"Agents of a Fuller Revelation" Photographs and Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

Rachel McBride Lindsey discusses the significance of photography in the study of religion and, particularly, how photographs were "made sense of" as an emerging technology in the nineteenth century. In reviewing the meaning of photos in American religion, she suggests that these images are not mere "things" but enable an entirely new way of engaging religious practices and doctrines. ...

Read More

Objects and Substances of Funeral Mediation in Mongolia: Coffin, Miniature Yurt and Food Offerings

Sandrine Ruhlmann describes contemporary Mongolian funerary practices in this week's post. Mongolian funerary practices, based in shamanism but mixed with other traditions as well, provide material intermediaries for the care of the disembodied soul. ...

Read More

Afflictions in the Field: Evil Eye and the Anthropologist

Rose Wellman and Dionisios Kavadias offer a comparative ethnographic study of the evil eye in Iran and Greece. With rich ethnographic detail, the authors convey the ongoing importance of the evil eye as well as the diagnostic approaches and remedies used for removal of this curse. Of particular interest is the way that this complex of notions exists aside from, or sometimes within, orthodox religious practices. Either way, the evil eye conveys a set of concerns related to admiration, envy, and inequality that has played an important role historically,...

Read More

The Power of Communitas

Edith Turner offers an excerpt from the preface of her book, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. In the excerpt, she recounts an incident while doing fieldwork among whale hunters in Alaska when a moment of “collective effervescence” was generated by the community in an effort to influence environmental conditions to better support their whale hunting activities. ...

Read More