Routledge Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals and Festivals (Religion and Society) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415941806 ISBN 13: 9780415941808

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

Many rituals and festivals take place in public, meaning that such expressions of faith are societal as well as individual forms of human behaviour. The similarity in the general patterns of rituals and festivals across cultures and religions is striking. For example, most cultures and religions mark major life-course transitions such as birth, marriage, and death with public ritual expressions, and numerous festivals are tied to food-producing activities such as planting and harvesting. Where religions and societies vary is in the meanings associated with ritual behaviour and the specific forms those behaviours take.

The Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals and Festivals explores this complex topic through articles covering the following general categories of information:

• general concepts and ideas such as communitas, inversion, purity and pollution, and pilgrimages
• major forms of ritual and festival such as rites of passage, devotional rites, sacrifice, calendrical rites, carnival, and fasting
• religious rites and festivals of major religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism and Judaism
• rites and festivals in cultural regions such as China, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific islands
• life-cycle rites, including those associated with birth, coming of age, marriage and death
• specific rites and festivals, such as Divali, Easter, Ramadan, snake handling and Yom Kippur.

The Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals, and Festivals contains 130 entries contributed and signed by scholars from international universities and institutes, with expertise in such fields as Asian and Pacific studies, archaeology, communication studies, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, international studies, philosophy, psychological anthropology, religious studies, social anthropology, sociology and theology.

An unprecedented resource, this new encyclopedia provides in-depth coverage of a vast array of worldwide practices with entries that draw on the latest research available, offering fresh insights while maintaining a connection with established scholarship. The cross-cultural coverage will help foster interfaith understanding as well as present and explain unfamiliar behaviours and rituals.

About this title

About the Author

Frank A. Salamone is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Iona College, New Rochelle, New York. He has conducted fieldwork in a number of settings, including Nigeria, the United States, Venezuela, and East Africa. Salamone has authored over 100 articles and authored, edited, or co-edited more than 15 books.

Reviews

Grade 10 Up–As stated in the introduction, this is not intended to be a comprehensive description of all religions or all social rituals. Articles describing types of practices common to many cultures treat such topics as death rituals, hunting rituals, puberty rites, and sport and ritual. Specific occasions that involve ceremonies include Divali, Easter, Ramadan, and Yom Kippur. Some practices like cannibalism, haircutting rituals, and snake handling are described in separate articles. While Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam receive the most attention, religious traditions such as Buddhism, Shinto, Jainism, and Wicca also find places here. Iban, Aztec, and other less generally known cultures are revealed through some of their ceremonies. Native North American belief systems and some of their cultural activities also receive attention. Origins and histories often form part of the articles. Each major entry concludes with a significant list of titles for further reading. Sidebars focus primarily on accounts of personal observation of specific ceremonies or quotes from important religious texts. Occasional black-and-white photographs depict significant sites or people practicing their beliefs. Most captions offer clear descriptions of the scenes and include the year of their occurrence. An alphabetical list of entries precedes the text while the index allows access to specific topics within the longer entries. This work is not a detailed, alphabetical list of specific rites, ceremonies, or beliefs but, rather, a more sociologically relevant discussion of such practices.–Ann G. Brouse, Steele Memorial Library, Elmira, NY
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Whether it's the Ghost Festival in China or a Good Friday procession among Christians, "ritual is often the most visible manifestation of religion and the one that first comes to the attention of outside observers." Rituals, however, are not only to be found among the world's religious traditions. Societies have secular rituals, although many of them have their roots in religion and belief. Employing an anthropological approach and drawing upon scholars from a variety of disciplines, this encyclopedia consists of 130 alphabetically arranged entries on rituals, both religious and secular. Each is signed by its author and concludes with a nice supplemental bibliography. There are illustrations throughout.

Entries treat concepts applicable to rituals of many religious traditions, such as Asceticism, Divination, Ecstatic worship, or Prayer, citing specific examples of how they are employed. Some entries are surveys for types of rituals (e.g., Agricultural rituals, Food and rituals, Naming rituals), but, again, tradition-specific information is included. The major rituals of the world's largest religious traditions are described in entries for Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shinto, and Taoism. Christianity is treated in multiple entries, such as Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, and protestantism. Finally, there are entries for specific rituals (e.g., Day of the Dead, Passover, and ramadan).

Noteworthy is the inclusion of rituals and religious traditions less well known than the aforementioned. For example, there are two survey articles on Africa (i.e., Africa, Central and Africa, West) along with entries on the Azande, Yoruba, and zulu. A description of the Naven ceremony of the Iatmul tribe of New Guinea, along with entries for Australian Aboriginal, melanesia, and micronesia, and treatment of Vodun in Haiti and a survey of Afro-Caribbean rituals, all demonstrate the volume's inclusiveness.

The encyclopedia contains an interesting combination of religious and anthropological information. But an in-depth anthropological survey article on a topic such as marriage rituals would be difficult enough to keep to a manageable length without the addition of tradition-specific information. Readers should be aware that the work will serve, at best, as a cursory introduction to topics. Nevertheless, academic and large public libraries may want to consider acquiring it. Christopher McConnell
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415941806
• ISBN 13: 9780415941808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 504
• Editor: Salamone Frank A.