Contemporary Religiosities

Bruce Kapferer is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway. His published books include: A Celebration of Demons (1983), Legends of People, Myths of the State (1988), and The Feast of the Sorcerer (1997). He has edited Beyond Rationalism (2003), and has coedited with Angela Hobart Aesthetics in Performance (2005) and, with Bjørn Bertelsen, Crisis of the State (2009).

These papers offer us many challenges as we come to consider the sacred and the secular, church and state, and associated moral concerns from new perspectives.”  ·  Anthropological Notebooks“Pity the reviewer of a collection of eleven articles as stimulating but thematically diverse as this.”  ·  JRAI“… a wide-ranging collection of studies taking the pulse of modern religion and society. As has become apparent, it is no longer possible to hold religion and politics apart analytically, nor to rest comfortably in the assumptions of secularization…As the state changes (or wanes), other social forces will blend with it or replace it, and the authors here have done a valuable service in demonstrating just a few ways in which this is happening and will continue to happen.”  ·  Anthropology Review Database

• Introduction: Religiosities toward a Future—in Pursuit of the New MillenniumBruce Kapferer, Annelin Eriksen, and Kari TelleChapter 1. The Politics of Conviction: Faith on the Neo-liberal FrontierJean ComaroffChapter 2. Strategic Secularism: Bible Advocacy in EnglandMatthew EngelkeChapter 3. Pentecostal Networks and the Spirit of Globalization: On the Social Productivity of Ritual FormsJoel Robbins Chapter 4.  Healing the Nation: In Search of Unity through the Holy Spirit in VanuatuAnnelin EriksenChapter 5. What Happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the WestTon Otto Chapter 6. Gold for a Golden Age: Sacred Money and Islamic Freedom in a Global Sufi OrderNils BubandtChapter 7. Sri Lankan Civil Society and Its FanaticsRohan Bastin Chapter 8. Dharma Power: Searching for Security in Post–New Order IndonesiaKari TelleChapter 9. An Ancient Case of Interrogation and TortureBruce Lincoln Chapter 10. The Terrorist as HumanitarianFaisal DevjiChapter 11. Reflections on the Rise of Legal Theology: Law and Religion in the Twenty-First CenturyJohn L. Comaroff