Catherine Bell Research Articles

Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equality, and Respect for Difference

Introduction / Michael Asch 1. Culture and Anarchy in Indian Country / J. Edward Chamberlin 2. Challenging Assumptions: The Impact of Precedent in Aboriginal Rights Litigation / Catherine Bell and Michael Asch 3. Re-Examining Culturally Appropriate Models / Emma LaRoque 4. The Impact of Treaty 9 on Natural Resource Development in Northern Ontario / Patrick Macklem 5. The Meaning of Aboriginal Title / Kent McNeil 6. Wampum at Niagara: Canadian Legal History, Self-Government, and the Royal Proclamation / John Borrows 7. Understanding Treaty 6: An Indigenous Perspective / Sharon Venne 8. Affirming Aboriginal Title: A New Basis for Comprehensive Claims Negotiations / Michael Asch and Norman Zlotkin Notes Contributors Index

Writing as Devotion: Hagiographical Composition and the Cult of the Saints in Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Cyril of Scythopolis

The period from the fourth through the seventh century witnessed the elaboration of Christian cults of saints with a particular interest in the ascetic labors and miraculous powers of holy men and women. Although much evidence for these cults derives from literary saints' lives, a genre that emerged simultaneously with the cults, scholars have overlooked the role of the hagiographer as devotee. Previous studies have tended to view an author's piety as a barrier to historical inquiry, dismissing miracle accounts (among other hagiographical elements) as pious fictions. Neglect of the religious dimensions of the activity of writing arises in part from the confluence of two trends. First, renewed interest in late antique popular culture highlights the affinities between the religious life of elites and nonelites. Despite the refreshing aspects of this approach, the distinctly literary contributions to the formation of piety have been overlooked. Second, traditional divisions between patristics and social history continue to exclude theology and religious composition from discussions of piety on the assumption that thought and action are separable. Thanks to the work of Catherine Bell and others, students of religion can appreciate that thinking is an activity, something obvious to Christians in late antiquity such as Gregory of Nyssa, for whom contemplation of God was virtuous motion.

Renhed, ritual og samfund hos Mary Douglas

“Purity, Ritual and Society According to Mary Douglas: A problematization inspired by some recent post-structuralist critiques”. Mary Douglas’ two pioneering books, Purity and Danger and Natural Symbols, were together a major break-through in the study of religions. Today, when post-structuralist voices are heard more and more clearly, also in this discipline, it is, however, time for a rethinking of her hypotheses. The present article attempts particularly to account for two such critiques. One is the objection against the linguistic paradigm and specially against its separation between thought and act, meaning and ritual. On the basis of the criticisms of Talal Asad, Catherine Bell and others (and referring back to philosophy of language) purity is instead seen as a felicity condition of ritual action, practice or agency. The other critique is based on phenomenology of perception and is directed at the fundamental distinction in Douglas’ social symbolism between an undifferentiated experience and a conceptual ordering. This distinction is a misrepresentation of Gestalt psychology according to Ariel Glucklich who, instead, develops a phenomenological definition of purity as ‘resonance’ between the ritual’s mythical narrative and the sensory experience of its performance.

Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion. Five Studies. Edited by David Johnson. Berkeley, Calif.: Chinese Popular Culture Project, 1995. xv, 265 pp. $15.00.

The papers in this important and long-awaited volume were originally presented at a 1990 conference organized by the Chinese Popular Culture Project at the University of California at Berkeley, and this book is further testimony to the importance of that project for the China field as a whole. CHINOPERL members will be particularly interested in this volume, because of the inseparability of oral performance and religious practice in Chinese culture. The authors of these five studies are Robert L. Chard (Rituals and Scriptures of the Cult), David Johnson (Mu-lien in Pao-chiian*: The Performance Context and Religious Meaning of the Yu-ming Paoch 'uan ), Patricia Ebrey (The Liturgies for Sacrifices to Ancestors in Successive Versions of the Family Rituals), Ursula-Angelika Cedzich (The cult of the Wu-t'unglWu-hsien in History and Fiction: The Religious Roots of The Journey to the South), and Chinfa Lien (Language Adaptation in Taoist Liturgical Texts). A brief introduction by David Johnson relates the papers to each other and to the title of the volume, and extracts two major themes that run through all of them: the never-ending literati campaign to reform the religious practices and beliefs of ordinary people, and the characteristically Chinese blurring of the line dividing religion and entertainment (p.xi). This book makes very little reference to the theoretical issues raised by scholars of Chinese religion like Catherine Bell, but I will suggest below that the historical focus Johnson notes in these essays makes a different but no less important contribution. Chard's study of the cult of the God summarizes in straightforward, readable fashion the findings of his dissertation Master of the Family: History and Development of the Chinese Cult of the Stove (1990). Chard analyzes the two main manifestations of the cult, namely the lively, fairly irreverent annual send-off of the god whose report to the Jade Thearch is a China-wide feature of the New Year's celebration; and a tradition of God scriptures whose didactic tone and prescriptions for continual reverence bespeak a more elite or clerical (in any case, more rule-

Examining the Theoretical Discourse on RitualRitual Theory, Ritual Practice.Catherine Bell

Previous articleNext article No AccessBooksExamining the Theoretical Discourse on Ritual Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Catherine Bell Jarich G. OostenJarich G. Oosten Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 34, Number 1Feb., 1993 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/204146 Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1993 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Frédéric Laugrand In Memoriam, Études/Inuit/Studies 40, no.11 (Jan 2016): 235.https://doi.org/10.7202/1040155ar

Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.Catherine Bell

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsRitual Theory, Ritual Practice. Catherine Bell Philip SmithPhilip Smith Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 98, Number 2Sep., 1992 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/230030 Views: 7Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1992 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Christina Gringeri, Alexandra Himonas Choreographing the Dance of Dissent: Roman Catholic Womenpriests’ Claims to Authority, Religions 13, no.44 (Apr 2022): 351.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040351

Space and Place in Chinese Religious Traditions

Previous articleNext article No AccessSpace and Place in Chinese Religious TraditionsBernard FaureBernard Faure Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 26, Number 4May, 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463086 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Adam Yuet Chau Ritual Terroir, Archives de sciences sociales des religions , no.193193 (Apr 2021): 25–54.https://doi.org/10.4000/assr.58331Koichi Shinohara Animals in Medieval Chinese Biographies of Buddhist Monks, Religions 10, no.66 (May 2019): 348.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060348Huaiyu Chen The Road to Redemption: Killing Snakes in Medieval Chinese Buddhism, Religions 10, no.44 (Apr 2019): 247.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040247Mark Meulenbeld Death and Demonization of a Bodhisattva: Guanyin's Reformulation within Chinese Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no.33 (Jan 2016): 690–726.https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv104 David B. Gray Eating the Heart of the Brahmin: Representations of Alterity and the Formation of Identity in Tantric Buddhist Discourse Gray, History of Religions 45, no.11 (Jul 2015): 45–69.https://doi.org/10.1086/497816David Chidester The Poetics and Politics of Sacred Space: Towards a Critical Phenomenology of Religion, (Jan 1994): 211–231.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0846-1_15 Catherine Bell Religion and Chinese Culture: Toward an Assessment of "Popular Religion", History of Religions 29, no.11 (Oct 2015): 35–57.https://doi.org/10.1086/463170