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From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.
What begins as a test of bravery or a sleepover activity—chanting in front of a mirror, riding an elevator alone, taking pictures in the dark—can become something . . . dangerous. This compendium collects the most spine-chilling games based on urban legends from around the world. Centuries–old games such as Bloody Mary and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board are detailed alongside new games from the internet age, like The Answer Man, a sinister voice that whispers secrets to whomever manages to contact him with a cellphone. With step-by-step instructions, historical context, and the stakes for each game, this black handbook is the ideal gift for anyone looking for a late-night thrill—but beware who, or what, may come out to play.
A horror debut by one of Britain's most celebrated up-and-coming writers, in which four friends get lost in a forest in Sweden, to find their lives are in mortal peril... as something evil lurks.
A pioneering anthropologist takes readers on a 'fascinating, well-researched' (Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE) journey through the rich tapestry of human ritual—showing how and why our most irrational behaviors are a key driver of our success." Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. And yet, though rituals exist in every culture and can persist nearly unchanged for centuries, their logic has remained a mystery—until now. In Ritual, pathfinding scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior. Armed with cutting-edge technology and drawing on discoveries from a wide range of disciplines, he presents a powerful new perspective on our place in the world. In birthday parties and coronations, in silent prayer, in fire-walks and terrifying rites of passage, in all the bewildering variety of human life, Ritual reveals the deep and subtle mechanisms that bind us together.
Designed for both academic and lay audiences, this book identifies the characteristics of ritual and, via multiple examples, details how ritual works on the human body and brain to produce its often profound effects. These include enhancing courage, effecting healing, and generating group cohesion by enacting cultural—or individual—beliefs and values. It also shows what happens when ritual fails.
This collection of essays examines various rituals and ceremonies in American popular culture, including architecture, religion, television viewing, humor, eating, and dancing.
Drawing together aspects of media studies, cultural studies, film studies, structuralism, mythology, literary criticism, feminism, and social commentary, this book examines the position of ""The Prisoner as a television classic. Gregory argues that its allegorical depiction of a totalitarian world where technology enables the powers-that-be to control every aspect of its citizens, lives becomes more and more relevant as the years go by. Decodings of all of the series' episodes are detailed, explaining how the series broke with the usual conventions of a TV series.
"Avidly Reads Screen Time is a heartwarming, harrowing diary of our relationship with screens and the complicated feelings we have about them"--