Chapter 9. Syncretism: The Problem of Definition, the Definition of the Problem

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents V
3. Introduction: From Contingency to Continuity 1
4. Part I. Marginality, Play and Power
5. Margin
6. Chapter 1. Symbols of Marginality in the Biographies of Religious and Secular Innovators: A comparative study of the lives of Jesus, Waldes, Booth, Kimbangu, Buddha, Mohammed and Marx 35
7. Chapter 2. The Playful Seriousness of Brazilian Religiosity: Mario Quintana on Religion 51
8. Inversion
9. Chapter 3. Paradise lost: The domestication of religious imagination 69
10. Chapter 4. The Popular Use of Popular Religion: Power and Meaning in Three Brazilian Popular Religions 92
11. Play and Ritual
12. Chapter 5. Enjoying an Emerging Alternative World: Ritual in Its Own Ludic Right 105
13. Chapter 6. Feasts: A View from Cultural Anthropology 125
14. Power and Meaning-making
15. Chapter 7. The Power Dimensions of the Christian Community: An Anthropological Model 143
16. Chapter 8. Identity, Religious Pluralism and Ritual in Brazil: Umbanda and Pentecostalism 169
17. Part II. Two Fields
18. Syncretism
19. Chapter 9. Syncretism: The Problem of Definition, the Definition of the Problem 195
20. Chapter 10. Syncretists, Fundamentalists and Scholars Compared 215
21. Chapter 11. Joana’s Story: Syncretism and Gender at the Actor’s Level 234
22. Pentecostalism
23. Chapter 12. Paradoxical Views on a Paradoxical Religion: Models for the Explanation of Pentecostal Expansion in Brazil and Chile 253
24. Chapter 13. Globalization and Pentecostal Success 285
25. Part III. Methodological Applications
26. Methodological Ludism
27. Chapter 14. Methodological Ludism: Beyond Religionism and Reductionism 311
28. Chapter 15. The Third Bank of the River: Play, Methodological Ludism and the Definition of Religion 339
29. Religion and Science
30. Chapter 16. Knowledge of Religion and Religious Knowledge: The Cultural Anthropology of Religion and a Religious Anthropology 365
31. Chapter 17. As Close as a Scholar Can Get: Exploring a One-Field Approach to the Study of Religion 388
32. Bibliography André Droogers 411
33. Original publication of chapters 424
34. Index 427