Based on vivid and colorful case studies about Mafiosi, priests, mothers, and migrants, the author offers new perspectives on the anthropology of religion and magic through categories of landscape, the body, human practice, and material experience. The focus on women as religious practitioners is linked to the idea of religion as a primary mode of production that creates and helps to maintain human reserves in a fast changing, male-dominated world. It is through this mechanism that the Catholic Church, the oldest existing bureaucratic agency of globalization, has maintained its power. Exploring aspects of spirit experiences, trance, the cult of saints, official ecclesiastical cults, and especially witchcraft, this book reveals the explosive, sometimes violent creativity of religion, its relation to magic, and its multi-facetted social value for humans as reflected in the religiously based, pragmatic realism of everyday life in the Mediterranean.

Power and Magic in Italy (EASA Series, 13)

Politics & Social Sciences

Hauschild, Thomas

Anthropology

Berghahn Books

Die alten und die neuen Hexen (Heyne Report)

Heyne

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hauschild, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hauschild, Thomas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hauschild, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Power and Magic in Italy (EASA Series, 13)

Die alten und die neuen Hexen (Heyne Report)