developing an original and influential theory of ritual. In this book he synthesises a radical theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the transience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants themselves, so allowing them to participate in the immortality of a transcendent entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing of animals. The theme is developed with reference to rituals of many types, from a variety of ethnographic sources, and Bloch shows that even exogamous marriage rituals can be reinterpreted in the light of this thesis. He concludes by considering the indirect relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.

General

Imprint:	Cambridge UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures
Release date:	October 1991
First published:	1992
Authors:	Maurice Bloch
Foreword by:	Alfred Harris
Dimensions:	237 x 159 x 14mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	132
Edition:	New
ISBN-13:	978-0-521-41154-7
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > Social & cultural anthropology > General Promotions
LSN:	0-521-41154-8
Barcode:	9780521411547

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