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  • Cited by 58
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      December 2009
      October 1991
      ISBN:
      9780511621581
      9780521411547
      9780521423120
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621581
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.334kg, 132 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.313kg, 132 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Religion, Anthropology, Religion: General Interest, Anthropological Theory
      Series:
      Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures
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    • Selected: Digital
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    Subjects:
    Religion, Anthropology, Religion: General Interest, Anthropological Theory
    Series:
    Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures
    Information

    Book description

    Maurice Bloch has for many years been developing an original and influential theory of ritual. In this book he synthesises a radical theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the transience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants themselves, so allowing them to participate in the immortality of a transcendent entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing of animals. The theme is developed with reference to rituals of many types, from a variety of ethnographic sources, and Bloch shows that even exogamous marriage rituals can be reinterpreted in the light of this thesis. He concludes by considering the indirect relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.

    Reviews

    "Bloch presents a strong theory of human behaviour based on the discovery of a 'minimum irreducible structure which is common to many ritual and other religious phenomena.'...I appreciate his robust theoretical reason...." Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion

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