The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies

This handbook showcases a set of exemplary contemporary studies on a wide range of topics in Ritual Studies, based on firsthand ethnographic research. The studies are chosen to demonstrate the scope of current theorizing on ritual practices, illuminated by the field experience of the authors. Each chapter highlights a specific concern with the process of theorizing, along with explication of how theory emerges from the ethnography, using an interpretive approach. The topics cover classic fields of study, such as shamanic practices, sorcery and witchcraft, sacrifice, religious pilgrimages and individual experience, inter-rituality and the compatibility of practices, temple organization and cultural intimacy, empathy and the situations of migrants and asylum seekers, sport and the construction of identities, performance studies, social exchange and sharing, ritual innovation, hospitality, cognition, mortuary practices,  Pentecostal Christianity, and revivals and the reconstitution of charisma over time. Throughout the volume there is an emphasis on creativity and change in ritual practices over time, in counterpoint to the conventional view that rituals represent continuity and stability in social life.The scholars collected here provide pathways through the complex and cross-disciplinary landscape of Ritual Studies today, and ultimately point to developments in the future. Edited by two of the most prominent Ritual Studies researchers active today, this volume should serve as an invaluable resource for scholars and students of the field for years to come.  Pamela J. Stewart is Senior Research Associate in Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Andrew J. Strathern is Andrew Mellon Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Stewart and Strathern have a long history of joint publications and research, with nearly fifty book publications and over two hundred co-authored articles. They are the long-standing co-editors of the Journal of Ritual Studies, and co-editors of the book series Ritual Studies and the volume Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion (2014).