Play and Power in Religion : : Collected Essays / / André Droogers.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Droogers, André,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2011]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Religion and Reason : Theory in the Study of Religion , 50
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (455 p.)

At a religion’s margins a counterpoint can be found for its power center. In a creative manner, relatively free from clerical control, religious virtuosos take new initiatives there. Inspired by their experience with the sacred, they explore their liberty to play with meanings, images and practices. Yet, the eventual success of such an innovation calls for organization and thus for the exercise of power. Accordingly new movements slow down into institutions – till a new virtuoso brings the cycle to a fresh start. Over the last thirty years André Droogers has extensively published on the relation between religion, power and play. In this collection of essays the most relevant articles are reprinted. For this volume Droogers wrote an autobiographical introduction, showing how the contingencies of a career may nevertheless lead to a more or less consistent approach. In Part I of the book articles are included that represent the basic ideas of Droogers’ approach, with an emphasis on margin, inversion, ritual and meaning-making. In part II some of his articles on syncretism and Pentecostalism illustrate his views. Part III contains articles that apply the play-and-power perspective to methodological issues in the study of religion.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: From Contingency to Continuity -- Part I. Marginality, Play and Power -- Margin -- Chapter 1. Symbols of Marginality in the Biographies of Religious and Secular Innovators: A comparative study of the lives of Jesus, Waldes, Booth, Kimbangu, Buddha, Mohammed and Marx -- Chapter 2. The Playful Seriousness of Brazilian Religiosity: Mario Quintana on Religion -- Inversion -- Chapter 3. Paradise lost: The domestication of religious imagination -- Chapter 4. The Popular Use of Popular Religion: Power and Meaning in Three Brazilian Popular Religions -- Play and Ritual -- Chapter 5. Enjoying an Emerging Alternative World: Ritual in Its Own Ludic Right -- Chapter 6. Feasts: A View from Cultural Anthropology -- Power and Meaning-making -- Chapter 7. The Power Dimensions of the Christian Community: An Anthropological Model -- Chapter 8. Identity, Religious Pluralism and Ritual in Brazil: Umbanda and Pentecostalism -- Part II. Two Fields -- Syncretism -- Chapter 9. Syncretism: The Problem of Definition, the Definition of the Problem -- Chapter 10. Syncretists, Fundamentalists and Scholars Compared -- Chapter 11. Joana’s Story: Syncretism and Gender at the Actor’s Level -- Pentecostalism -- Chapter 12. Paradoxical Views on a Paradoxical Religion: Models for the Explanation of Pentecostal Expansion in Brazil and Chile -- Chapter 13. Globalization and Pentecostal Success -- Part III. Methodological Applications -- Methodological Ludism -- Chapter 14. Methodological Ludism: Beyond Religionism and Reductionism -- Chapter 15. The Third Bank of the River: Play, Methodological Ludism and the Definition of Religion -- Religion and Science -- Chapter 16. Knowledge of Religion and Religious Knowledge: The Cultural Anthropology of Religion and a Religious Anthropology -- Chapter 17. As Close as a Scholar Can Get: Exploring a One-Field Approach to the Study of Religion -- Bibliography André Droogers -- Original publication of chapters -- Index