Religious and Social Ritual

<p><b>Examines particular rituals (social and religious) as a special kind of cultural performance or interaction in a wide variety of traditions and locations.</b></p><p>In Religious and Social Ritual ten scholars examine particular rituals as a special kind of cultural performance or interaction in a wide variety of traditions and locations. In so doing they surface timely theoretical and methodological issues and engage fundamental questions such as how and why these performances and interactions do what they do. Each investigation is conducted with careful attention to cultural cross-cultural social and contextual factors that make it possible to enter into the ritual participant's world and worldview. Moreover these essays take seriously the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary emphasis of ritual studies and incorporate the historical methodological and autobiographical situations of their authors in responsible and graceful ways. For scholars teachers and students of ritual in a variety of settings Religious and Social Ritual provides both significant scholarship and an invitation to further conversation about one of the most important topics in the contemporary study of religion and culture.</p>