Superstition

About: Superstition is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 778 publications have been published within this topic receiving 10255 citations.

Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition

Abstract: Introduction 1. Believing in Magic 2. The Superstitious Person 3. Superstition and Coincidence 4. Superstitious Thinking 5. Growing Up Superstitious 6. Is Superstition Abnormal, Irrational, or Neither? 7. A Magical View of the World

The cult of the saints : its rise and function in Latin Christianity

Abstract: Following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the cult of the saints was the dominant form of religion in Christian Europe. In this elegantly written work, Peter Brown explores the role of tombs, shrines, relics, and pilgrimages connected with the sacred bodies of the saints. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the merciful intercession of the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and to find new ways to accept their fellows. Challenging the common treatment of the cult as an outbreak of superstition among the lower classes, Brown demonstrates how this form of religiousity engaged the finest minds of the Church and elicited from members of the educated upper classes some of their most splendid achievements in poetry, literature, and the patronage of the arts. Brown has an international reputation for his fine style, a style he here turns on to illuminate the cult of the saints. Christianity was born without such a cult; it took rise and that rise needs chronicling. Brown has a gift for the memorable phrase and sees what the passersby have often overlooked. An eye-opener on an important but neglected phase of Western development.--The Christian Century Brilliantly original and highly sophisticated . . . . [The Cult of the Saints] is based on great learning in several disciplines, and the story is told with an exceptional appreciation for the broad social context. Students of many aspects of medieval culture, especially popular religion, will want to consult this work.--Bennett D. Hill, Library Journal

The Invention of Religion in Japan

Abstract: Through most of its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call "religion." There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country has to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson's account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of "superstitions" - and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

Magical interpretations, material realities: modernity, witchcraft and the occult in post-colonial Africa

Abstract: Magical interpretations and material realities - an introduction, Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Saunders. Delusions of development and the enrichment of witchcraft discourses in Cameroon, Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Cannibal transformations - colonialism and commodification in the Sierra Leone hinterland, Rosalind Shaw. Vulture men, campus cultists and teenaged witches - modern magics in Nigerian popular media, Misty L. Bastian. Witchcraft and scepticism by proxy - Pentecostalism and laughter in urban Malawi, Rijk van Dijk. Black market, free market - anti-witchcraft shrines and fetishes among the Akan, Jane Parish. Betrayal or affirmation? Transformations in witchcraft technologies of power, danger and agency among the Tuareg of Niger, Susan Rasmussen. Save our skins - structural adjustment, morality and the occult in Tanzania, Todd Saunders. Witchcraft in the new South Africa - from colonial superstition to postcolonial reality?, Isak Niehaus. On living in a world with witches - everyday epistemology and spiritual insecurity in a modern African city (Soweto), Adam Ashforth. Witchcraft, development and paranoia in Cameroon - interactions between popular, academic and state discourse.