Participating scholar:
Prof. Harvey Whitehouse
Harvey Whitehouse is Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford.
After carrying out two years of field research on a 'cargo cult' in New Britain, Papua New Guinea in the late eighties, Harvey Whitehouse developed a theory of 'modes of religiosity' that has been the subject of extensive critical evaluation and testing by anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and cognitive scientists. In recent years, he has focused his energies on the development of collaborative programmes of research on cognition and culture. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and an Honorary Professor at Queen's University Belfast.
Major publications include:
Inside the Cult (1995), Arguments and Icons (2000), and Modes of Religiosity (2004).
>> next Participating scholar:
Among the scholars who have
agreed to participate are:
>> Prof. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger
New Forms of Research on Rituals – An Announcement
We are delighted to announce the publication of the conference
proceedings "Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual" (ed. by Axel
Michaels et al.) by the publishing house Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, Germany.
Please find below details of the publication:
Volume I: Grammars and Morphologies of Ritual Practices in Asia (2010)
Section I: Grammar and Morphology of Ritual
Editors: Axel Michaels (Heidelberg) & Anand Mishra (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritual Discourse, Ritual Performance in China and Japan
Editors: Lucia Dolce, Gil Raz & Katja Triplett
Volume II: Body, Performance, Agency, and Experience (2010)
Section I: Ritual and Agency
Editor: Angelos Chaniotis (Princeton)
Section II: Ritual, Performance, and Event
Editor: Silke Leopold and Hendrik Schulze (Heidelberg)
Section III: The Body and Food in Ritual
Editor: Eric Venbrux, Thomas Quartier and Joanna Wojtkowiak (Nijmegen)
Section IV: The Varieties of Ritual Experience
Editors: Jan Weinhold (Heidelberg) and Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff)
Volume III: State, Power, and Violence (2010)
Section I: Ritual and Violence
Editor: Margo Kitts (Honolulu)
Section II: Rituals of Power and Consent
Editor: Bernd Schneidmüller (Heidelberg)
Section III: Usurping Ritual
Editors: Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta (Zürich)
Section IV: State and Ritual in India
Editor: Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda (Kiel)
Volume IV: Reflexivity, Media, and Visuality (2011)
Section I: Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual
Editor: Udo Simon (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritual and Media
Editor: Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit (Heidelberg)
Section III: Ritual and Visuality
Editors: Petra H. Rösch (Köln) and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen (Berlin)
Section IV: Ritual Design
Editor: Gregor Ahn (Heidelberg)
Volume V: Transfer and Spaces (2010)
Section I: Ritual Transfer
Editors: Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer (Heidelberg)
Section II: Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity
Editor: Nils Holger Petersen (Kopenhagen)
Transforming Heidelberg into the center of research on rituals, the conference proceedings are an result of the international conference “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual” with its immense seminal potential of the traditional subject. Held by the collaborative research center SFB 619 “Ritual Dynamics” from Sept 29 to Oct 2, 2008, it was one of the most comprehensive conventions in the field of humanities and cultural science at the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg. As many as 600 participants from more than 15 disciplines discussed the future of research on rituals. More than 260 experts presented their research results in 22 panels, some of which spanned several days.
Aswell as the the conference the conference proceedings assembled all experts of importance to research on rituals in order to reassess the traditional subject in view of the latest research. Its outcomes will be pathbreaking for a future transcultural, interdisciplinary and multi-methodical research approach and as a basis for a possible ritual science. The convention was marked by the broad range of disciplines and the corresponding diversity of methods. It embraced a tremendous variety of topics in terms of cultural geography and spanned a time horizon from the antiquity to the present.
