Michael Lambek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is author of The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar (2002), Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte (1993), and Human Spirits (1981), and co-editor of Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (1996) and Illness and Irony: On the Ambiguity of Suffering in Culture (2004) (both with Paul Antze).

"Michael Lambek has succeeded in putting together an impressive collection of key texts and essays." (Culture and Religion, July 2009)"The most comprehensive anthology on its subject, this is a splendid tool for teaching and a matchless scholarly resource." (International Review of Biblical Studies, 2008)Praise for the first edition:"[A] reader that ambitiously attempts to represent the full breadth, depth, and complexity of anthropology's investigations into religion.... The masterly general introduction situates this anthology within the long and often difficult anthropological engagement with this most mystified and powerful realm of social action.... [A]n excellent text." (International Social Science Review)"A major guide to both the history of the anthropology of religion and new trends in research.... Lambek has compiled an excellent anthology." (Journal of Empirical Theology)

• Preface to Second Edition xiGeneral Introduction 1Part I The Context of Understanding and Debate 19Opening Frameworks 21Introduction 211 Religion in Primitive Culture 23Edward Burnett Tylor2 The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 34Emile Durkheim3 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 48Max Weber4 Religion as a Cultural System 57Clifford GeertzSkeptical Rejoinders 77Introduction 775 Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough 79Ludwig Wittgenstein6 Religion, Totemism and Symbolism 82W. E. H. Stanner7 Remarks on the Verb “To Believe” 90Jean Pouillon8 Christians as Believers 97Malcolm Ruel9 The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category 110Talal AsadPart II Poiesis: The Composition of Religious Worlds 127Signs and Symbols 129Introduction 12910 The Logic of Signs and Symbols 131Susanne K. Langer11 The Problem of Symbols 139E. E. Evans-Pritchard12 On Key Symbols 151Sherry B. Ortner13 The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol 160Eric R. WolfStructure, Function, and Interpretation 167Introduction 16714 Myth in Primitive Psychology 168Bronislaw Malinowski15 Folk Dialectics of Nature and Culture 176Marshall Sahlins16 Land Animals, Pure and Impure 183Mary Douglas17 A Jivaro Version of Totem and Taboo 196Claude Lévi-Strauss18 Text-Building, Epistemology, and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theatre 206Alton L. BeckerMoral Inversions and Spaces of Disorder 225Introduction 22519 The Winnebago Trickster Figure 226Paul Radin20 Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social and Semantic Implications of the Structure of Belief 238Raymond C. Kelly21 The Politics and Poetics of Transgression 253Peter Stallybrass and Allon WhiteConceptualizing the Cosmos 265Introduction 26522 Closure and Multiplication: An Essay on Polynesian Cosmology and Ritual 267Alfred Gell23 Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism 280Eduardo Viveiros de CastroPart III Praxis: Religious Action 299The Movement in Ritual: Emergence 301Introduction 30124 The Control of Experience: Symbolic Action 302Godfrey Lienhardt25 Form and Meaning of Magical Acts 311Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah26 Liminality and Communitas 326Victor TurnerGender, Subjectivity, and the Body 341Introduction 34127 “Jewish Comes Up in You from the Roots” 342Barbara Myerhoff28 Fate in Relation to the Social Structure 350Meyer Fortes29 Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience 356Gananath Obeyesekere30 Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: The Cultural Therapeutics of Possession and Trance 368Janice Boddy31 The Poetics of Time in Mayan Divination 386Dennis TedlockWhat Ritual Does: The Foundations of Order 397Introduction 39732 The Disconnection between Power and Rank as a Process 398Maurice Bloch33 Enactments of Meaning 410Roy A. RappaportPart IV Historical Dynamics: Power, Modernity, and Change 429Capitalism, Colonialism, Christianity, and Conflict 431Introduction 43134 New Heaven, New Earth 432Kenelm Burridge35 The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labor and the Baptism of Money 447Michael Taussig36 The Colonization of Consciousness 464John and Jean Comaroff37 Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion 479Susan F. Harding38 On Being Shege in Kinshasa: Children, the Occult and the Street 495Filip De BoeckReligious Ethics and Politics in the State, Public Sphere, and Transnational Scene 507Introduction 50739 Civil Religion in America 509Robert N. Bellah40 Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery 519Caroline Humphrey41 “Using the Past to Negate the Present”: Ritual Ethics and State Rationality in Ancient China 533Mayfair Mei-hui Yang42 Passional Preaching, Aural Sensibility, and the Islamic Revival in Cairo 544Charles Hirschkind43 Moral Landscapes: Ethical Discourses among Orthodox and Diaspora Jains 560Anne Vallely44 Candomblé in Pink, Green and Black: Re-scripting the Afro-Brazilian Religious Heritage in the Public Sphere of Salvador, Bahia 573Mattijs van de Port45 Martyr vs. Martyr: The Sacred Language of Violence 590Galit Hasan-RokemAfterword 59746 Evidence and Presence, Spectral and Other 598Stephan PalmiéPart V Research Tools 611A Guide to the Literature 613Bibliography 630Index 673