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Book
Traveling spirits : migrants, markets and mobilities
Authors: ---
ISBN: 9780415998789 0415998786 9780415808002 9780203865262 9781135224110 9781135224158 9781135224165 Year: 2010 Publisher: New York : Routledge,

Prey into hunter
Author:
ISBN: 0521411548 0521423120 0511621582 9780521423120 9780511621581 9780521411547 Year: 1992 Volume: 1984 Publisher: Cambridge Cambridge University Press

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Abstract

Maurice Bloch has for many years been developing an original and influential theory of ritual. In this book he synthesises a radical theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the transience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants themselves, so allowing them to participate in the immortality of a transcendent entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing of animals. The theme is developed with reference to rituals of many types, from a variety of ethnographic sources, and Bloch shows that even exogamous marriage rituals can be reinterpreted in the light of this thesis. He concludes by considering the indirect relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.

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