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The life and career of one of anthropology’s most important ancestors, William Robertson Smith in the context of the history of anthropology. William Robertson Smith’s influence on anthropology ranged from his relationship with John Ferguson McLennan, to advising James George Frazer to write about “Totem” and “Taboo” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica that he edited. This biography places a special emphasis on the notes and observations from his travels to Arabia, as well as on his influence on the representatives of the “Myth and Ritual School.” With his discussion of myth and ritual, Smith influenced generations of scholars, and his insistence on the connection between the people, their God, and the land they inhabited inspired many of the concepts later developed by Émile Durkheim. “This is a clear, well-informed and interesting account of Robertson Smith’s central ideas. The theories are set in the context of debates of the day, and their influence on anthropology and bible studies is discussed. An original and fascinating section reviews Robertson Smith’s field work in the Middle East, which was much more extensive and intensive than is, I think, generally appreciated.”—Adam Kuper, London School of Economics From the introduction: Although respected and studied, especially since the 1990s, Smith has a somewhat paradoxical position in the history of social and cultural anthropology. Anthropologists educated in the twentieth century admire him, but many contemporary scholars are not quite sure what to make of him.

Myth and ritual school. --- Anthropology of religion --- Anthropologists --- History --- James George Frazer. --- John Ferguson McLennan. --- William Robertson Smith. --- anthropologist. --- anthropology. --- biography. --- durkheim. --- folklore. --- myth. --- ritual. --- social anthropology. --- sociology. --- Émile Durkheim. --- Myth --- Ritual --- Scientists --- Religious anthropology --- Ethnology --- Study and teaching --- Anthropologists - Scotland - 19th century - Biography --- Anthropology of religion - History - 19th century --- Myth and ritual school --- Orientalism --- Smith, William Robertson, - 1846-1894 --- Smith, W. Robertson --- Smīth, Rūbirtsūn, --- Smith, William Robertson,

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"Robert Bellah (1927-2013) was a hugely-influential twentieth-century American social scientist. During an intellectual career that spanned six decades, his work became central in many fields: the sociology of Japanese religion, the relationships between sociology and the humanities, the relationship between American religion and politics, the cultures of modern individualism, and evolution and society. His seminal 1967 essay "Civil Religion in America" created a huge debate across disciplines which continues to this day; his co-authored book Habits of the Heart (1985) was a bestseller (it sold close to 500,000 copies) and became the object of sustained public discussion about the temptations and dangers of radical individualism. His last magnum opus, an interpretation of 15,000 years of human history many years in the making entitled Religion in Human Evolution and published by HUP when Bellah was 84, was a capstone to an extraordinary scholarly and intellectual career. It has been reprinted numerous times and continues to sell. In this book Matteo Bortolini recounts not just the arc of this extraordinary scholarly career, but also an eventful and tempestuous life, including a youthful student affiliation with the Communist Party USA and a resulting McCarthy era exile to Canada, crushing personal tragedies (with the death of two of his four daughters in the 1970s), and, at the age of 50, a coming out as a gay man, which did not however sever his close ties with his wife of many decades, Melanie Hyman Bellah. The author has worked on this book for thirteen years, and during this time has conducted research at university archives around the world, including archives at Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley, and McGill. Bortolini also interviewed some three dozen of Bellah's colleagues, former students, friends and relatives, including his two daughters, who have given this project their full support (without attempting to influence it in any way). They have also given the author full access to Bellah's personal papers. (Bellah's wife of many years predeceased him.) It is also noteworthy that when the obits appeared after Bellah's death, Bortolini was quoted in them as Bellah's biographer. So he is already widely recognized as the guy from whom we can expect a definitive biography of this man"--

Sociologists --- Bellah, Robert N. --- United States. --- Academic freedom. --- Admiration. --- After Virtue. --- Allan Bloom. --- Ambivalence. --- Appeasement. --- Average Joe. --- Axial Age. --- Barrington Moore, Jr. --- Charismatic authority. --- Christian right. --- Civil religion. --- Clifford Geertz. --- Communitarianism. --- Consciousness. --- Conservative Judaism. --- Courtesy. --- Culture hero. --- Discipline. --- Enthusiasm. --- Erudition. --- Formality. --- Gananath Obeyesekere. --- Glorification. --- Good Omens. --- Good faith. --- Grandiosity. --- Gratitude. --- Great books. --- Great power. --- H. Richard Niebuhr. --- Hedonism. --- Herbert J. Gans. --- High modernism. --- Hippie. --- His Favorite. --- Impartiality. --- Impossibility. --- In Plain Sight. --- Individualism. --- J. Anthony Lukas. --- Jack Miles. --- Jerome Bruner. --- Loyalty. --- Manliness (book). --- Max Weber. --- Meaningful life. --- Modernity. --- Moral Majority. --- Morale. --- Morality. --- Morton White. --- Mr. --- On Religion. --- On the Right Track. --- Open marriage. --- Open-mindedness. --- Optimism. --- Original position. --- Originality. --- Patriotism. --- Peacemaking. --- Peacetime. --- Political Man. --- Positive feedback. --- Post-war consensus. --- Pragmatism. --- Pro bono. --- Rational analysis. --- Rationality. --- Religion. --- Romanticism. --- Rugged individualism. --- Sam Keen. --- Secular humanism. --- Secular movement. --- Secularism. --- Self-confidence. --- Self-fulfillment. --- Self-righteousness. --- Seriousness. --- Social science. --- Sociology. --- Sola fide. --- Solidarity. --- Sophism. --- Spirituality. --- Subjectivism. --- Talcott Parsons. --- The Best and the Brightest. --- The Love-Ins. --- The Other Hand. --- Triumphalism. --- Truth claim. --- Unconditional love. --- Utilitarianism. --- Utopia. --- Wilfred Cantwell Smith. --- Young Man Luther. --- Émile Durkheim.