I hold a PhD in anthropology from Boston University. My doctoral fieldwork focused on religious change and cultural processes among the Warlpiri of central Australia. I have taught anthropology in upstate New York and Denver. My areas of interest include religion, violence, and psychological anthropology. I am the author of such books as "Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach" (Wadsworth, 2005), "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2014), "Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives" 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2016), "Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence across Culture and History" (Prometheus, 2010), "Social Science and Historical Perspectives: Society, Science, and Ways of Knowing" (Routledge, 2016), and "Psychological Anthropology for the 21st Century" (Routledge, 2018). Phone: 3037554946 Address: 1885 S. Quebec Way F-104
Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness, 2024
"Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness" examines the concept of liminality in the... more "Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness" examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., "rites of passage"), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically-and mostly uncritically-absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.
Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World, 2024
"Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World" offers a contemporary, cross-cultural... more "Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World" offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at nonbelief and nonreligion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on nonbelievers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of nonreligion for Muslims.
It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity. A chapter by Mascha Schulz on Bangladesh (attached) is available open access.
Gun Violence and Prevention: Connections, Cultures, and Consequences, 2024
People are dying or suffering all over the world from the plague of gun violence, and countries a... more People are dying or suffering all over the world from the plague of gun violence, and countries and entire regions are reeling from the damage, instability, and insecurity that gun violence causes. Taking a global perspective on the problem, and identifying correlates such as drug trafficking, gun trafficking, state failure, ethnic and political conflict, terrorism and war, and the consequent rise of personal fear and insecurity leading to more citizens arming themselves or hiring armed security forces, the chapters in this volume look far beyond the United States, which monopolizes public and scholarly attention, to include India, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa. The chapters explore and compare histories of, causes of, correlates of, and responses to gun violence across this broad region, predominantly in the Global South, identifying commonalities and differences in the character, incidence, and attempted prevention of gun violence. The volume aims to inform readers about gun violence in these often-overlooked places and to encourage intensified quantitative and qualitative research into the geographical and historical diversity of such violence and the steps taken by various countries to curb it. Only with a cross-cultural and transhistorical perspective can we hope to lower the personal and social cost that gun violence inflicts on populations around the globe.
The Anthropology of Donald Trump: Culture and the Exceptional Moment, 2022
The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed... more The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed by some of the leading figures in the discipline. It applies their concepts, perspectives, and methods to a sustained and diverse understanding of Trump’s supporters, policies, and performance in office. The volume includes ethnographic case studies of "Trump country," examines Trump’s actions in office, and moves beyond Trump as an individual political figure to consider larger structural and institutional issues. Providing a unique and valuable perspective on the Trump phenomenon, it will be of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with contemporary American society and politics as well as suitable reading for courses on political anthropology and US culture.
Psychological Anthropology for the 21st Century, 2019
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to psychological anthropology, covering both the ... more This book provides a comprehensive introduction to psychological anthropology, covering both the early history and contemporary state of the field. Eller discusses the major themes, theories, figures and publications, and provides a detailed survey of the essential and enduring relationship between anthropology and psychology. The volume charts the development, celebrates the accomplishments, critiques the inadequacies, and considers the future of a field that has made great contributions to the overall discipline of anthropology. The chapters feature rich ethnographic examples and boxes for more in-depth discussion as well as summaries and questions to support teaching and learning. This is essential reading for all students new to the study of psychological anthropology.
Knowledge of and sensitivity toward diversity is an essential skill in the contemporary United St... more Knowledge of and sensitivity toward diversity is an essential skill in the contemporary United States and the wider world. This book addresses the standard topics of race, ethnicity, class and gender but goes much further by engaging seriously with issues of language, religion, age, health and disability, and region and geography. It also considers the intersections between and the diversities within these categories. Eller presents students with an unprecedented combination of history, conceptual analysis, discussion of academic literature, and up-to-date statistics. The book includes a range of illustrations, figures and tables, text boxes, a glossary of key terms, and a comprehensive bibliography. Additional resources are provided via a companion website.
For millennia, a fundamental question of culture and law has been the relationship between religi... more For millennia, a fundamental question of culture and law has been the relationship between religion and ruler, or more recently between church and state. Although the term “political theology” was not always known, the question remained and was answered in various ways: theocracy, the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven, the rule of jurists, and so forth. Almost a century ago, German political scientist Carl Schmitt revived political theology and reshaped it into a less theological and more political subject with his famous notions of sovereignty and the exception. While he asserted that all modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts, that is not really his point, nor is it the point that preoccupies us today. Rather, Schmitt highlighted the eternal struggle between power or authority on the one hand and law (especially “positive law” or the law that legislatures and constitutional conventions declare) and political institutions on the other. Schmitt rightly understood that law can never entirely legitimize or constrain power or authority and that the real site and source of law is power or authority, revealed in the moment of exception and of “the decision.” But in the past three or four years, we have had an exceptional president who seems to use his power to flaunt the law. What does political theology teach us about Donald Trump, and what does Trump teach us about the precarious relationship between law/political institutions and executive authority/sovereignty?
Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives (4th ed), 2020
This is the fourteenth chapter of the new (4th) edition of my cultural anthropology textbook. The... more This is the fourteenth chapter of the new (4th) edition of my cultural anthropology textbook. The new edition has a theme of "the future," including planning, design, decision-making, hope (and hopelessness), waiting, and of course contemporary factors like globalization and populism--all in a discipline that is ordinarily assumed to be obsessed with the past and tradition. Pursuing the consequences of colonialism introduced in the previous chapter, the fourteenth chapter looks at politics in the post-colonial world, a mobile, uncertain, and highly contested world. The chapter first considers how the specific independence processes and experiences in former colonies shaped their post-colonial politics. Then, building on the legacy of plural or multi-ethnic societies, the chapter draws the critical distinction between a nation and a state and explores how attempts to integrate populations into a single identity group—to instill a single state imagination—have often failed, resulting in competition and conflict between sub-state and trans-state groups and in struggles to control the state or to form a state of their own. Another consequence of such struggle and strife is the creation of large refugee or diaspora populations, many living in temporary camps outside their homeland. Finally, the chapter investigates one of the most surprising and alarming global political developments—the rise of right-wing populist parties and leaders.
New edition of a full-service introductory cultural anthropology textbook, with the following new... more New edition of a full-service introductory cultural anthropology textbook, with the following new features: • New opening vignettes for almost all of the chapters • New closing “contemporary cultural controversy” cases for the majority of chapters • A new topical theme—China—with nine boxed case-studies on China, one “Seeing Culture as a Whole” case, and numerous other references across chapters • New boxed case-studies—almost all of them ethnographic—for all of the chapters, evenly distributed across the world’s geographic areas and as recent as 2015, featuring examples like anthropology in the global Ebola crisis, important women in early anthropology, Mexican beach vendors, Iranian temporary marriage, international journalists, Pentecostal television, forest conservation, the U.S. automobile industry, and surgical training, to name a few • Extensive revisions to chapters three (Origins of Cultural Anthropology), seven (Economics), eight (Politics), twelve (Colonialism), thirteen (Post-colonial politics), and fourteen (Post-colonial economics) • Condensed discussion of pre-modern economic, political, and religious systems to allow more space for contemporary topics like the corporation, work, and the informal economy; citizenship and policy; and Christianity, Islam, paganism, and cognitive-evolutionary theory of religion, among others (much of the previous materials on pre-modern systems has been retained as supplemental readings on the companion website) • Extended or brand new discussions of enskilment, materiality, consumption, age and youth, friendship, colonialism and governmentality, borderlands and illegality, and the precarity of work under new regimes of accumulation • Two new “Seeing Culture as a Whole” extended case studies, on Western “transnationals” living in China and on Boko Haram and Islamic violence in Nigeria • An entire new chapter on medical anthropology • More supplemental readings on the companion website (at least three per chapter) more tightly integrated with the textbook
The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" will be coming out in November 2014.... more The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" will be coming out in November 2014. It features enhancements in every chapter, including more ethnography, photographs, and new discussions of "modes of religiosity," anthropology of Christianity and Islam, and an entirely new chapter on "vernacular religion." It will also come with a robust companion website with quizzes, suggestions for further reading, website and A-V recommendations, and supplemental case materials for each chapter. Finally, the website will feature a bonus chapter on sex, gender, and religion, which is attached here in a pre-formatted version.
Society has always existed, but social science is remarkably new. How and why did the social sci... more Society has always existed, but social science is remarkably new. How and why did the social sciences originate? How are they related to older philosophical, theological, and moral questions? What is the unique perspective or "way of knowing" of each social science? And what are the challenges to--and alternatives to--the social sciences as we know them today? The book explores the history, theories, and schools of economics, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, and history and illustrates the unique perspective of each by applying it to one critical contemporary issue--terrorism. Finally, the book considers how non-Western, feminist, and indigenous ways of knowing are compelling us to rethink and unthink the conventional social sciences.
The phrase “religious violence” often brings to mind dramatic events: the September 11 attack on ... more The phrase “religious violence” often brings to mind dramatic events: the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, riots in India between Muslims and Hindus, or, farther back in history, the Crusades and the Thirty Years War. But as anthropologist Jack David Eller shows in this illuminating, in-depth study, violence in connection with religion is a very broad-based phenomenon encompassing all cultures and including a wide variety of activities and complex motives.
Eller presents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence—not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence—but also more prevalent forms. He devotes separate chapters to:
■sacrifice (both animal and human);
■self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom);
■religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts);
■ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia);
■religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews’ wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars);
■and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and “dowry death,” among other manifestations).
In the final chapter, “Religion and Nonviolence,” Eller examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict.
Taking a scrupulously objective approach, Eller neither accuses nor exonerates religion in regard to violence. Rather, he presents the evidence revealing which kinds of religious ideas and practices contribute to certain kinds of violence and why. In so doing, he goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.
Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives helps students understand the application of an... more Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives helps students understand the application of anthropological concepts to the contemporary world. It offers an exceptionally clear and readable introduction to cultural anthropology, closely relating it to key topics such as colonialism and post-colonialism, ethnicity, the environment, cultural change, economic development and globalisation.
This second edition includes additional material on medical, urban and political anthropology, as well as increased coverage of religion and culture, with particular focus on Islamic societies. An updated and expanded range of case studies explores the diverse nature of anthropology through appealing subjects as "Blue Jeans Going Global" and "Migrating Brides in Northern India". The text also develops two recurring themes--Islam and the corporation. Students will especially welcome the additional focus on careers in anthropology and how it is used in everyday life.
The design of this second edition has various aids to facilitate student learning:
A wealth of additional color images help bring concepts and theories to life.
Explains difficult key terms with marginal glosses and promotes further reading with “key texts” feature.
Assists study with boxed chapter summaries, an extensive bibliography and index.
Exclusive to purchasers of this new edition is 12-month access to the Routledge Interactive version of your textbook, including audio introductions from the author, exclusive supplementary case studies and study guides, and quiz material to test your learning."
A textbook for anthropology of religion, the book has sophisticated discussions of belief, myth, ... more A textbook for anthropology of religion, the book has sophisticated discussions of belief, myth, ritual, and morality. It includes chapters on world religions, religious violence, fundamentalism, secularism, and American religion. It contains many ethnographic examples.
A text appropriate for anthropology or sociology of violence courses. It contains chapters on no... more A text appropriate for anthropology or sociology of violence courses. It contains chapters on non-violent and violent traditional societies, gender violence, religious violence, political violence, and American violence. It provides ample extended cross-cultural case-studies.
After substantial chapters on the concepts of ethnicity and culture and on the history of social-... more After substantial chapters on the concepts of ethnicity and culture and on the history of social-scientific theories of ethnicity, the book offers five in-depth case studies: Sri Lanka,Rwanda, Kurdistan, Bosnia, and Quebec. Rather than focusing on the modern conflicts themselves, the book explores the historical construction of the identities and interests that would eventually lead to conflict.
Gun Violence and Prevention: Connections, Cultures, and Consequences, 2024
The United States dominates most policy debates and academic studies of gun violence, but this do... more The United States dominates most policy debates and academic studies of gun violence, but this dominance overshadows the often much higher rate of firearm-related injury and death inflicted in its southern neighbors. This chapter explores guns and gun violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, where some countries experience war-level death rates from firearms despite considerably lower rates of gun ownership in those countries. The chapter presents data—which is unfortunately often scarce, incomplete, or dated—on the region as a whole and on specific countries, identifying trends but also distinct and important variation, both geographically and historically. This variation challenges simplistic explanations in terms of the region’s violent past or an enduring “culture of violence.” The discussion thus then turns to the elucidation of factors that influence the incidence of gun violence, from poverty, urbanization, gangs, and drug trafficking to concerns about weak states and personal security. Finally, the chapter shares some of the gun policies and regulations in the region, surveying the steps that countries have taken—and others like its great northern neighbor can take—to curtail the damage and loss of life attributed to guns.
Global Journal of HUMAN-SOCIAL SCIENCE: C Sociology & Culture, 2023
Justified criticism of fake news, as practice and as accusation, is premised on a pair of assumpt... more Justified criticism of fake news, as practice and as accusation, is premised on a pair of assumptions—that there is such a thing as "true news" or truth more generally and that truth is the business of news and of governments. Both of these assumptions are dubious. This essay, following the lead of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, considers fake news and other forms of disinformation and non-knowledge not as simulations or distortions of information but as substitutes for information, that is, as informulacra. Examining some of the principal purveyors of fake news and the accusers of mainstream media as traffickers in fake news, such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as well as corporations, the essay explores how fake news, lies, disinformation, and propaganda are tools of political power and acts of sovereignty, literally deployed to replace information with informulacra and to impose the speaker's will on society and reality.
For many Americans and other Westerners, Islam is still the ultimate Other. Indeed, since 9/11, t... more For many Americans and other Westerners, Islam is still the ultimate Other. Indeed, since 9/11, the words of nineteenth-century scholar William Muir, quoted by Edward Said in his seminal Orientalism, are truer today for the detractors of Islam: "the sword of Muhammad, and the Qur'an, are the most stubborn enemies of Civilization, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known" (1979: 151). This includes the near-impossibility for most outsiders to imagine that there is any significant nonbelief, let alone atheism, in Muslim-majority countries. Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi (2015) has rightly chided Westerners for their "inability to even conceive of an Arab atheist." Unbeknownst to critics of Islam on both the right and the left, there has been a lively, if culturally distinct, secularist stream in Islamic societies at least since the late 1800s, for instance, in the work of Jamal a-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad 'Abduh; there are also present-day high-profile former Muslims like Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, mostly writing from the relative safety of the West. Meanwhile, some of the most notorious regimes in the twentieth-century Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were secular, from Mubarak's Egypt (which forcefully opposed the Muslim Brotherhood) to Qaddafi's Libya and Hussein's Iraq. But inside the Muslim world itself, as Khaled Diab of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies opines, there is a "tsunami of atheism" (2020: 18), one serious and prominent enough to alarm religious conservatives and spark a strong response.
This article explores the lyrics of Rush and Devo – and in the case of Devo, their embodied perfo... more This article explores the lyrics of Rush and Devo – and in the case of Devo, their embodied performance – during their key overlapping creative periods from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. Both imagined technology becoming a greater force – and threat – for humanity, although Rush championed constant opposition to and despair at the alienation of humanity while Devo reveled in an ambiguous postmodern fashion about humanity’s devolved cyborg future. Several decades of hindsight suggest that Rush represented the futile struggle of the (modern) Last Human whereas Devo more accurately captured the contemporary capitulation to the Post Human.
Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness, 2024
"Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness" examines the concept of liminality in the... more "Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness" examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., "rites of passage"), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically-and mostly uncritically-absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.
Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World, 2024
"Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World" offers a contemporary, cross-cultural... more "Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World" offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at nonbelief and nonreligion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on nonbelievers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of nonreligion for Muslims.
It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity. A chapter by Mascha Schulz on Bangladesh (attached) is available open access.
Gun Violence and Prevention: Connections, Cultures, and Consequences, 2024
People are dying or suffering all over the world from the plague of gun violence, and countries a... more People are dying or suffering all over the world from the plague of gun violence, and countries and entire regions are reeling from the damage, instability, and insecurity that gun violence causes. Taking a global perspective on the problem, and identifying correlates such as drug trafficking, gun trafficking, state failure, ethnic and political conflict, terrorism and war, and the consequent rise of personal fear and insecurity leading to more citizens arming themselves or hiring armed security forces, the chapters in this volume look far beyond the United States, which monopolizes public and scholarly attention, to include India, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa. The chapters explore and compare histories of, causes of, correlates of, and responses to gun violence across this broad region, predominantly in the Global South, identifying commonalities and differences in the character, incidence, and attempted prevention of gun violence. The volume aims to inform readers about gun violence in these often-overlooked places and to encourage intensified quantitative and qualitative research into the geographical and historical diversity of such violence and the steps taken by various countries to curb it. Only with a cross-cultural and transhistorical perspective can we hope to lower the personal and social cost that gun violence inflicts on populations around the globe.
The Anthropology of Donald Trump: Culture and the Exceptional Moment, 2022
The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed... more The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed by some of the leading figures in the discipline. It applies their concepts, perspectives, and methods to a sustained and diverse understanding of Trump’s supporters, policies, and performance in office. The volume includes ethnographic case studies of "Trump country," examines Trump’s actions in office, and moves beyond Trump as an individual political figure to consider larger structural and institutional issues. Providing a unique and valuable perspective on the Trump phenomenon, it will be of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with contemporary American society and politics as well as suitable reading for courses on political anthropology and US culture.
Psychological Anthropology for the 21st Century, 2019
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to psychological anthropology, covering both the ... more This book provides a comprehensive introduction to psychological anthropology, covering both the early history and contemporary state of the field. Eller discusses the major themes, theories, figures and publications, and provides a detailed survey of the essential and enduring relationship between anthropology and psychology. The volume charts the development, celebrates the accomplishments, critiques the inadequacies, and considers the future of a field that has made great contributions to the overall discipline of anthropology. The chapters feature rich ethnographic examples and boxes for more in-depth discussion as well as summaries and questions to support teaching and learning. This is essential reading for all students new to the study of psychological anthropology.
Knowledge of and sensitivity toward diversity is an essential skill in the contemporary United St... more Knowledge of and sensitivity toward diversity is an essential skill in the contemporary United States and the wider world. This book addresses the standard topics of race, ethnicity, class and gender but goes much further by engaging seriously with issues of language, religion, age, health and disability, and region and geography. It also considers the intersections between and the diversities within these categories. Eller presents students with an unprecedented combination of history, conceptual analysis, discussion of academic literature, and up-to-date statistics. The book includes a range of illustrations, figures and tables, text boxes, a glossary of key terms, and a comprehensive bibliography. Additional resources are provided via a companion website.
For millennia, a fundamental question of culture and law has been the relationship between religi... more For millennia, a fundamental question of culture and law has been the relationship between religion and ruler, or more recently between church and state. Although the term “political theology” was not always known, the question remained and was answered in various ways: theocracy, the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven, the rule of jurists, and so forth. Almost a century ago, German political scientist Carl Schmitt revived political theology and reshaped it into a less theological and more political subject with his famous notions of sovereignty and the exception. While he asserted that all modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts, that is not really his point, nor is it the point that preoccupies us today. Rather, Schmitt highlighted the eternal struggle between power or authority on the one hand and law (especially “positive law” or the law that legislatures and constitutional conventions declare) and political institutions on the other. Schmitt rightly understood that law can never entirely legitimize or constrain power or authority and that the real site and source of law is power or authority, revealed in the moment of exception and of “the decision.” But in the past three or four years, we have had an exceptional president who seems to use his power to flaunt the law. What does political theology teach us about Donald Trump, and what does Trump teach us about the precarious relationship between law/political institutions and executive authority/sovereignty?
Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives (4th ed), 2020
This is the fourteenth chapter of the new (4th) edition of my cultural anthropology textbook. The... more This is the fourteenth chapter of the new (4th) edition of my cultural anthropology textbook. The new edition has a theme of "the future," including planning, design, decision-making, hope (and hopelessness), waiting, and of course contemporary factors like globalization and populism--all in a discipline that is ordinarily assumed to be obsessed with the past and tradition. Pursuing the consequences of colonialism introduced in the previous chapter, the fourteenth chapter looks at politics in the post-colonial world, a mobile, uncertain, and highly contested world. The chapter first considers how the specific independence processes and experiences in former colonies shaped their post-colonial politics. Then, building on the legacy of plural or multi-ethnic societies, the chapter draws the critical distinction between a nation and a state and explores how attempts to integrate populations into a single identity group—to instill a single state imagination—have often failed, resulting in competition and conflict between sub-state and trans-state groups and in struggles to control the state or to form a state of their own. Another consequence of such struggle and strife is the creation of large refugee or diaspora populations, many living in temporary camps outside their homeland. Finally, the chapter investigates one of the most surprising and alarming global political developments—the rise of right-wing populist parties and leaders.
New edition of a full-service introductory cultural anthropology textbook, with the following new... more New edition of a full-service introductory cultural anthropology textbook, with the following new features: • New opening vignettes for almost all of the chapters • New closing “contemporary cultural controversy” cases for the majority of chapters • A new topical theme—China—with nine boxed case-studies on China, one “Seeing Culture as a Whole” case, and numerous other references across chapters • New boxed case-studies—almost all of them ethnographic—for all of the chapters, evenly distributed across the world’s geographic areas and as recent as 2015, featuring examples like anthropology in the global Ebola crisis, important women in early anthropology, Mexican beach vendors, Iranian temporary marriage, international journalists, Pentecostal television, forest conservation, the U.S. automobile industry, and surgical training, to name a few • Extensive revisions to chapters three (Origins of Cultural Anthropology), seven (Economics), eight (Politics), twelve (Colonialism), thirteen (Post-colonial politics), and fourteen (Post-colonial economics) • Condensed discussion of pre-modern economic, political, and religious systems to allow more space for contemporary topics like the corporation, work, and the informal economy; citizenship and policy; and Christianity, Islam, paganism, and cognitive-evolutionary theory of religion, among others (much of the previous materials on pre-modern systems has been retained as supplemental readings on the companion website) • Extended or brand new discussions of enskilment, materiality, consumption, age and youth, friendship, colonialism and governmentality, borderlands and illegality, and the precarity of work under new regimes of accumulation • Two new “Seeing Culture as a Whole” extended case studies, on Western “transnationals” living in China and on Boko Haram and Islamic violence in Nigeria • An entire new chapter on medical anthropology • More supplemental readings on the companion website (at least three per chapter) more tightly integrated with the textbook
The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" will be coming out in November 2014.... more The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" will be coming out in November 2014. It features enhancements in every chapter, including more ethnography, photographs, and new discussions of "modes of religiosity," anthropology of Christianity and Islam, and an entirely new chapter on "vernacular religion." It will also come with a robust companion website with quizzes, suggestions for further reading, website and A-V recommendations, and supplemental case materials for each chapter. Finally, the website will feature a bonus chapter on sex, gender, and religion, which is attached here in a pre-formatted version.
Society has always existed, but social science is remarkably new. How and why did the social sci... more Society has always existed, but social science is remarkably new. How and why did the social sciences originate? How are they related to older philosophical, theological, and moral questions? What is the unique perspective or "way of knowing" of each social science? And what are the challenges to--and alternatives to--the social sciences as we know them today? The book explores the history, theories, and schools of economics, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, and history and illustrates the unique perspective of each by applying it to one critical contemporary issue--terrorism. Finally, the book considers how non-Western, feminist, and indigenous ways of knowing are compelling us to rethink and unthink the conventional social sciences.
The phrase “religious violence” often brings to mind dramatic events: the September 11 attack on ... more The phrase “religious violence” often brings to mind dramatic events: the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, riots in India between Muslims and Hindus, or, farther back in history, the Crusades and the Thirty Years War. But as anthropologist Jack David Eller shows in this illuminating, in-depth study, violence in connection with religion is a very broad-based phenomenon encompassing all cultures and including a wide variety of activities and complex motives.
Eller presents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence—not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence—but also more prevalent forms. He devotes separate chapters to:
■sacrifice (both animal and human);
■self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom);
■religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts);
■ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia);
■religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews’ wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars);
■and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and “dowry death,” among other manifestations).
In the final chapter, “Religion and Nonviolence,” Eller examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict.
Taking a scrupulously objective approach, Eller neither accuses nor exonerates religion in regard to violence. Rather, he presents the evidence revealing which kinds of religious ideas and practices contribute to certain kinds of violence and why. In so doing, he goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.
Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives helps students understand the application of an... more Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives helps students understand the application of anthropological concepts to the contemporary world. It offers an exceptionally clear and readable introduction to cultural anthropology, closely relating it to key topics such as colonialism and post-colonialism, ethnicity, the environment, cultural change, economic development and globalisation.
This second edition includes additional material on medical, urban and political anthropology, as well as increased coverage of religion and culture, with particular focus on Islamic societies. An updated and expanded range of case studies explores the diverse nature of anthropology through appealing subjects as "Blue Jeans Going Global" and "Migrating Brides in Northern India". The text also develops two recurring themes--Islam and the corporation. Students will especially welcome the additional focus on careers in anthropology and how it is used in everyday life.
The design of this second edition has various aids to facilitate student learning:
A wealth of additional color images help bring concepts and theories to life.
Explains difficult key terms with marginal glosses and promotes further reading with “key texts” feature.
Assists study with boxed chapter summaries, an extensive bibliography and index.
Exclusive to purchasers of this new edition is 12-month access to the Routledge Interactive version of your textbook, including audio introductions from the author, exclusive supplementary case studies and study guides, and quiz material to test your learning."
A textbook for anthropology of religion, the book has sophisticated discussions of belief, myth, ... more A textbook for anthropology of religion, the book has sophisticated discussions of belief, myth, ritual, and morality. It includes chapters on world religions, religious violence, fundamentalism, secularism, and American religion. It contains many ethnographic examples.
A text appropriate for anthropology or sociology of violence courses. It contains chapters on no... more A text appropriate for anthropology or sociology of violence courses. It contains chapters on non-violent and violent traditional societies, gender violence, religious violence, political violence, and American violence. It provides ample extended cross-cultural case-studies.
After substantial chapters on the concepts of ethnicity and culture and on the history of social-... more After substantial chapters on the concepts of ethnicity and culture and on the history of social-scientific theories of ethnicity, the book offers five in-depth case studies: Sri Lanka,Rwanda, Kurdistan, Bosnia, and Quebec. Rather than focusing on the modern conflicts themselves, the book explores the historical construction of the identities and interests that would eventually lead to conflict.
Gun Violence and Prevention: Connections, Cultures, and Consequences, 2024
The United States dominates most policy debates and academic studies of gun violence, but this do... more The United States dominates most policy debates and academic studies of gun violence, but this dominance overshadows the often much higher rate of firearm-related injury and death inflicted in its southern neighbors. This chapter explores guns and gun violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, where some countries experience war-level death rates from firearms despite considerably lower rates of gun ownership in those countries. The chapter presents data—which is unfortunately often scarce, incomplete, or dated—on the region as a whole and on specific countries, identifying trends but also distinct and important variation, both geographically and historically. This variation challenges simplistic explanations in terms of the region’s violent past or an enduring “culture of violence.” The discussion thus then turns to the elucidation of factors that influence the incidence of gun violence, from poverty, urbanization, gangs, and drug trafficking to concerns about weak states and personal security. Finally, the chapter shares some of the gun policies and regulations in the region, surveying the steps that countries have taken—and others like its great northern neighbor can take—to curtail the damage and loss of life attributed to guns.
Global Journal of HUMAN-SOCIAL SCIENCE: C Sociology & Culture, 2023
Justified criticism of fake news, as practice and as accusation, is premised on a pair of assumpt... more Justified criticism of fake news, as practice and as accusation, is premised on a pair of assumptions—that there is such a thing as "true news" or truth more generally and that truth is the business of news and of governments. Both of these assumptions are dubious. This essay, following the lead of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, considers fake news and other forms of disinformation and non-knowledge not as simulations or distortions of information but as substitutes for information, that is, as informulacra. Examining some of the principal purveyors of fake news and the accusers of mainstream media as traffickers in fake news, such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as well as corporations, the essay explores how fake news, lies, disinformation, and propaganda are tools of political power and acts of sovereignty, literally deployed to replace information with informulacra and to impose the speaker's will on society and reality.
For many Americans and other Westerners, Islam is still the ultimate Other. Indeed, since 9/11, t... more For many Americans and other Westerners, Islam is still the ultimate Other. Indeed, since 9/11, the words of nineteenth-century scholar William Muir, quoted by Edward Said in his seminal Orientalism, are truer today for the detractors of Islam: "the sword of Muhammad, and the Qur'an, are the most stubborn enemies of Civilization, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known" (1979: 151). This includes the near-impossibility for most outsiders to imagine that there is any significant nonbelief, let alone atheism, in Muslim-majority countries. Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi (2015) has rightly chided Westerners for their "inability to even conceive of an Arab atheist." Unbeknownst to critics of Islam on both the right and the left, there has been a lively, if culturally distinct, secularist stream in Islamic societies at least since the late 1800s, for instance, in the work of Jamal a-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad 'Abduh; there are also present-day high-profile former Muslims like Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, mostly writing from the relative safety of the West. Meanwhile, some of the most notorious regimes in the twentieth-century Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were secular, from Mubarak's Egypt (which forcefully opposed the Muslim Brotherhood) to Qaddafi's Libya and Hussein's Iraq. But inside the Muslim world itself, as Khaled Diab of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies opines, there is a "tsunami of atheism" (2020: 18), one serious and prominent enough to alarm religious conservatives and spark a strong response.
This article explores the lyrics of Rush and Devo – and in the case of Devo, their embodied perfo... more This article explores the lyrics of Rush and Devo – and in the case of Devo, their embodied performance – during their key overlapping creative periods from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. Both imagined technology becoming a greater force – and threat – for humanity, although Rush championed constant opposition to and despair at the alienation of humanity while Devo reveled in an ambiguous postmodern fashion about humanity’s devolved cyborg future. Several decades of hindsight suggest that Rush represented the futile struggle of the (modern) Last Human whereas Devo more accurately captured the contemporary capitulation to the Post Human.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2023
Political theology has traditionally been dominated by Christian concepts,
specifically the conce... more Political theology has traditionally been dominated by Christian concepts, specifically the concept of a law-giving and order-preserving god. Other political theologies are possible, however, and this essay considers one—the trickster—a culture hero and comic buffoon who delightedly and shamelessly violates and subverts order to inaugurate a new reality of his own making, if not of his own will. The first half of the essay introduces the trickster as a cross-cultural agent of creative destruction, a messenger and civilization-bringer, and a clever fool. The second half explores how the last two centuries of Western social and intellectual history have shifted the ground from under a god of order toward a spirit of flux, transience, paradox, and liminality. The essay concludes that the contemporary post-modern state of permanent liminality is better symbolized and grasped through the mythical lens of the trickster than the biblical god, including and especially contemporary global right-wing populism, whose leading figures reflect the wicked energy and appeal of the trickster impulse.
Both scholars and the general public have tended to assume that Islam is immune to modernization ... more Both scholars and the general public have tended to assume that Islam is immune to modernization and secularization and that Muslims are all fanatical religionists. However, the growing and increasingly active number of nonbelievers in Muslim-majority countries has been called a tsunami by religious authorities. This article surveys the current research on nonreligion and atheism in Islam-dominated countries, with special attention to Egypt. After examining the statistical information on nonbelief, including in unlikely places such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, the article considers the terminology of nonbelief in Arabic, which is not equivalent to English terminology and illustrates the local nature of nonreligion, constructed in relation to local concepts of religion. The article then discusses the social and legal perils of nonbelievers in societies still committed to religious belief and finally investigates the lives and activities of nonbelievers and atheists, individually, in groups, and online. The article concludes with some reflections on modernization and secularization, noting the forces that have made nonbelief more possible and prevalent in Muslim-majority contexts but also led to multiple specific secularities and atheisms.
Despite the fact there is some debate on the subject, many philosophers recognize epistemic akras... more Despite the fact there is some debate on the subject, many philosophers recognize epistemic akrasia as a concomitant of practical akrasia-believing what one ought not to believe, just as one often does what one ought not to do. This essay will argue that epistemic akras ia is real and common, although not always best understood as lack of willpower or selfcontrol. Then it will show that religious belief is a form of such akrasiabelieving religious claims when one knows (or could and should know) that one ought not to believe them.
ABSTRACT The first title in Routledge's new series of short "101&amp... more ABSTRACT The first title in Routledge's new series of short "101" disciplinary introduction textbooks, the manuscript surveys the origins and current state of cultural anthropology in one-third the words of a standard full-length text. Organized around major themes rather than conventional chapter-topics, the book manages to explore issues of practice, embodiment, materiality, and engaged anthropology, discussing gender, race, art, design, medicine, and the environment, with up-to-date ethnographic examples as well as classic anthropological sources. The attached file contains the introduction and first chapter, in simple PDF form.
Belief has been extensively (although not always profitably) researched, but nonbelief has not.. ... more Belief has been extensively (although not always profitably) researched, but nonbelief has not.. This essay proposes to change this attitude by introducing and promoting the concept of apisteology (a-pistis-logos) or the study of nonbelief. Nonbelief has not only been a neglected subject but has been generally assumed to apply to religion primarily or exclusively. Taking a much broader view of nonbelief as absence, abstention, or rejection of truth-claims, confidence, and commitment on any potential matter (in the contemporary world, for example, climate change, vaccine efficacy, the Holocaust, or mainstream news media), the essay begins to conceive the form and mission of apisteology and surveys what four disciplines-philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology-can contribute to it as an independent interdisciplinary field of inquiry.
First anthropology became unbound from “the village”, then from the single site, and
gradually fr... more First anthropology became unbound from “the village”, then from the single site, and gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology’s engagement with the subject, going back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal, will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of human diversity.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2019
In this paper, I address the question of whether metaphysics and theology are or can become scien... more In this paper, I address the question of whether metaphysics and theology are or can become science. After examining the qualities of contemporary science, which evolved from an earlier historic concept of any body of literature into a formal method for obtaining empirical knowledge, I apply that standard to metaphysics and theology. I argue that neither metaphysics nor theology practices a scientific method or generates scientific knowledge. Worse, I conclude that both metaphysics and theology are at best purely cultural projects—exercises in exegesis of local cultural and religious ideas and language—and, therefore, that other cultures have produced or would produce radically different schemes of metaphysics or theology. At its worst, metaphysics is speculation about the unknowable, while theology is rumination about the imaginary.
Since the days of Shils and Geertz it has been common to refer to ethnicity as a bond, a tie, or ... more Since the days of Shils and Geertz it has been common to refer to ethnicity as a bond, a tie, or an attachment. Shils used the term “tie” in the title of his seminal 1957 article to refer to a set of social relationships, including what he called “civil,” “kinship,” “sacred,” and “primordial.” The primordial tie was notable for the “ineffable significance” which social actors attribute to it and to the relationship which it engenders: “the attachment [is] not merely to the other … as a person, but as a possessor of certain especially ‘significant relational’ qualities, which could only be described as primordial. The attachment … is not just a function of interaction.” Subsequently Geertz developed the notion of ethnic “attachment” as an affect and identity, or better yet, an affect-centered identity. The intention, often quite explicit, of these thinkers and the many who followed them was to emphasize the emotional quality of ethnicity as an explanation of its persistence and power...
The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" features new contemporary ... more The second edition of "Introducing Anthropology of Religion" features new contemporary ethnographic examples, a robust discussion of the anthropology of Christianity and Islam, recent theoretical ideas such as modes of religiosity, and an entire new chapter on "vernacular" religion (such as religion and popular media, religion and economics/corporations, and paganism), as well as photographs. There is also a companion website with quizzes, further reading suggestions, web and A-V resources, and additional case materials. Finally, there is a complete online chapter on sex, gender, and religion, which is attached here.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2020
Recent years have seen an increased interest in the construction and exploitation of ignorance, w... more Recent years have seen an increased interest in the construction and exploitation of ignorance, with the establishment of a field of agnotology (ignorance studies). This effort has focused almost exclusively on governments and corporations, though little or none on religion. After exploring work in agnotology and introducing the concept of agnomancy (the creation or conjuring of ignorance), the present article offers a preliminary application of these perspectives to religion, investigating what light agnotology sheds on religion and when and for what reasons religion engages in agnomancy.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry
This article argues that if Kenneth Howard’s prediction of a “religion singularity” is true, it s... more This article argues that if Kenneth Howard’s prediction of a “religion singularity” is true, it should not be a worry for social scientists, who must remain neutral on religious matters. Further, the deinstitutionalization, fragmentation, atomization, and even extinction of religion should come as no surprise to scholars who have observed these processes repeatedly. This process occurs not only in the realm of religion but in all social domains, from family and marriage to government—and indeed not only in social domains but in the natural world, as well. Contemporary forces of mediatization and neoliberalism are only the latest threats to institutional membership, creating a crisis among established authorities and encouraging “irregular” religion just as much as they encourage “irregular” employment. While the “religious economy” model suggests an adaptation of religion to the tastes and preferences of today’s religious consumer, ethnographic evidence illustrates the difference be...
A uniquely thorough text on cultural and physical diversity in the U.S., combining statistical, h... more A uniquely thorough text on cultural and physical diversity in the U.S., combining statistical, historical, and ethnographic material on the customary topics (race, class, gender) but also on language, religion, health/(dis)ability, and region. Perfect for courses in sociology of diversity, American studies, and multiculturalism, as well as institutional training in American diversity.
Four recent books—two edited volumes and two monographs—
applying anthropological and ethnographi... more Four recent books—two edited volumes and two monographs— applying anthropological and ethnographic methods to contemporary right-wing populism and illiberalism, around the world but with a special interest in the United States, are reviewed. While the authors discover great diversity in conservative, populist, and ethnonationalist movements and agendas based on local circumstances (for instance, European Union membership) and national history and culture, all identify anger and identity (racial and/or ethnic) as central to the current global wave of populist mobilization. The review concludes with an analysis of cultural loss and the appeal of illiberal democracy as a winning strategy.
Review of Insa Nolte, Olukoya Ogen, Rebecca Jones, eds. 2017. "Beyond Religious Tolerance: Muslim... more Review of Insa Nolte, Olukoya Ogen, Rebecca Jones, eds. 2017. "Beyond Religious Tolerance: Muslim, Christian and Traditionalist Encounters in an African Town." Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer. The book describes the co-existence of religions in the Nigerian town of Ede, noting the tradition of religious diversity and questioning the appropriateness of the Western concept of "toleration."
Recent initiatives by Stein, Flynn, Conrad, and others have promoted 'unbelief' as a replacement, an 'umbrella term,' for concepts like atheism, secularism, and irreligion. In this essay I show that unbelief as it is currently construed cannot serve this function: it is simultaneously too broad (embracing not only irreligion but heterodox religious belief) and too narrow (focusing on religious belief to the exclusion of other types of belief), and it commits a taxonomic error of equating unbelief with categories above and below its level. However, I also argue that, once reformed and disciplined, unbelief is a valuable and essential tool, and I provide some resources and models for a future Unbelief Studies in the Credition Research Project and the literature on agnotology, as well as ethnographical material questioning the cross-cultural applicability of belief and unbelief. Finally, I charge Unbelief Studies with the mission not only to analyze belief but to criticize and ultimately banish it as a bad mental and linguistic habit that perpetuates mistakes and leaves individuals vulnerable to further faults while eroding social trust and facticity itself.
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Books by Jack D Eller
It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity.
A chapter by Mascha Schulz on Bangladesh (attached) is available open access.
• New opening vignettes for almost all of the chapters
• New closing “contemporary cultural controversy” cases for the majority of chapters
• A new topical theme—China—with nine boxed case-studies on China, one “Seeing Culture as a Whole” case, and numerous other references across chapters
• New boxed case-studies—almost all of them ethnographic—for all of the chapters, evenly distributed across the world’s geographic areas and as recent as 2015, featuring examples like anthropology in the global Ebola crisis, important women in early anthropology, Mexican beach vendors, Iranian temporary marriage, international journalists, Pentecostal television, forest conservation, the U.S. automobile industry, and surgical training, to name a few
• Extensive revisions to chapters three (Origins of Cultural Anthropology), seven (Economics), eight (Politics), twelve (Colonialism), thirteen (Post-colonial politics), and fourteen (Post-colonial economics)
• Condensed discussion of pre-modern economic, political, and religious systems to allow more space for contemporary topics like the corporation, work, and the informal economy; citizenship and policy; and Christianity, Islam, paganism, and cognitive-evolutionary theory of religion, among others (much of the previous materials on pre-modern systems has been retained as supplemental readings on the companion website)
• Extended or brand new discussions of enskilment, materiality, consumption, age and youth, friendship, colonialism and governmentality, borderlands and illegality, and the precarity of work under new regimes of accumulation
• Two new “Seeing Culture as a Whole” extended case studies, on Western “transnationals” living in China and on Boko Haram and Islamic violence in Nigeria
• An entire new chapter on medical anthropology
• More supplemental readings on the companion website (at least three per chapter) more tightly integrated with the textbook
Eller presents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence—not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence—but also more prevalent forms. He devotes separate chapters to:
■sacrifice (both animal and human);
■self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom);
■religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts);
■ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia);
■religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews’ wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars);
■and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and “dowry death,” among other manifestations).
In the final chapter, “Religion and Nonviolence,” Eller examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict.
Taking a scrupulously objective approach, Eller neither accuses nor exonerates religion in regard to violence. Rather, he presents the evidence revealing which kinds of religious ideas and practices contribute to certain kinds of violence and why. In so doing, he goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.
This second edition includes additional material on medical, urban and political anthropology, as well as increased coverage of religion and culture, with particular focus on Islamic societies. An updated and expanded range of case studies explores the diverse nature of anthropology through appealing subjects as "Blue Jeans Going Global" and "Migrating Brides in Northern India". The text also develops two recurring themes--Islam and the corporation. Students will especially welcome the additional focus on careers in anthropology and how it is used in everyday life.
The design of this second edition has various aids to facilitate student learning:
A wealth of additional color images help bring concepts and theories to life.
Explains difficult key terms with marginal glosses and promotes further reading with “key texts” feature.
Assists study with boxed chapter summaries, an extensive bibliography and index.
Exclusive to purchasers of this new edition is 12-month access to the Routledge Interactive version of your textbook, including audio introductions from the author, exclusive supplementary case studies and study guides, and quiz material to test your learning."
Papers by Jack D Eller
identifying trends but also distinct and important variation, both geographically and historically. This variation challenges simplistic explanations in terms of the region’s violent past or an enduring “culture of violence.” The discussion thus then turns to the elucidation of factors that influence the incidence of gun violence, from poverty, urbanization, gangs, and drug trafficking to concerns about weak states and personal security. Finally, the chapter shares some of the gun policies and regulations in the region, surveying the steps that countries have taken—and others like its great northern neighbor can take—to curtail the damage and loss of life attributed to guns.
It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity.
A chapter by Mascha Schulz on Bangladesh (attached) is available open access.
• New opening vignettes for almost all of the chapters
• New closing “contemporary cultural controversy” cases for the majority of chapters
• A new topical theme—China—with nine boxed case-studies on China, one “Seeing Culture as a Whole” case, and numerous other references across chapters
• New boxed case-studies—almost all of them ethnographic—for all of the chapters, evenly distributed across the world’s geographic areas and as recent as 2015, featuring examples like anthropology in the global Ebola crisis, important women in early anthropology, Mexican beach vendors, Iranian temporary marriage, international journalists, Pentecostal television, forest conservation, the U.S. automobile industry, and surgical training, to name a few
• Extensive revisions to chapters three (Origins of Cultural Anthropology), seven (Economics), eight (Politics), twelve (Colonialism), thirteen (Post-colonial politics), and fourteen (Post-colonial economics)
• Condensed discussion of pre-modern economic, political, and religious systems to allow more space for contemporary topics like the corporation, work, and the informal economy; citizenship and policy; and Christianity, Islam, paganism, and cognitive-evolutionary theory of religion, among others (much of the previous materials on pre-modern systems has been retained as supplemental readings on the companion website)
• Extended or brand new discussions of enskilment, materiality, consumption, age and youth, friendship, colonialism and governmentality, borderlands and illegality, and the precarity of work under new regimes of accumulation
• Two new “Seeing Culture as a Whole” extended case studies, on Western “transnationals” living in China and on Boko Haram and Islamic violence in Nigeria
• An entire new chapter on medical anthropology
• More supplemental readings on the companion website (at least three per chapter) more tightly integrated with the textbook
Eller presents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence—not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence—but also more prevalent forms. He devotes separate chapters to:
■sacrifice (both animal and human);
■self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom);
■religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts);
■ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia);
■religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews’ wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars);
■and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and “dowry death,” among other manifestations).
In the final chapter, “Religion and Nonviolence,” Eller examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict.
Taking a scrupulously objective approach, Eller neither accuses nor exonerates religion in regard to violence. Rather, he presents the evidence revealing which kinds of religious ideas and practices contribute to certain kinds of violence and why. In so doing, he goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.
This second edition includes additional material on medical, urban and political anthropology, as well as increased coverage of religion and culture, with particular focus on Islamic societies. An updated and expanded range of case studies explores the diverse nature of anthropology through appealing subjects as "Blue Jeans Going Global" and "Migrating Brides in Northern India". The text also develops two recurring themes--Islam and the corporation. Students will especially welcome the additional focus on careers in anthropology and how it is used in everyday life.
The design of this second edition has various aids to facilitate student learning:
A wealth of additional color images help bring concepts and theories to life.
Explains difficult key terms with marginal glosses and promotes further reading with “key texts” feature.
Assists study with boxed chapter summaries, an extensive bibliography and index.
Exclusive to purchasers of this new edition is 12-month access to the Routledge Interactive version of your textbook, including audio introductions from the author, exclusive supplementary case studies and study guides, and quiz material to test your learning."
identifying trends but also distinct and important variation, both geographically and historically. This variation challenges simplistic explanations in terms of the region’s violent past or an enduring “culture of violence.” The discussion thus then turns to the elucidation of factors that influence the incidence of gun violence, from poverty, urbanization, gangs, and drug trafficking to concerns about weak states and personal security. Finally, the chapter shares some of the gun policies and regulations in the region, surveying the steps that countries have taken—and others like its great northern neighbor can take—to curtail the damage and loss of life attributed to guns.
specifically the concept of a law-giving and order-preserving god. Other political theologies are possible, however, and this essay considers one—the trickster—a culture hero and comic buffoon who delightedly and shamelessly violates and subverts order to inaugurate a new reality of his own making, if not of his own will. The first half of the essay introduces the trickster as a cross-cultural agent of creative destruction, a messenger and civilization-bringer, and a clever fool. The second half explores how the last two centuries of Western social and intellectual history have shifted the ground from under a god of order toward a spirit of flux, transience, paradox, and liminality. The essay concludes that the contemporary post-modern state of permanent liminality is better symbolized and grasped through the mythical lens of the trickster than the
biblical god, including and especially contemporary global right-wing populism, whose leading figures reflect the wicked energy and appeal of the trickster impulse.
attention to Egypt. After examining the statistical information on nonbelief, including in unlikely places such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, the article considers the terminology of nonbelief in Arabic, which is not equivalent to English terminology and illustrates the local nature of nonreligion, constructed in relation to local concepts of religion. The article then discusses the social and legal perils of nonbelievers in societies still committed to religious belief and finally investigates the lives and activities of nonbelievers and atheists, individually, in groups, and online. The article concludes with some reflections on modernization and secularization, noting the forces that have made nonbelief more possible and prevalent in Muslim-majority contexts but also led to multiple specific
secularities and atheisms.
gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is
set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and
can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining
the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology’s engagement with the subject, going
back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism
in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct
extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated
with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of
terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the
essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new
identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from
the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal,
will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of
human diversity.
applying anthropological and ethnographic methods
to contemporary right-wing populism and illiberalism, around
the world but with a special interest in the United States, are
reviewed. While the authors discover great diversity in conservative,
populist, and ethnonationalist movements and agendas
based on local circumstances (for instance, European Union
membership) and national history and culture, all identify
anger and identity (racial and/or ethnic) as central to the current
global wave of populist mobilization. The review concludes
with an analysis of cultural loss and the appeal of
illiberal democracy as a winning strategy.
https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2021.vol3.no1.01
Recent initiatives by Stein, Flynn, Conrad, and others have promoted 'unbelief' as a replacement, an 'umbrella term,' for concepts like atheism, secularism, and irreligion. In this essay I show that unbelief as it is currently construed cannot serve this function: it is simultaneously too broad (embracing not only irreligion but heterodox religious belief) and too narrow (focusing on religious belief to the exclusion of other types of belief), and it commits a taxonomic error of equating unbelief with categories above and below its level. However, I also argue that, once reformed and disciplined, unbelief is a valuable and essential tool, and I provide some resources and models for a future Unbelief Studies in the Credition Research Project and the literature on agnotology, as well as ethnographical material questioning the cross-cultural applicability of belief and unbelief. Finally, I charge Unbelief Studies with the mission not only to analyze belief but to criticize and ultimately banish it as a bad mental and linguistic habit that perpetuates mistakes and leaves individuals vulnerable to further faults while eroding social trust and facticity itself.