|
Showing 1 - 8 of
8 matches in All Departments
At the end of 2019, Americans were living in an era of post-truth
characterized by fake news, weaponized lies, alternative facts,
conspiracy theories, magical thinking, and irrationalism. While
many complex interconnected factors were at work, this post-truth
era was partly the culmination of a cadre of anthropologists and
other academics in American universities and colleges during the
1980's and 1990's. In Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth
World, H. Sidky examines how their untoward dalliance with
problematic and dangerous ideas by Michel Foucault, Jacques
Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard
informed and empowered a forceful assault on science and truth in
the following decades by corporate organizations, politicians,
religious extremists, and right-wing populists.
In The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity, H.
Sidky examines shamanism as an ancient magico-religious,
divinatory, medical, and psychotherapeutic tradition found in
various parts of the world. Sidky uses first-hand ethnographic
fieldwork and scientific theoretical work in archaeology, cognitive
and evolutionary psychology, and neurotheology to explore the
origins of shamanism, spirit beliefs, the evolution of human
consciousness, and the origins of ritual behavior and religiosity.
Haunted by the Archaic Shaman critically engages the general
discourse on shamanism by using ethnographic data gathered among
different ethnic groups in the Nepal Himalayas to address several
key conceptual issues and problems in the scholarly field of
shamanic studies. Sidky not only tackles topics that appear beyond
resolution to many, such as defining shamanism and delimiting its
geographical scope, but also challenges on empirical and
theoretical grounds several widely held ideas that have assumed the
status of incontrovertible facts, such as the antiquity of
shamanism and its place in the rise of human religiosity. This book
makes a significant theoretical contribution to the field of
shamanic studies and the anthropology of religion.
At the end of 2019, Americans were living in an era of post-truth
characterized by fake news, weaponized lies, alternative facts,
conspiracy theories, magical thinking, and irrationalism. Science
and scientific knowledge were under attack. While many complex
interconnected factors were at work, post-truth in the United
States was partly the culmination of a cadre of anthropologists and
other academics in American universities and colleges during the
1980's and 1990's. In Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth
World, H. Sidky examines how their untoward dalliance with
problematic and dangerous ideas by Michel Foucault, Jacques
Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard
informed and empowered a forceful assault on science and truth in
the following decades by corporate organizations, politicians,
religious extremists, and right-wing populists.
Religion: An Anthropological Perspective provides a critical view
of religion focusing upon important but overlooked topics such as
religion, cognition, and prehistory; science, rationality, and
religion; altered states of consciousness, entheogens and religious
experience; religion and the paranormal; magic and divination;
religion and ecology; fundamentalism; and religion and violence. In
addition, this book offers a unique and concise coverage of
traditional topics of the anthropology of religion such as
shamanism and witchcraft (past and present), ritual, myth,
religious symbols, and revitalization movements. A vast range of
findings from ethnography, ethnology, cultural anthropology,
archaeology, prehistory, history, and cognitive science are brought
to bear on the subject. Written in clear jargon-free prose, this
book provides an accessible and comprehensive yet critical view of
the anthropology of religion both for graduate and undergraduate
students and general audiences. Its scope and critical scientific
orientation sets Religion: An Anthropological Perspective apart
from all other treatments of the subject.
In The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity, H.
Sidky examines shamanism as an ancient magico-religious,
divinatory, medical, and psychotherapeutic tradition found in
various parts of the world. Sidky uses first-hand ethnographic
fieldwork and scientific theoretical work in archaeology, cognitive
and evolutionary psychology, and neurotheology to explore the
origins of shamanism, spirit beliefs, the evolution of human
consciousness, and the origins of ritual behavior and religiosity.
In this volume, Sidky undertakes the task of reconstructing the
history of Greek Bactria, a warlike kingdom that existed twenty-two
centuries ago in what is now northern Afghanistan, from fragmentary
sources. The resulting work brings to life ancient documents in a
narrative scope, where a forgotten people are recreated in the
reader's mind. The story of east meeting west, and the resulting
synthesis, is re-told here, with critical analysis of sources
fitting easily alongside vivid descriptions of glorious battles and
great cities. This easily accessible, yet scholarly, work will
interest students of ancient history and archaeology.
Irrigation and State Formation in Hunza explores the evolution of
political complexity and centralization in Hunza, a remote
high-mountain kingdom in the western Karakoram mountains. The
author follows the argument that the rise of the Hunza state is
directly linked to the construction of Hunza's large-scale
irrigation works during the late 18th and early-19th centuries.
Sidky's theories are influenced by anthropological writings on
irrigation and its impact on society. He pays special attention to
Karl Wittfogel's 'hydraulic hypothesis' and goes on to examine
linkages between specific ecological conditions, hydraulic
agriculture, and the pattern of socioeconomic and political
organization that emerged in Hunza due to a local ruler's
construction of a large-scale hydraulic system. This unique study
will appeal to historians, anthropologists, cultural geographers
and South Asian specialists.
|
|