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The Social Life of Spirits
Contributor(s): Blanes, Ruy (Editor), Santo, Diana Espírito (Editor)
ISBN: 022608177X     ISBN-13: 9780226081779
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $33.66  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: November 2013
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Comparative Religion
- Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social
- Social Science | Sociology Of Religion
Dewey: 202.109
LCCN: 2013015003
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 8.8" (1.10 lbs) 312 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else--symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities--with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions--providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents.

The contributors tour the spiritual globe--the globe of nonthings--in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the "people of the streets" in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.

Contributor Bio(s): Santo, Diana Esp: - Diana Espírito Santo is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Center in Anthropology at the New University of Lisbon.Blanes, Ruy: - Ruy Blanes is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bergen and associate researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences in Lisbon. He is coeditor of Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections.