Religions in Practice ─ An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion

Religions in Practice provides a comprehensive and primarily theme-based overview for students who are being introduced to the anthropology of religion. While covering traditional topics like magic, witchcraft, and spiritual healing, the book also addresses key contemporary subjects such as migration, nationalism, transnationalism, law, and secularism. It offers an issues-oriented perspective on everyday religious behaviors and examines small-scale societies as well as major, established religions. Bowen successfully balances the presentation of theory and concepts with rich case study examples, integrating theoretical discussion with a wide range of cross-cultural ethnographic material.

This seventh edition has been updated throughout and the opening chapters have been reworked to focus more clearly on the question of what is ‘religion’ and on approaches to studying religion. There is also a new final chapter on violence and religion. The book now contains a greater number of illustrations and each chapter ends with questions for discussion. Further resources are available via a comprehensive companion website.