Overview

Ritual, Performance and the Senses is a unique and timely collection at the heart of which is an experiment in anthropological theory. It explores the possibility of developing a new anthropology of ritual by combining theoretical insights from three distinct domains of anthropological inquiry: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses. These three areas of study are often considered, and indeed operate institutionally, as distinct academic sub-fields, and yet they share substantive objects of study, with their focus on experience, the body and the relationships between percept, concept and action. Bringing together scholars from each of these disciplines to consider the potential for drawing insights from each area to help to theorize ritual, this collection sheds new light on one of anthropology's most enduring research objects: by understanding ritual we understand processes at the very centre of human social life - of humanity itself. This will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of anthropology, cognitive science, performance studies and religious studies--