Claude Levi-Strauss and the style of thinking known as 'structuralism, ' with which his work is conventionally associated, is widely recognized as having made a seminal contribution to the discipline of anthropology. More generally, his writings register the turn to language in social theory in the 1960s, and are marked by the influence of Kant, Rousseau, Saussurian linguistics, Marx and Freud. In turn, Levi-Strauss is recognized as having been a key influence on thinkers such as Althusser, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. This volume seeks to address a key gap in the burgeoning secondary literature about Levi-Strauss: his importance to the study of religions. This volume pays particular attention to Levi-Strauss' writings on totemism, myth and "la pensee sauvage," situating these writings both in terms of previous theories of religion and in terms of the wider influences that informed his work. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of Levi-Strauss' life and work, the thinkers and theories that informed his writings, and his contribution to the study of religions.

This concise and accessible introduction brings the writings of Marx and Engels and later thinkers in the Marxist tradition including Althusser, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School as well as Liberation Theologians such as Gutierrez and Maduro, into focus in relation to questions of religion, social change and social justice. Marx was a nineteenth century thinker trying to develop a theory that could explain the dramatic social and technological changes that he lived through. Later thinkers modified and developed key elements of Marx' theoretical model, with religion - particularly Christianity - providing a vital point of critical self-reflection for thinkers in the Marxist tradition. This book tracks these modifications and developments to Marx' ideas, and their continuing relevance to contemporary debates about religion, social change and social justice.

Claude Levi-Strauss and the style of thinking known as 'structuralism, ' with which his work is conventionally associated, is widely recognized as having made a seminal contribution to the discipline of anthropology. More generally, his writings register the turn to language in social theory in the 1960s, and are marked by the influence of Kant, Rousseau, Saussurian linguistics, Marx and Freud. In turn, Levi-Strauss is recognized as having been a key influence on thinkers such as Althusser, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. This volume seeks to address a key gap in the burgeoning secondary literature about Levi-Strauss: his importance to the study of religions. This volume pays particular attention to Levi-Strauss' writings on totemism, myth and "la pensee sauvage," situating these writings both in terms of previous theories of religion and in terms of the wider influences that informed his work. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of Levi-Strauss' life and work, the thinkers and theories that informed his writings, and his contribution to the study of religions.

This book argues that neither theories of secularisation nor theories of lived religion offer satisfactory accounts of religion and social change. Drawing from Deleuze and Gauttari's idea of the assemblage, Paul-Francois Tremlett outlines an alternative. Informed by classical and contemporary theories of religion as well as empirical case studies and ethnography conducted in Manila and London, this book re-frames religion as spatially organised flows. Foregrounding the agency of hon-human actors, it offers a compelling and original account of religion and social change.

This transdisciplinary and theoretically innovative edited volume contains seven original, research-led chapters that explore complex intersections of ritual and democracy in a wide range of contemporary, cultural and geographic contexts. The volume emerged out of a workshop held at the Open University in London, organized as part of the international research project, 'Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource' (REDO) funded by the Norwegian Research Council and led by Jone Salomonsen. The chapters document entanglements of the religious and the secular in political assembly and iconoclastic protest, of affect and belonging in pilgrimage and church ritual and politics and identity in performances of self and culture. Across the essays emerges a conception of ritual less as scripts for generating stability than as improvisational spaces and as catalysts for change.

This transdisciplinary and theoretically innovative edited volume contains seven original, research-led chapters that explore complex intersections of ritual and democracy in a wide range of contemporary, cultural and geographic contexts. The volume emerged out of a workshop held at the Open University in London, organized as part of the international research project, 'Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource' (REDO) funded by the Norwegian Research Council and led by Jone Salomonsen. The chapters document entanglements of the religious and the secular in political assembly and iconoclastic protest, of affect and belonging in pilgrimage and church ritual and politics and identity in performances of self and culture. Across the essays emerges a conception of ritual less as scripts for generating stability than as improvisational spaces and as catalysts for change.

This book argues that neither theories of secularisation nor theories of lived religion offer satisfactory accounts of religion and social change. Drawing from Deleuze and Gauttari's idea of the assemblage, Paul-Francois Tremlett outlines an alternative. Informed by classical and contemporary theories of religion as well as empirical case studies and ethnography conducted in Manila and London, this book re-frames religion as spatially organised flows. Foregrounding the agency of hon-human actors, it offers a compelling and original account of religion and social change.

Through revisiting and challenging what we think we know about the work of Edward Burnett Tylor, a founding figure of anthropology, this volume explores new connections and insights that link Tylor and his work to present concerns in new and important ways. At the publication of Primitive Culture in 1871, Tylor was at the centre of anthropological research on religion and culture, but today Tylor's position in the anthropological canon is rarely acknowledged. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture does not claim to present a definitive, new Tylor. The old Tylor - the founder of British anthropology; the definer of religion; the intellectualist; the evolutionist; the liberal; the utilitarian; the avatar of white, Protestant rationalism; the Tylor of the canon - remains. Part I explore debates and contexts of Tylor's lifetime, while the chapters in Part II explore a series of new Tylors, including Tylor the ethnographer and Tylor the Spiritualist, re-writing the legacy of the founder of anthropology in the process. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture is essential reading for anyone interested in the study of religion and the anthropology of religion.

Through revisiting and challenging what we think we know about the work of Edward Burnett Tylor, a founding figure of anthropology, this volume explores new connections and insights that link Tylor and his work to present concerns in new and important ways. At the publication of Primitive Culture in 1871, Tylor was at the centre of anthropological research on religion and culture, but today Tylor's position in the anthropological canon is rarely acknowledged. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture does not claim to present a definitive, new Tylor. The old Tylor - the founder of British anthropology; the definer of religion; the intellectualist; the evolutionist; the liberal; the utilitarian; the avatar of white, Protestant rationalism; the Tylor of the canon - remains. Part I explore debates and contexts of Tylor's lifetime, while the chapters in Part II explore a series of new Tylors, including Tylor the ethnographer and Tylor the Spiritualist, re-writing the legacy of the founder of anthropology in the process. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture is essential reading for anyone interested in the study of religion and the anthropology of religion.

The point of departure for this book is the debate about whether religious studies should privilege explanation or understanding. Engaging with contemporary scholarship in the field, Tremlett argues that the study of religions has always involved the conflation of facts and values and indeed has been structured in advance by the value-saturated discourse on disenchanted modernity. He argues that phenomenological and post-modern approaches to religions lack both theoretical and methodological coherence, and in their stead proposes a Marxist approach to religions that is at once empirical and informed by values pertaining to social justice, freedom and autonomy.

The point of departure for this book is the debate about whether religious studies should privilege explanation or understanding.
Engaging with contemporary scholarship in the field, Tremlett argues that the study of religions has always involved the conflation of facts and values and indeed has been structured in advance by the value-saturated discourse on disenchanted modernity. He argues that phenomenological and post-modern approaches to religions lack both theoretical and methodological coherence, and in their stead proposes a Marxist approach to religions that is at once empirical and informed by values pertaining to social justice, freedom and autonomy.