This small but interdisciplinary collection on ritual originally published between 1974 and 1998, draws together research by leading academics in the area of anthropology, sociology, history and religion and provides a focused approach to the study of ritual in human society. Comprised of 4 volumes, the collection offers a diverse study of how ritual plays a vital role in a variety of circumstances, including: Industrial society; Diasporas; Reproduction; Society; Death and bereavement. This academically stimulating set provides a uniquely interdisciplinary look at an area of study currently regaining prominence. It brings back into print a selection of previously unavailable titles, which will still be of interest to academics today, as at their time of publication. It will provide a must-have resource for academics and students seeking to better understand the use of ritual from a wide selection of areas. The collection will appeal to not only those working in the area of anthropology, but also history, sociology and religion.

Originally published in 1989, Death, Ritual and Bereavement examines the social history of death and dying from 1500 to the 1930s. This edited collection focuses on the death-bed, funerals, burials, mourning customs, and the expression of grief. The essays throw fresh light on developments which lie at the roots of present-day tendencies to minimize or conceal the most unpleasant aspects of death, among them the growing participation of doctors in the management of death-beds in the eighteenth century and the creation of extra-mural cemeteries, followed by the introduction of cremation in the nineteenth century. The volume also underlines the importance of religious belief, in helping the bereaved in past times. The book will appeal to students and academics of family and social history as well as history of medicine, religion and anthropology.

Originally published in 1984 Reproductive Ritual examines fertility and re-production in pre-industrial England. The book discusses both through anthropological research and reviews of contemporary literature that conscious family limitation was practised before the nineteenth century. The volume describes a surprising number of rules, regulations, taboos, injunctions, charms and herbal remedies used to affect pregnancy, and shows the extent to which individual women and men were concerned with controlling the size of their families. The fertility levels in England – as in Western Europe as a whole – were a very long way from the biological maximum in these centuries, and the book discusses the various reasons why this was so. The book reviews traditional ideas concerning the relationship between procreation and pleasure, drawn from a range of contemporary sources and discusses ways in which earlier generations sought both to promote and limit fertility. The book also examines abortion and shows how much evidence there is for its actual practice during the period and of traditional views towards it. This book provides a detailed understanding of historical attitudes towards conception family planning in pre-industrial England.

Media Rituals rethinks our accepted concepts of ritual behaviour for a media-saturated age. It connects ritual directly with questions of power, government, and surveillance and explores the ritual space which the media construct and where their power is legitimated. Drawing on sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of ritual, Couldry applies the work of theorists such as Durkheim, Bourdieu and Bloch to a number of important media arenas: the public media event; reality TV; Webcam sites; talk shows and docu-soaps; media pilgrimages; the construction of celebrity. In a final chapter, he imagines a different world where the media's ritual power is less, because the possibilities of participation in media production are more evenly shared.

The volumes in this set, originally published between 1978 and 1992, draw together research by leading academics in the area of the occult and provide a rigorous examination of related key issues. The collection examines occultism from a broad range of disciplines, from shamanism and the occult tarot, to the esoteric and spiritualism. It includes volumes across the disciplines of religion, covering new religious movements, spiritualism, ritual and magic practices. The three books that comprise this set include investigations into the evolution of occultism, as well as the history and practices of the occult as a religious movement. This collection brings back into print insightful and detailed books and will be a must-have resource for academics and students, not only of religion and anthropology, but also of history and psychology.

Originally published in 1974 Intimacy and Ritual is a sympathetic study of spiritualist activities and their relation to the practitioners' secular lives. It is based on the author's fieldwork as a 'participant observer' among spiritualists in a South Wales town.

This is a study of the history and consequences of the revolutionary campaign to transform culture and ritual in northern Vietnam. Based on official documents and several years of field research, it provides a detailed account of the nature of revolutionary cultural reform in Vietnam.

This collection of out-of-print books brings together research on the key aspects of Korea: its business world; religious world; society; and language. It is an essential reference collection.

Illustrated with over fifty photos, Civilizing Rituals merges contemporary debates with lively discussion and explores central issues involved in the making and displaying of art as industry and how it is presented to the community. Carol Duncan looks at how nations, institutions and private individuals present art , and how art museums are shaped by cultural, social and political determinants. Civilizing Rituals is ideal reading for students of art history and museum studies, and professionals in the field will also find much of interest here.