Janice Boddy & Michael Lambek 
A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion 

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion presents a
collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays that
explore the variety of beliefs, practices, and religious
experiences in the contemporary world and asks how to think about
religion as a subject of anthropological inquiry.

* Presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed
essays exploring the wide variety of beliefs, practices, and
religious experiences in the contemporary world

* Explores a broad range of topics including the
‘perspectivism’ debate, the rise of religious
nationalism, reflections on religion and new media, religion and
politics, and ideas of self and gender in relation to religious
belief

* Includes examples drawn from different religious traditions and
from several regions of the world

* Features newly-commissioned articles reflecting the most
up-to-date research and critical thinking in the field, written by
an international team of leading scholars

* Adds immeasurably to our understanding of the complex
relationships between religion, culture, society, and the
individual in today’s world

Table of Content

List of Figures viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface and Acknowledgments xiv

What Is ‘Religion’ for Anthropology?

And What Has Anthropology Brought to ‘Religion’? 1
Michael Lambek

Part I Worlds and Intersections 33

1 Presence, Attachment, Origin: Ontologies of ‘Incarnates’ 35
Philippe Descola

2 The Dynamic Reproduction of Hunter-Gatherers’ Ontologies and Values 50
Sylvie Poirier

3 Cohabiting an Interreligious Milieu: Reflections on Religious Diversity 69
Veena Das

4 Religious and Legal Particularism and Universality 85
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

Part II Epistemologies 101

5 Are Ancestors Dead? 103
Rita Astuti and Maurice Bloch

6 Coping with Religious Diversity: Incommensurability and Other Perspectives 118
Eva Spies

7 Varieties of Semiotic Ideology in the Interpretation of Religion 137
Michael Lambek

8 Religion and the Truth of Being 154
Paul Stoller

Part III Time and Ethics 169

9 Ethics 171
James Laidlaw

10 The Social and Political Theory of the Soul 189
Heonik Kwon

11 Ghosts and Ancestors in the Modern West 202
Fenella Cannell

12 The Work of Memory: Ritual Laments of the Dead and Korea’s Cheju Massacre 223
Seong-nae Kim

13 The Globalization of Pentecostalism and the Limits of Globalization 239
Girish Daswani

Part IV Practices and Mediations 255

14 Food, Life, and Material Religion in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity 257
Tom Boylston

15 Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess 274
Amira Mittermaier

16 Ritual Remains: Studying Contemporary Pilgrimage 294
Simon Coleman

17 Mediation and Immediacy: Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies, and the Question of the Medium 309
Birgit Meyer

Part V Languages and Conversions 327

18 Translating God’s Words 329
Wendy James

19 Christianity as a Polemical Concept 344
Pamela E. Klassen

20 Reconfiguring Humanity in Amazonia: Christianity and Change 363
Aparecida Vilaça

21 Language in Christian Conversion 387
William F. Hanks

Part VI Persons and Histories 407

22 Canonizing Soviet Pasts in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Saint Matrona of Moscow 409
Jeanne Kormina

23 Reflections on Death, Religion, Identity, and the Anthropology of Religion 425
Ellen Badone

24 S pirits and Selves Revisited: Za¯r and Islam in Northern Sudan 444
Janice Boddy

Part VII Powers 469

25 The Political Landscape of Early State Religions 471
Edward Swenson

26 A Syariah Judiciary as a Global Assemblage: Islamization and Beyond in a Southeast Asian Context 489
Michael G. Peletz

27 The Catholicization of Neoliberalism 507
Andrea Muehlebach

28 The Sacred and the City: Modernity, Religion, and the Urban Form in Central Africa 528
Filip De Boeck

Index 549

About the author

Janice Boddy is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her books include Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (1989); Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl (1994); and Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (2007).
Michael Lambek is Professor of Anthropology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His books include Human Spirits (1981, 2009); Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession (1993); The Weight of the Past (2002); and Ordinary Ethics (2010). He is also the editor of A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).