Religious Architecture: Anthropological Perspectives
Author(s): Oskar Verkaaik (Author)
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: September 26, 2013
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 230 pages
- ISBN-10: 908964511X
- ISBN-13: 9789089645111
Book Description
Borrowing from a range of theories on spacemaking and material religion, and with contributions from anthropologists working in the United Kingdom, Mali, Brazil, Spain, and Italy, this fascinating and comprehensive study develops an anthropological perspective on modern religious architecture including mosques, churches, and synagogues. Religious Architecture examines how religious buildings take their place in opposition to their secular surroundings and, in so doing, function not only as community centers in urban daily life, but also as evocations of the sublime that help believers to move beyond the boundaries of modern subjectivity.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Compelling and thought provoking collection of essays by anthropologists on religious architecture that shed new theoretical light on the relation between the material and immaterial in the realm of religion in our so-called secular world" -- Jojada Verrips, em. professor of cultural anthropology, University of Amsterdam.
About the Author
Oskar Verkaaik is associate professor affiliated with the Department of Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam.