History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Golden Plates

Ann Taves reviews the accounts of the golden plates that Joseph Smith discovered and interpreted. In spite of conflicting historical evidence regarding the actuality of the plates, Taves suggests a nuanced approach of skilled perception as a means to resolve the challenges of accepting their reality wholesale or denying their reality and inferring that Smith intentionally misled people. This excerpt reproduces the first two sections of the longer article cited belo...

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The Stereoscope and the Stereograph

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. – the noted poet, essayist, and physician – offers a set of reflections on the emerging technology of photography in this 1859 essay. Apparent here is the intricate reliance on complex technology for rendering the 3-dimensional world into a 2-dimensional fixed representation of that world. With the novel ability to produce such accurate images easily, Holmes sees a transition occur: even though the photograph is a quintessential example of a material object, Holmes sees form “divorced from matter” in the photographic...

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The Stuff of Everyday Religion

Alexandra Antohin offers a set of reflections on her training in visual and material culture at University College London and how that facilitated insights regarding her ethnographic study of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. ...

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Magic and the Kula

Few studies of material culture have been as thorough, have had as much influence, or have been discussed in as many anthropology classrooms as Bronislaw Malinowski’s classic treatment, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. In the book, Malinowski chronicles a complicated network of gift exchange known as the “kula ring” among inhabitants of numerous Trobriand Islands. By detailing the people involved, the journeys, the items of exchange, ritual practices, et cetera, Malinowski helped to establish the significance of reciprocity in human culture...

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The Materiality of Metaphor: On Words and Things

In this extract from his recent book, A History of Religion in 5½ Objects, S. Brent Plate discusses the grounding of language and meaning, especially metaphor, in bodily experience. ...

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The 'Magritte effect' in the study of religion, Part I and II

In this theoretically rich piece, Jean-Pierre Warnier discusses the entanglement of ‘things’ and their representations.  In most religious traditions, this topic plays an important historical role in determining how devotees respond to imagery and materiality, especially as these media convey or embody their most important religious concepts.  Cycles of iconophilia and iconoclasm relating to this issue form a central thread in the Abrahamic faiths, for instance.  Warnier insists that scholars of religion need to be more...

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The Economies of Temple Chanting and Conversion in China

Eric Reinders discusses the material culture of chant, the complexities of conversion, and the economics of religious "trades" in this intriguing piece.  Drawing on excerpts from Christian missionary publications and other writings, Reinders highlights the subtle cultural dynamics at play when two religious traditions encounter one another, especially under conditions when one aims to supplant the other. Originally published...

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