Caroline Humphrey Bücher

Reich illustrierter Überblick über die vielfältigen Formen von Sakralarchitektur in vergangenen und bestehenden Kulturen.

Humphrey and Laidlaw present a new and radical general theory of ritual by drawing on an ethnographically rich account of the ritual worship of the Jains of western India. Ritual, they argue, is not a logically separate type of activity, but rather a quality that can be attributed to a wide range of everyday activities. In exploring the issue of what is distinctive about actions which are ritualized, this book makes an ambitious and controversial contribution to social and religious anthropology.

The Russia-China border is a study in contrasts, with booming cities on the Chinese side and sleepy villages on the Russian. Both governments discourage cross-border interaction, yet exchange is constant. Anthropologists Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey describe a vigorous and diverse transnational society facing profound political constraints.

A Monastery in Time is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery—the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia—from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries. Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen’s vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today’s practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

Velkolepé chrámy, katedrály či mešity jsou odrazem vědomí sounáležitosti s bohy a staly se symboly duchovní kultury a lidské touhy po věčnosti.