Anthropology of Religion

Since the early 1990s Pentecostal-Charismatic Church membership has spectacularly grown in Africa (Anderson 2001, Corten and Marshall-Fratani 2001, Gifford 1998, Meyer 2004a). Scholars of these churches (which are sometimes also called Pentecostalist or Born-Again Churches) invariably mention how audiovisual media are used both in church gatherings and in the proselytising activities of their members. Not only street evangelism, but also print and audiovisual media are perceived as important tools for attracting potential converts. This is especially the case in dense urban societies like Lagos, Accra and Kinshasa. Yet, religious mass media are not all confined to local urban settings. Through a range of different media Pentecostalist leaders also reach out to people in other cities than their own, in villages and in the Diaspora, on the African continent and beyond. (...)
Several explanations have been proposed to account for the appropriation of electronic media such as film, video, radio, and the internet by African Pentecostalist leaders. The global and cosmopolitan scope of these new Christian movements (Hackett 1998, Meyer 2004b), the desire for revelation in contrast to the assumed secrecy of so-called traditional African religious systems (Meyer 2006), and the orality of African societies push Pentecostalist leaders to use modern technological equipment in their predications. These explanations are sought in the peculiarity of African Pentecostalism, though they obliterate the use of mass media in the evangelising work of missionaries during the colonial period. Revisiting the colonial past and taking into account the interfaces of religion and visual media before the heydays of Pentecostalism will, as I hope, contribute to our understandings of how Pentecostalist leaders have been drawn to capture mass media. I attempt to illustrate this with material about Kinshasa’s media history.

Media celebrity, or public status achieved through mass media, is a particular kind of social distinction that appears in most contemporary societies. It is difficult to predict what qualities define celebrity, since the associations conjured up by their names, and the meanings attributed to them, differ from one social context to another. Empirical research is needed in order to understand how celebrities’ reputations are construed. This article focuses on the reputation of television actors in post-Mobutu Kinshasa, a city where charismatic Christianity predominates within the public imaginary. The public identity of Kinshasa’s television stars, audience reactions to artists’ performances, and collective evaluations of these mass-mediated public figures are informed by culturally-rooted approaches toward imitation and the mediation of charisma. This article argues that in order to understand the social and cultural dynamics of media celebrity, we need to examine how, in a given society, connections between mimetic representations and moral authority are perceived.

The article provides insight into the current violent practices of urban
youngsters in Kinshasa. At nightfall youth gangs transform the streets of
Kinshasa’s townships into arenas of the fight. Frequent regular clashes between
these gangs create young violent leaders, who not only sow terror but also
provide security for the inhabitants (young and old) of their territories. Although
many of these boys and young men are trained in foreign fighting styles such as
judo, jujitsu and karate, in the public clashes between the fighting groups, these
boys and young men perform mukumbusu. This fighting style, inspired and
based on the gorilla, was invented during the last decade of colonialism, and
is an original mixture of a traditional Mongo wrestling practice, libanda, and
Asian and Western fighting practices. In the article, I scrutinize the practices
of these young fighters through the diverse images of masculinity (kimobali)
upon which they draw, such as the fighter and the soldier; and the models of
masculinity that they contest, the sapeur and the staffeur.

This article discusses discourses on development in the social space of Kinshasa’s
post-Mobutu teleserials. The producers (dramatic artists and born-again Christian
leaders; some are both) contend that their work will transform society, counter the
social and political crisis and improve the nation in various ways. Pentecostalist
Christianity meets the genre of the melodrama in the way the teleserials focus on
the individual’s spiritual development. This article argues that the fictive representation
of witchcraft relates to a Pentecostalist diagnosis of the crisis and that the
narrative unfolding of the teleserials points towards the cultural key scenario
asserted in Pentecostal-charismatic churches.

This article studies the dance poetics and politics of Christians in contemporary
Kinshasa. For Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa), dance is one of the most important
technologies to get in touch with an invisible Other, the divine or the occult. In
sermons, and other modes of instruction, spiritual leaders inform their followers
about the morality of songs and dances. These discourses reflect pentecostal thought,
and trace back the purity of specific body movements to the choreography’s source
of inspiration. As the specific movements of so-called sacred dances borrow from
a wide array of cultural worlds, ranging from traditional ritual dances and popular
urban dance to biblical tales, the religious leaders state that not just the body
movements, but also the space where people dance and the accompanying songs,
define the Christian or pagan identity of the dancer. Therefore, both the reflections
upon dance movements and the dance events within these churches will be discussed
as moments in the construction of a Christian community.

NB/ the link leads you to an extract/promo article, not the full book

Academic approaches to studying magic and the occult: examining scholarship into witchcraft and paganism, ten years after Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon

A collection of essays edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green

Contributions by: Ronald Hutton, Amy Hale, Sabina Magliocco, Dave Green, Henrik Bogdan, Phillip Bernhardt-House, R.A. Priddle, Geoffrey Samuel, Caroline Tully & Dave Evans

Ten years on from the groundbreaking Triumph of the Moon: A history of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Professor Ronald Hutton, a selection of worldwide scholars, some ‘big names; some newer in the field, with nearly two centuries of hands-on pagan research experience between them, present a collection of researches inspired by, deriving from or just celebrating the immense impact of that seminal book. The topics cover many historical periods, many academic disciplines and it provides a wealth of information of use to academic scholar and interested freelance reader alike. Includes an extended essay by Ronald Hutton on the history of such scholarship, the state of it today and some of his thoughts for the future.

“Those engaging in Pagan Studies, provided that they speak and write in sufficiently public a manner, are inevitably going to mould the traditions that they are studying. Whether they are concerned with the history of forms of contemporary Paganism, or with their present nature, their work is going to have a lasting and continuing impact on the identities which Pagans assume and embody, and the manner in which they relate to society as a whole. I hope that this book will be read by people within the university system, and also by both Pagans and curious general readers: and my most important message is that all of them matter to the way in which Paganism is to develop in the next few decades, and probably for much longer: we are all weavers of the tapestry of time”
- Ronald Hutton




Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, ed. Dave  Evans and Dave Green (Hidden
Publishing, 2009),  ISBN  978-0-9555237-5-5. © 2009  a collection of essays
inspired by Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon (which is ten years old in
2009), including a fabulous piece by Ronald himself

Just to let you know the book is officially launched now- you can see it on
the publishers website here and there are also links to amazon etc- if you
prefer to use local retailers then please take the ISBN and order locally

http://hiddenpublishing.com/about/ten-years-triumph-moon/

please circulate the link to anywhere relevant

Scholars of ancient cultures are increasingly speaking of the "embeddedness" of ancient religion — arguing that the practices modern investigators group under the heading of "religion" did not compose a well-defined category in antiquity; instead, they claim that "religion was embedded" in other aspects of ancient culture. These writers use this notion of "embeddedness" to help us see that categories post-Enlightenment thinkers often regard as distinct (such as politics, economics, and religion) largely overlapped in antiquity. The trope of "embedded religion" can, however, also produce the false impression that religion is a descriptive concept rather than a redescriptive concept for ancient cultures (i.e., that there really is something "out there" in antiquity called "Roman religion" or "Mesopotamian religion," which scholars are simply describing rather than creating). By allowing this slippage between descriptive and redescriptive uses of "religion," the rhetoric of "embedded religion" exacerbates the very problem it is meant to solve.

La présence des Assemblées de Dieu (AD) en Afrique de l’Ouest dans la deuxième décennie du XXe siècle et leur développement progressif en pays mossi à partir de 1921 illustrent à merveille l’implantation extrêmement rapide du pentecôtisme en Afrique, presque contemporaine de la naissance même du mouvement.
Cet article revient sur la dynamique historique d'implantation des AD en Afrique de l'Ouest à partir d'une lecture critique de l'ouvrage de Pierre-Joseph Laurent, Les pentecôtistes du Burkina Faso (Karthala, 2003).

Les Églises pentecôtistes, si elles mobilisent de nombreux chercheurs, n’ont jamais véritablement été étudiées, du moins en Afrique subsaharienne, sous l’angle de la place qu’elles font ou qu’elles refusent de faire aux morts. Cet article aborde ce thème à partir du cas des milieux pentecôtistes, et plus largement évangéliques 5, du Sud-Bénin, où la conversion évangélique, revendiquée comme une nouvelle naissance, débouche en
effet sur un véritable basculement du statut des défunts.

This article explores memories of slavery in the Abomey region, in the heart of Fon country and of the pre-colonial kingdom of Dahomey, as they are revealed through the Egun cult, a Yoruba form of ancestor cult. In the local debates that have surrounded the emergence and then the development of this cult, which began principally among Yoruba with slave origins, there are noticeable continuities and slippages in the place made for slavery in Abomey society. One discerns simultaneously the emergence, in the lineages claiming Yoruba origins, of attempts at liberation from the stigma of slavery and at a claim of Yoruba authenticity. Involvement in the Egun cult, at first tolerated and later appropriated by the Fon, is at the centre of this process.

Il y a quelques années, on lisait dans un article « L'image de la femme en Grèce anciennefait actuellement l'objet d'une réévaluation »
Le titre du colloque lillois, en imposant d'emblée la déesse, semblait laisser peu de placeau masculin et aller dans le sens de la mode actuelle. Je ne souhaitais pourtant pas lancer denouvelle réflexion sur le « genre » et les textes réunis dans ce volume prouvent avec bonheur que le débat ne s'est pas orienté selon une opposition masculin/féminin. La distinctionartificielle entre femme et homme au niveau des humains, entre dieu et déesse au niveau desimmortels a été heureusement dépassée ici.Ainsi, cette introduction se cantonne par choix arbitraire, à une stricte « féminité » — mortelle et divine —, sans tenter de la confronter au monde masculin : s'il existe un clivage dansles pratiques votives, il ne s'organise pas selon un axe horizontal des genres mais plutôt selon lerôle des acteurs, quel que soit leur sexe. Il m'a donc paru intéressant de dégager les actions, lesinteractions et les réactions que des liens entre les femmes et les déesses peuvent engendrer dansles sanctuaires de divinités féminines, et qui constituent un système votif à part entière.

Using ethnographic data from the Marshall Islands, I argue that clashing identities may give rise to paradoxical belief systems. Marshall Islanders consider themselves both authentically Marshallese and devoutly Christian, causing a schism of belief and identity that is most starkly visible in historical narratives. When asked generally about the past, locals describe a utopia of traditional peace; but when asked specifically about life before Christian missionaries arrived, locals describe a dystopia of heathen barbarism. Interviewees are usually unable to reconcile these two accounts, showing that they are as vexingly paradoxical to locals as they are to outsiders. Researchers who are desirous of tidy analyses or wary of implying that their informants are irrational may downplay such dilemmas in the societies they study. Yet, far from demonstrating the futility of analysis, admitting the existence of contradiction in social life allows for a richer and more insightful view of culture, religion, belief, and identity.

A little-known lecture by Lévi-Strauss is the inspiration for this work. In this lecture, he intuitively suggested that in medieval Europe there once existed a set of myths, centred on the grail, which are structurally the opposite of the goatsucker myths that he famously analyzed in his mythologiques series. This work uses Lévi-Strauss’ inspirational lecture as a launchpad for an exploration of a group of related medieval Welsh myths, two of which have been briefly considered previously by Lévi-Strauss himself. The root of the methodological approach this book employs throughout is the Structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss; however, it has been modified to incorporate the suggestions of later neo-Structuralists.

This book provides a comprehensive selection of readings that relate to and explore the definition of religion. The texts come from a wide range of approaches, unified both by the questions they address and their broadly social scientific perspective. The disciplines covered include anthropology, phenomenology, psychology and sociology. The editors have also included some key texts relating to the feminist approach to and critique of religion.

This article is an attempt to show how the spaces in which African Christians in Amsterdam can move are produced by the mapping of various actors and the geographies that are created based on these maps. It first situates and describes a Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal church within global cultural flows, in relation to Nigeria and in relation to the Netherlands. In the view of many African Pentecostals, Europe, and by extension the Netherlands and Amsterdam, are territories which should be won back for Jesus. Subsequently, I show how 'producing the local' is crucially important to the goals of this church and how this relates to mapping and the production of religious geographies. The last part of this paper analyses how one particular location of this church, namely the South East of Amsterdam, shows up on a very different map that pinpoints this neighbourhood as a centre of Nigerian crime. In both cases, maps turn out to be a powerful means to mobilise money and people to produce long-lasting results.

French
Cet article tente de montrer comment les espaces dans lesquels les Africains chrétiens d'Amsterdam peuvent se mouvoir sont produits par la stratégie d'acteurs variés et que les géographies créées sont basées sur ces plans. Il situe et décrit d'abord l'église pentecôtiste nigériane dans les flux culturels globaux entre le Nigeria et les Pays-Bas. L'Europe, et par extension les Pays-Bas et Amsterdam, est un territoire que Jésus devrait récupérer. Par la suite, je montre que « produire une localité » est extrêmement important pour cette église et comment cela se rapporte à la stratégie et à la production de géographies religieuses. La dernière partie de cet article montre qu'une localisation particulière de cette église, à savoir le sud-est d'Amsterdam, révèle une carte très diff érente qui indique les alentours comme un centre du crime nigérian. Dans les deux cas, les cartes se révèlent un moyen puissant pour mobiliser des gens et des ressources afin de produire des résultats durables.

Many researchers have pointed out how world religions, in particular evangelical and Pentecostal Christianities, enable individual believers to more successfully navigate the spaces of modernity and translocalities (e.g. Van Dijk 1999). In contrast, we focused this issue on how African Christianities are themselves constituting spaces and become entangled in a particular locality of the African Diaspora, namely the Netherlands and in particular Amsterdam.
How do individual believers relate to the place where they are, the places they want to go and the place they come from through Christianity? How does African Christianity create its own religioscapes (McAlister 1998) or sacroscapes (Tweed 2006)?

Pele is known to virtually all who call the island of Hawai’i home, be they native Hawaiians or from foreign shores.  Hawaiians recognize a vast polytheistic hierarchy similar to the ancient Greeks. Born of Haumea, Pele is one of 14 children.  “The major gods represented the universal forces of nature....The lesser gods were usually associated with particular activities or places.  Of these, the most famous is Pele, the volcano goddess.”  When one speaks of Pele in contemporary Hawai’i, her name is oftentimes spoken with reverence and usually accompanied by the respectful title “Madame” or “Tūtū.”  Unlike many of the Greek deities, however, Tūtū Pele has a variety of names and can transform her appearance: “She is Pele-honua-mea, Pele of the sacred land.  She is Pele-‘ai-honua, Pele the eater of the land, when she devours the land with her flames....Her sacred name as a spirit is Ka-‘ula-o-ke-ahi, the redness of fire.”  As such, Tūtū Pele can and, according to contemporary eye witnesses,  does take many physical forms.  Hawaiian historian Herb Kane states that “in folklore she may appear as a tall, beautiful young woman, or as an old woman, wrinkled and bent with age, sometimes accompanied by a white dog.  When enraged she may appear as a woman all aflame or as pure flame.... To know Pele is to know the awe that the first Hawaiians must have felt when they came upon this huge island crowned with fiery volcanoes and trembling earthquakes.”

Astronomical alignment of megalithic monuments has proved to be a divisive issue in the history of archaeology. Above all, it remains an area in which a divide has been maintained between the public perception of the role of megaliths and archaeological or archaeoastronomical interpretation. This is most apparent at passage tomb sites, some of which are publicly reputed to have astronomical alignments, but are considered doubtful candidates from a technical and scientific point of view. The difficulty concerns our ability to gauge the level of constructional intentionality of astronomical orientations in the monument's design. Even sites that have empirical evidence of sunlight entering the chamber, may, from a technical perspective, be considered inconclusive, or possess insufficiently precise alignments to be deemed as planned features of their construction. In this paper, it is argued that because our understanding of monument orientations has been largely governed by these technical matters and questions of intentionality, insufficient consideration has been given to how astronomical alignments may have actually been engaged with from a ritualistic standpoint. By employing a ritualistic perspective over an exclusively technical one, new interpretations are offered both on the methods used by archaeologists, and on the ritual use of passage tombs.

The debates between members of the two schools of Folklorsitics in the US were not always negative, they allowed scholars to continuously question the reason of their studies, their limits and many methodolgical issues. After the creation of department of foklore studies in some US universities, folklore begins to be studied as a performative fenomenon in ewhich the analysis of context is primordial, emphasizing synchronic approaches to the communication of verbal traditions. This gave rise to the study of repertoire and to the use  traditional materials in contemporary societies. Contributions by other disciplines are also studied.

French blurb / quatrième de couverture:
Ce livre est le fruit d'un projet ambitieux visant à replacer l'émergence du portrait européen dans le contexte large d'une évolution où parmi d'autres facteurs les rites funéraires et les masques mortuaires jouent un rôle déterminant. L'« archéologie de la ressemblance » est ainsi la formule que l'auteur propose pour renouveler notre connaissance des débuts du portrait au XIIIe siècle, c'est-à-dire bien avant l'apogée du portrait individuel à la Renaissance. Par une transgression audacieuse des frontières du champ disciplinaire, l'enquête jette un éclairage inattendu sur l'environnement culturel qui favorisa l'apparition de ce genre visuel si caractéristique du continent européen. Le recours à la méthode étymologique enrichit tout particulièrement l'investigation en éclairant d'un jour nouveau les causes profondes de cette représentation figurée. Sur un sujet où tout déjà semblait avoir été dit, un arrière-plan aux multiples facettes se trouve ici mis au jour, qui d'une manière exemplaire révèle la complexité des facteurs intervenant dans l'histoire de la représentation figurée.

Hans Belting


German blurb / Klappentext:
Das Buch spannt einen weiten Bogen und ordnet die Herausbildung des europäischen Porträts in einen viel größeren Zusammenhang ein, in welchem auch Grabriten und die Totenmaske eine Rolle spielen. So ist etwa die „Archäologie der Ähnlichkeit“ ein Stichwort, um unsere Aufmerksamkeit für die Anfänge des Porträts im 13. Jahrhundert, lange vor der Blütezeit des Individualporträts in der Renaissance, neu zu wecken. Indem sie die Fachgrenzen kühn überschreitet, bietet die Untersuchung einen unerwarteten Einblick in das kulturelle Umfeld, in welchem es zur Entstehung dieser für Europa so charakteristischen Bildgattung kommen konnte. Das gilt auch für die Etymologie der Begriffe, die bei diesem Vorgang eine Rolle spielen und ein neues Licht auf die Motivation hinter diesem Bildnis werfen. In einem Thema, in dem alles schon gesagt schien, wird hier ein vielfach verzweigter Hintergrund freigelegt, der exemplarisch beweist, wie komplex die Gründe sind, die in der Bildgeschichte eine Rolle spielen.

Hans Belting

THE DAY OF BRAHMA presents Indian mythology as an organic whole which resembles the Tree of Life whose branches are the seven major fields of knowledge. The fundamental myths of India are fascinatingly retold as a saga of the human psyche’s light and dark sides.
This is a new idea, a new light upon the meaning of life, with which humans can work towards a larger understanding of themselves and their relation to the Universe. It gives us a healing vision of order underlying the apparent chaos and emits soothing vibrations of unity to tune us up into the spirit of time.

The book combines the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s understanding of comparative mythology. Stefania Dimitrova explores the evolution of the human “psychic genome” from the dawn of human consciousness to the modern era of Integration. The images of our inner realms personified by gods and goddesses of Indian pantheon emerge as universalities of human experience across time and cultures.

Suitable for both specialists and the general reading public.

This paper is based on two community reconstitution studies (Soure and Lousã) in early modern Portugal (17-18th centuries), that demonstrate the value of analyzing networks of relations, specially the "apadrinhamento", for understanding social structures and the individual strategies that they encompass.

A central aspect of the methodology used is the concept of "event of relative social positioning": an action, traceable in the sources, by which an actor makes explicit his perception of the social position that he has relatively to another actor. The relationship of "apadrinhamento", in which someone asks another person to be the godfather or godmother of a child, is the main source of social positioning events used in our research. It will be demonstrated that people never invite as godfather or godmother someone they consider socially inferior.

This simple principle produces surprising results when a global reconstitution is made at the community level and the relative social position of a large number of frequently interacting individuals is obtained. The resulting network has interesting formal characteristics suggesting self - organization e high connectivity, and constitutes and example of what modern network theory calls "small worlds".

The reconstituted web of relations allows us to put into context information from different sources, providing surprising  insights on social mechanism otherwise invisible. Specific case studies will be shown to illustrate the explanatory power of this approach, with a focus on socially determined patterns of moral behavior (Soure), and the impact of an early manufacture in a traditional community (Lousã).

Preliminary observations on spiritual and herbal healing traditions in Italy, based on fieldwork 2005-06 in Emilia-Romagna and Campania.  I argue that elements of the enchanted worldview continue to exist in particular social contexts, both in the south and in central and northern Italy.

Voy a presentar algunos de los resultados de investigación referentes a ciertas esferas que hacen
parte en la actualidad del ritual adivinatorio de los pueblos indígenas serranos de la Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta en el departamento del Magdalena. Voy a focalizar el trabajo
específicamente sobre los Kogi.  Presentaré algunos de los elementos constitutivos del espacio
simbólico y material de las prácticas adivinatorias; estas actividades mágico-religiosas inciden
de forma importante en la constitución de los elementos de manejo ambiental indígena del
territorio; todos los grupos indígenas de la sierra manejan prácticas adivinatorias que se
construyen, estructuran y funcionan sobre la base de la utilización de símbolos cosmo-biológicos
que desencadenan conductas culturales importantes que afectan de manera directa las estructuras
bióticas y abióticas del territorio de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

"Reviews of The Making of Psychotherapists:

“An insightful study of the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists from an anthropological perspective…[and] a valuable contribution to ethnographies of professional socialization.”
- Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

“A remarkable anthropological study via participant observation of the world of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Davies has produced a tour de force of critical yet compassionate engagement covering all aspects of our institutional life, including the institution of the clinic itself…. Anyone involved with training or other work of any kind in psychoanalytic organisations who cares about the degree of self-knowledge and social awareness they bring to their jobs should read this work.”
- Professor Andrew Samuels (Analytical Psychology), University of Essex


"According to James Davies's fascinating book, the medicalized mental health landscape in which English psychoanalytic institutes currently operate...further discourages analysts from critically assessing their institutional systems, theoretical assumptions, and professional practices....This thought-provoking book, which is suitable for teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate level, should make even the most unreflexive analyst question traditional institutional practices. If such questioning ultimately leads to better patient care, then we all stand to benefit"
- Medical Anthropology Quarterly

“James Davies has produced an unprecedented book that is stimulating, challenging and unequivocal in its claims.”
- The United Kingdom Association for Psychotherapy Integration.

“His careful and well-written examination of the training process and the insights that he brings from anthropology offer us a timely and valuable contribution to meeting the many challenges now threatening the vitality and even very existence of our profession…. This groundbreaking new book dissects the way that the profession is taught and asks whether its very vitality is at stake.”
- The Foundation for Psychotherapy

“A wise, thoughtful, careful examination of a world often shrouded in secrecy. Davies is both a trained psychotherapist and a trained anthropological observer. As a result, his observations have a quite different feel than most of the literature in either field. Not only psychotherapists, but their clients (not to mention anthropologists) can look to this book to understand how this profession learns to see and respond to human pain.”
- Professor Tanya Luhrmann, (Anthropology and Psychology),
Stanford University

“Combining narrative and analytical skills, Davies provides a gripping story of life among trainee and professional psychoanalytic therapists and their patients. The clinic is the participant anthropologist's village and the dramatis personae are the individuals he studies, whose ambitions and problems punctuate their learning and experiences of psychotherapy.... While laying bare the sometimes unpalatable essence of such training, Davies conveys warmth and empathy for his fellow participants. The value of the study goes beyond the particular instance of psychoanalysis and tells us how small groups meet all kinds of unanticipated consequences as they transmit the knowledge on which their profession depends”.
- Professor David Parkin (Social Anthropology),
University of Oxford.

“I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the field of psychoanalysis, in
the culture of institutions, and in how institutions foster change in their constituent members.”
- Contemporary Psychology (American Psychological Association).

“James Davies’ ‘The Making of Psychotherapists: An Anthropological Analysis’ is a thorough and thought provoking anthropological study of the culture of psychoanalytic training…. On his impressive juxtaposition of mastery of both anthropological and psychoanalytic theory, Davies points out that in a parallel development psychoanalysis developed the notion of countertransference and anthropology that of self-reflexivity….Davies’ book is well written, thoroughly and academically resourced and describes with acute detail the striving for the establishment of the doctrine of psychoanalysis…. It is essential reading for anyone involved in the therapy world who is interested in the understanding of the philosophical, historical, social and political implications of the construction of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century.”
- The European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling."

Popular culture can no longer be exclusively seen as a source of escapism. It can amuse, entertain, instruct, and relax people, but what if it provides inspiration for religion?

The Church of All Worlds, the Church of Satan and Jediism from the Star Wars series are but three examples of new religious groups that have been greatly inspired by popular culture to (re)create a religious message. These are hyper-real religions, that is a simulacrum of a religion partly created out of popular culture which provides inspiration for believers/consumers. These postmodern expressions of religion are likely to be consumed and individualised, and thus have more relevance to the self than to a community and/or congregation. On the other hand, religious fundamentalist groups tend, at times, to resist this synergy between popular culture and religion, and at other times, re-appropriate popular culture to promote their own religion. Examples of this re-appropriation are Christian super-hero comics and role playing games, Bible-based PC games, and 'White Metal' music.

To explore these new phenomena, this book views itself as the 'hyper-real testament' of these new religious phenomena by addressing the theories, among many others, of Baudrillard, Jameson and Lipovetsky, and by exploring the use of fictions such as those from Harry Potter, The Matrix, Star Trek, Buffy and The Lord of the Rings.

This paper, published in the journal _Ethnologies_ in 1998, was one of the first to examine the emergent category of "Pagan music," that is, the music of the modern Pagan movement.  Focused entirely on North American data, this paper also models a  dialogic style of ethnography in which singer-songwriter-performer Holly Tannen, herself trained in folklore and an insider in the modern Pagan movement, collaborated with Magliocco to research and write this piece.