Historically, canonic studies of ritual have discussed and explained ritual organization, action, and transformation primarily as representations of broader cultural and social orders. In the present, as in the past, less attention is given to the power of ritual to organize and effect transformation through its own dynamics. Breaking with convention, the contributors to this volume were asked to discuss ritual first and foremost in relation to itself, in its own right, and only then in relation to its socio-cultural context. The results attest to the variable capacities of rites to effect transformation through themselves, and to the study of phenomena in their own right as a fertile approach to comprehending ritual dynamics.

Don Handelman’s groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman’s initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on “bureaucratic logic”; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century.

Ritual has emerged as a major focus of academic interest. As a concept, the idea of ritual integrates the study of behavior both within and beyond the domain of religion. Ritual can be both secular and religious in character. There is renewed interest in questions such as: Why do rituals exist at all? What has been, and continues to be, their place in society? How do they change over time? Such questions exist against a backdrop of assumptions about development, modernization, and disenchantment of the world. Written with the specific needs of students of religious studies in mind, Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion surveys the field of ritual studies, looking at it both historically within anthropology and in terms of its contemporary relevance to world events.

Drawing on insights from Indian intellectual tradition, this book examines the conception of dharma by Jaimini in his Mīmāṃsāsūtras, assessing its contemporary relevance, particularly within ritual scholarship. Presenting a hermeneutical re-reading of the text, it investigates the theme of the relationship between subjectivity and tradition in the discussion of dharma, bringing it into conversation with contemporary discourses on ritual. The primary argument offered is that Jaimini’s conception of dharma can be read as a philosophy of Vedic practice, centred on the enjoinment of the subject, whose stages of transformation possess the structure of a hermeneutic tradition. Offering both substantive and methodological insights into the contentions within the contemporary study of ritual, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Hindu studies, ritual studies, Asian religion, and South Asian studies.

Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of rituals performed at female saint shrines in the Middle East. In the midst of turbulent political contention over land and borders, Nurit Stadler shows, religious minorities lay claim to space through rituals enacted at sacred spaces in the Holy Land. Using ethnographic analysis, Stadler explores the rise of these rituals, their focus on the body, female materiality, and their place in the Israeli-Palestinian landscape. Stadler examines the varied features of the practice and implications of the rituals, looking at themes of femininity and material experience. She considers the role of the body in rituals that represent the act of birth or the circle of life and that aim to foster an intimate connection between the female saint and her worshippers. Stadler underscores the political, cultural, and spatial elements of this practice, bringing attention to how religious minorities (Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, among others) have utilized these rituals to assert their right to the land. Voices of the Ritual offers a valuable assessment of religious ritual practice that encrypts female themes into a landscape that has historically been defined by war and conflict.

Male-male rivalry and female passive choice, the two principal tenets of Darwinian sexual selection, raise important ethical questions in The Descent of Man--and in the decades since--about the subjugation of women. If female choice is a key component of evolutionary success, what impact does the constraint of women's choices have on society? The elaborate courtship plots of 19th century Spanish novels, with their fixation on suitors and selectors, rivalry, and seduction, were attempts to grapple with the question of female agency in a patriarchal society. By reading Darwin through the lens of the Spanish realist novel and vice versa, Travis Landry brings new insights to our understanding of both: while Darwin's theories have often been seen as biologically deterministic, Landry asserts that Darwin's theory of sexual selection was characterized by an open ended dynamic whose oxymoronic emphasis on "passive" female choice carries the potential for revolutionary change in the status of women.

Performance and Ethnography: Dance, Drama, Music revisits the territory of the performance orientation, touching on anthropology, dance, folklore, music and theatre to look for present trends in both the ethnography of performance and performance ethnography. One of the main concerns of this volume is with an embodied, affective and sensory ethnography that privileges encounters between ethnographer, participants and practices as key to understanding and knowledge. Another is the extent to which individuals are shaped by their engagement with ethnographic practice in the midst of migration, diffusion, revival, appropriation and commodification of performance. A third is the interface of academic disciplines with the idea of performance, and the way in which academics and practitioners are drawn to ethnography to better understand, negotiate, perform and profess their diverse fields. Individual chapters include a refreshed interface for performance studies and anthropology through new approaches to ritual; a consideration of performance studies through an ethnography of PSi; the emplaced body as a tool for ethnographic research; somatic practice in dance as a mode of ethnography; artisanal musical instrument making as performance; the commodification of traditional performance; and an introductory overview that reflects shifting ethnographic perspectives on traditional performances.