Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms - Couverture souple

McCauley, Robert N.

 
9780521016292: Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

Synopsis

Bringing Ritual to Mind explores the cognitive and psychological foundations of religious ritual systems. Participants must recall their rituals well enough to ensure a sense of continuity across performances, and those rituals must motivate them to transmit and re-perform them. Most religious rituals the world over exploit either high performance frequency or extraordinary emotional stimulation (but not both) to enhance their recollection (the availability of literacy has little impact on this). But why do some rituals exploit the first of these variables while others exploit the second? McCauley and Lawson advance the ritual form hypothesis, arguing that participants' cognitive representations of ritual form explain why. Reviewing evidence from cognitive, developmental and social psychology and from cultural anthropology and the history of religions, they utilize dynamical systems tools to explain the recurrent evolutionary trajectories religions exhibit.

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À propos des auteurs

ROBERT N. MCCAULEY is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Emory College Center for Teaching and Curriculum, Emory University.

E. THOMAS LAWSON is Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University and executive editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture.

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780521815598: Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0521815592 ISBN 13 :  9780521815598
Editeur : Cambridge University Press, 2002
Couverture rigide