Selves Engraved on Stone: Seals and Identity in the Ancient Near East, ca. 1415-1050 BCE /
:
Selves Engraved on Stone explores the ways in which multiple aspects of identity were constructed through the material, visual, and textual characteristics of personal seals from ancient Mesopotamia and Syria in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE.
Typically carved in stone, the cylinder seal is perhaps the most distinctive art form to emerge in ancient Mesopotamia. It spread across the Near East from ca. 3300 BCE onwards, and remained in use for millennia. What was the role of this intricate object in the making of a person's social identity? As the first comprehensive study dedicated to this question, Selves Engraved on Stone explores the ways in which different but often intersecting aspects of identity, such as religion, gender, community and profession, were constructed through the material, visual, and textual characteristics of seals from Mesopotamia and Syria.
:
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004524569
9789004524576
Contesting religious identities : transformations, disseminations, and mediations /
:
Religion is a hot topic on the public stages of 'secular' societies, not in its individualized liberal or orthodox form, but rather as a public statement, challenging the divide between the secular neutral space and the religious. In this new challenging modus, religion raises questions about identity, power, rationality, subjectivity, law and safety, but above all: religion questions, contests and even blurs the borders between the public and the private. These phenomena urge to rethink what are often considered to be clear differences between religions, between the public and the private and between the religious and the secular. In this volume scholars from a range of different disciplines map the different aspects of the dynamics of changing, contesting and contested religious identities.
:
Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004337459 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Politics of worship in the contemporary Middle East : sainthood in fragile states /
:
In Sainthood in Fragile States , a wide range of social scientists explore the contested role of sainthood in the contemporary Middle East. By expanding the notion of sainthood to cover both the religious and secular ways of dealing with extraordinary events, people and things, the volume offers new insights into the way sainthood is embedded in various levels of everyday life, as well as national and international politics. The case studies highlight how fragility as a central aspect of sainthood is a productive force that often consolidates tales of the extraordinary, and is also the source of contesting social identities. Contributors include: Andreas Bandak, Mikkel Bille, Jürgen Frembgen, Sune Haugbolle, Angie Heo, Daniella Kuzmanovic, Edith Szanto, and Pnina Werbner.
:
1 online resource (215 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004249226 :
1385-3376 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.