1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456925203321

Titolo

The problem of ritual efficacy / / edited by William S. Sax, Johannes Quack & Jan Weinhold

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, New York : , : Oxford University Press, , 2010

©2010

ISBN

1-282-40287-0

9786612402876

0-19-974236-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (204 p.)

Collana

Oxford Ritual Studies

Disciplina

291.38

Soggetti

Ritual

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Contributors; 1. Ritual and the Problem of Efficacy; 2. Ritual Healing and the Investiture of the Babylonian King; 3. Jesus and his Followers as Healers: Symbolic Healing in Early Christianity; 4. Healing Rituals in the Mediaeval West; 5. Excommunication in the Middle Ages: A Meta-Ritual and the Many Faces of Its Efficacy; 6. The Work of Zâr: Women and Spirit Possession in Northern Sudan; 7. Ritual Humility in Modern Laboratories: Or, Why Ecuadorian IVF Practitioners Pray; 8. Ritual, Medicine, and the Placebo Response; 9. Bell, Bourdieu, and Wittgenstein on Ritual Sense; Index

Sommario/riassunto

How do rituals work? Although this is one of the first questions that people everywhere ask about rituals, little has been written explicitly on the topic. In The Problem of Ritual Efficacy, nine scholars address this issue, ranging across the fields of history, anthropology, medicine, and biblical studies. For ""modern"" people, the very notion of ritual efficacy is suspicious because rituals are widely thought of as merely symbolic or expressive, so that - by definition - they cannot be efficacious. Nevertheless people in many cultures assume that rituals do indeed ""work,"" and when we take