Harald Wydra | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)

Books by Harald Wydra

Although mimetic theory does not revolve around power and statecraft, its focus on desires, imita... more Although mimetic theory does not revolve around power and statecraft, its focus on desires, imitation, and passions makes Girard's thought an indispensable guide to understanding Machiavelli's work. In spite of Machiavelli's parochial concern with his homeland, the spheres of desire and passionate interests constitute no less than the contours of a mimetic anthropology of political conflict that has a universal appeal. In turn, a Machiavellian reading of Girard suggests that mimetic theory should become much more prominent in political sciences, conceived as human sciences: It is necessary to understand that political processes transcend the dichotomy between individualism and the collective action of institutional logic.

This ground-breaking collection introduces readers to the fascinating research field of political... more This ground-breaking collection introduces readers to the fascinating research field of political anthropology. The chapters engage in major theoretical and methodological debates to provide interpretive frames, analytical tools and ethnographic illustrations for culturally based interpretations of political phenomena, revealing the intersection between anthropology, culture, politics and international relations.

In the absence of democratic state institutions, Eastern European countries were considered to po... more In the absence of democratic state institutions, Eastern European countries were considered to possess only myths of democracy. Working on the premise that democracy is not only an institutional arrangement but also a civilisational project, this book argues that mythical narratives help to understand the emergence of democracy without 'democrats'. Examining different national traditions as well as pre-communist and communist narratives, myths are seen as politically fabricated 'programmes of truth' that form and sustain the political imagination. Appearing as cultural, literary, or historical resources, myths amount to ideology in narrative form, which actors use in political struggles for the sake of achieving social compliance with and loyalty to the authority of new political forms. Drawing on a wide range of case studies including Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, this book argues that narratives about the past are not simply legacies of former regimes but have actively shaped representations and meanings of democracy in the region. Taking different theoretical and methodological approaches, the power of myth is explored for issues such as leadership, collective identity formation, literary representation of heroic figures, cultural symbolism in performative art as well as for the constitution of legitimacy and civic identity in post-communist democracies.

Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globa... more Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globalizing world. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in situations
that fall between defined structures and have uncertain outcomes. Based on case studies of some of the most important crises in history, society, and politics, this volume explores the methodological range and applicability of the
concept to a variety of concrete social and political problems.

This path-breaking book argues that practices of the sacred are consti- tutive of modern secular ... more This path-breaking book argues that practices of the sacred are consti- tutive of modern secular politics. Following a tradition of enquiry in anthropology and political theory, it examines how limit situations shape the political imagination and collective identity. As an experiential and cultural fact, the sacred emerges within, and simultaneously transcends, transgressive dynamics such as revolutions, wars, or globalisation. Rather than conceive the sacred as a religious doctrine or a metaphysical belief, Wydra examines its adaptive functions as origins, truths, and order which are historically contingent across time and transformative of political aspirations. He suggests that the brokenness of political reality is a permanent condition of humanity, which will continue to produce quests for the sacred, and transcendental political frames. Working in the spirit of the genealogical mode of enquiry, this book examines the secular sources of political theologies, the democratic sacred, the communist imagination, European political identity, the sources of human rights, and the relationship of victimhood to new wars.

Papers by Harald Wydra

Handbook of Political Anthropology

This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European s... more This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European social theorists. It will have three particularities. While most of the best-known thinkers from the region were originally Marxists, little space will be devoted to them, as ...

This chapter explores how political anthropology can contribute to understanding, and challenging... more This chapter explores how political anthropology can contribute to understanding, and challenging, the multiple forms of postdemocracy that have arisen in recent decades. Ethnographic research demonstrates how postdemocratic governance can be immensely harmful, as it is frequently underpinned by dynamics quite different to the beneficent principles it purports to embody. This discovery in itself can empower anthropologists to make important critical interventions. But political anthropology also clarifies how postdemocratic arrangements actually arise. It moves us beyond simplistic portraits of postdemocracy as grounded in 'economic power' or 'a turn to expertise', instead illuminating the complex processes by which different private (and public) interests gain leverage in both policy-making processes and citizens' political aspirations. These insights do not just make for better causal explanations of political transformations. They are also a vital resource for activism, enabling us to explore alternatives to postdemocracy that are responsive to the concerns of the people we work with, rather than-or perhaps as well as-our own. The chapter illustrates these arguments with examples drawn from Brazil, the United States, and the author's own research in Indonesia.

Handbook of Political Anthropology

This handbook introduces readers to the field of political anthropology. It engages major debates... more This handbook introduces readers to the field of political anthropology. It engages major debates and the shifting borders of a moving field of enquiry at the intersection of anthropology, politics, philosophy and international relations. The aim is not only to provide an overview of the current debates around political anthropology today, but also to flesh out the potential and the limits of the approaches, methodologies and explanatory frames developed by scholars working within political anthropology. Political anthropology is not an easily definable subject area or sub-discipline. The variety of approaches one can connect to the term makes it virtually impossible to interrogate the what, how, why and where of current political anthropology: one is immediately thrown into the daunting task of reviewing not only the entire discipline of anthropology but also the many interfaces between anthropology and the social and political sciences in a world of blurry boundaries. In a sense, it may appear futile writing a handbook on a field whose contours seem difficult, if not impossible, to delineate. And yet it is worth a try. It is worth a try exactly because we find ourselves in a moment where there is a growing awareness of the need to retrieve older insights and combine them with newer developments. Social science, after all, should be cumulative. Contemporary challenges in an ever-shifting world should not necessarily result in a giving up on disciplinary traditions. Indeed, to speak with Marcel Mauss, the "political" cannot be so neatly separated, as the political sphere intersects with social, economic, legal, and cultural patterns and practices, forming a "total social fact". This might be a compelling reason for a return to classical insights, exactly due to problems of the contemporary political scene, whose underlying challenges and dangers may not always be so radically new after all. Surely, the idea of politics as a total social fact would seem to fit better in societies with low degrees of institutional differentiation. However, anthropologists have successfully argued that also in modern states a great deal of politics takes place via informal networks and informal political action, underpinning or overlapping with the more objectifiable institutional level that political scientists tend to concentrate on. Here, anthropology still offers a supplement to, and an enriching of, the wider social and political sciences. Political anthropology has been a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom in political science. It has called into question the validity of rationalist, structuralist or normative explanations of states and relations between states. Political anthropology has framed new visions of contemporary interpretive political analysis. This occurred, on the one hand, by adopting analytical tools from germane disciplines and, on the other hand, by providing analytical tools to germane disciplines as well. The move from structuralism and functionalism to process approaches, for instance, would be met by new theoretical frameworks inspired by post-structuralism and post-modernism. Post-structuralism has facilitated a decisive turn towards acknowledging the agency of

Prace Kulturoznawcze, 2017

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2018

This paper links memory to generations of meaning and argues that generational belonging mediates... more This paper links memory to generations of meaning and argues that generational belonging mediates access to memory. Generations of meaning create memories because they connect experiences, beyond the lifetime of individuals, with the wider cultural existence of social communities. Such connections can be understood as a hermeneutic and relational process. Meaning is not a factor of causation, but is cumulative, as meanings are recollected across generational thresholds of experience. This paper conceptualizes such thresholds of experience through three lines of enquiry. First, generativity produces new carriers of culture and memory, which sustain perceptions of historical beginnings. Second, generational change is a condition of liminality and in-betweenness, which people work to transcend by mediating fractures and thus connecting past problem spaces to frameworks of anticipation. Third, narrative commitments emerge as memories are recollected across different temporalities, incom...

Titre d'un ouvrage de Norbert Elias, la notion de « proces de civilisation » est entree depui... more Titre d'un ouvrage de Norbert Elias, la notion de « proces de civilisation » est entree depuis une trentaine d'annees dans la boite a outils des sciences sociales. Paradoxalement, c'est au moment ou cette notion, ainsi que les concepts et la lecture du social qui l'accompagnent, connaissent une indeniable consecration que les objections critiques se multiplient. Est il possible, est il meme serieux de suggerer l'idee d'un mouvement vers la civilisation, comme une regression de la violence, renforcement des autocontrole chez les humains, dans un siecle marque par le genocide des Juifs d'Europe, les horreurs du Cambodge et du Rwanda ?. et sur un registre moins tragique, est il convaincant de vanter la puissance inedite de contraintes interiorisees dans une epoque associee a la liberation des mœurs, a une expression moins corsetee des affects, aux sports et experience « extremes » C'est a ces questions que s'attachent onze contributions du colloque « Question au proces de Civilisation » (Rennes, 2000). Elles donnent la parole a des chercheurs qui ont directement travaille avec Elias et rendent accessible a un public francophone un espace de debat largement inedit. Elles se confrontent au grand defi que posent a l'analyse d'Elias les genocides du XX siecle. Elles suggerent , a travers un ensemble d'etudes originales (de la litterature gore aux concerts rock, via la « privatisation » du politique) ce que pourraient etre les traits d'une etape plus « informelle » de la dynamique civilisatrice. C'est donc une œuvre essentielle de la sociologie moderne qui est ainsi actualisee.

Norbert Élias et la théorie de la civilisation

Introduction Ce texte propose quelques réflexions autour des tendances à la violence extrême qui ... more Introduction Ce texte propose quelques réflexions autour des tendances à la violence extrême qui se sont manifestées dans des guerres en ex-Yougoslavie pendant les années quatre-vingt-dix. Après la fin du communisme, le génocide et l´épuration ethnique en ex-Yougoslavie ont choqué le monde occidental. Il est apparu que la fin du communisme ne correspondait pas à l´arrivée d´un monde démocratique et pacifique désiré par les tenants des théories de la modernisation. Ainsi les guerres en Yougosl..

Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition, 2000

Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition, 2000

This paper examines the imitation of models in the Polish transition. The reconstruction of an ec... more This paper examines the imitation of models in the Polish transition. The reconstruction of an economic and political order in 1989 has widely been interpreted as the imitation of capitalism and democracy. This paper conceives of imitation as aiming to overcome the distance to a desired model. By applying Bruno Latour's concept of action at a distance, it is argued that institutions and practices of capitalism and democracy were not the principal models of imitation in the Polish transition. Essentially, Poland wanted to shorten the distance to model-like 'islands' in the West and in its own past. Rather than to Team' capitalism or democracy as of 1989, Poland sought identification with the image of the West and with the image of the trade union Solidarity.

Although mimetic theory does not revolve around power and statecraft, its focus on desires, imita... more Although mimetic theory does not revolve around power and statecraft, its focus on desires, imitation, and passions makes Girard's thought an indispensable guide to understanding Machiavelli's work. In spite of Machiavelli's parochial concern with his homeland, the spheres of desire and passionate interests constitute no less than the contours of a mimetic anthropology of political conflict that has a universal appeal. In turn, a Machiavellian reading of Girard suggests that mimetic theory should become much more prominent in political sciences, conceived as human sciences: It is necessary to understand that political processes transcend the dichotomy between individualism and the collective action of institutional logic.

This ground-breaking collection introduces readers to the fascinating research field of political... more This ground-breaking collection introduces readers to the fascinating research field of political anthropology. The chapters engage in major theoretical and methodological debates to provide interpretive frames, analytical tools and ethnographic illustrations for culturally based interpretations of political phenomena, revealing the intersection between anthropology, culture, politics and international relations.

In the absence of democratic state institutions, Eastern European countries were considered to po... more In the absence of democratic state institutions, Eastern European countries were considered to possess only myths of democracy. Working on the premise that democracy is not only an institutional arrangement but also a civilisational project, this book argues that mythical narratives help to understand the emergence of democracy without 'democrats'. Examining different national traditions as well as pre-communist and communist narratives, myths are seen as politically fabricated 'programmes of truth' that form and sustain the political imagination. Appearing as cultural, literary, or historical resources, myths amount to ideology in narrative form, which actors use in political struggles for the sake of achieving social compliance with and loyalty to the authority of new political forms. Drawing on a wide range of case studies including Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, this book argues that narratives about the past are not simply legacies of former regimes but have actively shaped representations and meanings of democracy in the region. Taking different theoretical and methodological approaches, the power of myth is explored for issues such as leadership, collective identity formation, literary representation of heroic figures, cultural symbolism in performative art as well as for the constitution of legitimacy and civic identity in post-communist democracies.

Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globa... more Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globalizing world. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in situations
that fall between defined structures and have uncertain outcomes. Based on case studies of some of the most important crises in history, society, and politics, this volume explores the methodological range and applicability of the
concept to a variety of concrete social and political problems.

This path-breaking book argues that practices of the sacred are consti- tutive of modern secular ... more This path-breaking book argues that practices of the sacred are consti- tutive of modern secular politics. Following a tradition of enquiry in anthropology and political theory, it examines how limit situations shape the political imagination and collective identity. As an experiential and cultural fact, the sacred emerges within, and simultaneously transcends, transgressive dynamics such as revolutions, wars, or globalisation. Rather than conceive the sacred as a religious doctrine or a metaphysical belief, Wydra examines its adaptive functions as origins, truths, and order which are historically contingent across time and transformative of political aspirations. He suggests that the brokenness of political reality is a permanent condition of humanity, which will continue to produce quests for the sacred, and transcendental political frames. Working in the spirit of the genealogical mode of enquiry, this book examines the secular sources of political theologies, the democratic sacred, the communist imagination, European political identity, the sources of human rights, and the relationship of victimhood to new wars.

Handbook of Political Anthropology

This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European s... more This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European social theorists. It will have three particularities. While most of the best-known thinkers from the region were originally Marxists, little space will be devoted to them, as ...

This chapter explores how political anthropology can contribute to understanding, and challenging... more This chapter explores how political anthropology can contribute to understanding, and challenging, the multiple forms of postdemocracy that have arisen in recent decades. Ethnographic research demonstrates how postdemocratic governance can be immensely harmful, as it is frequently underpinned by dynamics quite different to the beneficent principles it purports to embody. This discovery in itself can empower anthropologists to make important critical interventions. But political anthropology also clarifies how postdemocratic arrangements actually arise. It moves us beyond simplistic portraits of postdemocracy as grounded in 'economic power' or 'a turn to expertise', instead illuminating the complex processes by which different private (and public) interests gain leverage in both policy-making processes and citizens' political aspirations. These insights do not just make for better causal explanations of political transformations. They are also a vital resource for activism, enabling us to explore alternatives to postdemocracy that are responsive to the concerns of the people we work with, rather than-or perhaps as well as-our own. The chapter illustrates these arguments with examples drawn from Brazil, the United States, and the author's own research in Indonesia.

Handbook of Political Anthropology

This handbook introduces readers to the field of political anthropology. It engages major debates... more This handbook introduces readers to the field of political anthropology. It engages major debates and the shifting borders of a moving field of enquiry at the intersection of anthropology, politics, philosophy and international relations. The aim is not only to provide an overview of the current debates around political anthropology today, but also to flesh out the potential and the limits of the approaches, methodologies and explanatory frames developed by scholars working within political anthropology. Political anthropology is not an easily definable subject area or sub-discipline. The variety of approaches one can connect to the term makes it virtually impossible to interrogate the what, how, why and where of current political anthropology: one is immediately thrown into the daunting task of reviewing not only the entire discipline of anthropology but also the many interfaces between anthropology and the social and political sciences in a world of blurry boundaries. In a sense, it may appear futile writing a handbook on a field whose contours seem difficult, if not impossible, to delineate. And yet it is worth a try. It is worth a try exactly because we find ourselves in a moment where there is a growing awareness of the need to retrieve older insights and combine them with newer developments. Social science, after all, should be cumulative. Contemporary challenges in an ever-shifting world should not necessarily result in a giving up on disciplinary traditions. Indeed, to speak with Marcel Mauss, the "political" cannot be so neatly separated, as the political sphere intersects with social, economic, legal, and cultural patterns and practices, forming a "total social fact". This might be a compelling reason for a return to classical insights, exactly due to problems of the contemporary political scene, whose underlying challenges and dangers may not always be so radically new after all. Surely, the idea of politics as a total social fact would seem to fit better in societies with low degrees of institutional differentiation. However, anthropologists have successfully argued that also in modern states a great deal of politics takes place via informal networks and informal political action, underpinning or overlapping with the more objectifiable institutional level that political scientists tend to concentrate on. Here, anthropology still offers a supplement to, and an enriching of, the wider social and political sciences. Political anthropology has been a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom in political science. It has called into question the validity of rationalist, structuralist or normative explanations of states and relations between states. Political anthropology has framed new visions of contemporary interpretive political analysis. This occurred, on the one hand, by adopting analytical tools from germane disciplines and, on the other hand, by providing analytical tools to germane disciplines as well. The move from structuralism and functionalism to process approaches, for instance, would be met by new theoretical frameworks inspired by post-structuralism and post-modernism. Post-structuralism has facilitated a decisive turn towards acknowledging the agency of

Prace Kulturoznawcze, 2017

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2018

This paper links memory to generations of meaning and argues that generational belonging mediates... more This paper links memory to generations of meaning and argues that generational belonging mediates access to memory. Generations of meaning create memories because they connect experiences, beyond the lifetime of individuals, with the wider cultural existence of social communities. Such connections can be understood as a hermeneutic and relational process. Meaning is not a factor of causation, but is cumulative, as meanings are recollected across generational thresholds of experience. This paper conceptualizes such thresholds of experience through three lines of enquiry. First, generativity produces new carriers of culture and memory, which sustain perceptions of historical beginnings. Second, generational change is a condition of liminality and in-betweenness, which people work to transcend by mediating fractures and thus connecting past problem spaces to frameworks of anticipation. Third, narrative commitments emerge as memories are recollected across different temporalities, incom...

Titre d'un ouvrage de Norbert Elias, la notion de « proces de civilisation » est entree depui... more Titre d'un ouvrage de Norbert Elias, la notion de « proces de civilisation » est entree depuis une trentaine d'annees dans la boite a outils des sciences sociales. Paradoxalement, c'est au moment ou cette notion, ainsi que les concepts et la lecture du social qui l'accompagnent, connaissent une indeniable consecration que les objections critiques se multiplient. Est il possible, est il meme serieux de suggerer l'idee d'un mouvement vers la civilisation, comme une regression de la violence, renforcement des autocontrole chez les humains, dans un siecle marque par le genocide des Juifs d'Europe, les horreurs du Cambodge et du Rwanda ?. et sur un registre moins tragique, est il convaincant de vanter la puissance inedite de contraintes interiorisees dans une epoque associee a la liberation des mœurs, a une expression moins corsetee des affects, aux sports et experience « extremes » C'est a ces questions que s'attachent onze contributions du colloque « Question au proces de Civilisation » (Rennes, 2000). Elles donnent la parole a des chercheurs qui ont directement travaille avec Elias et rendent accessible a un public francophone un espace de debat largement inedit. Elles se confrontent au grand defi que posent a l'analyse d'Elias les genocides du XX siecle. Elles suggerent , a travers un ensemble d'etudes originales (de la litterature gore aux concerts rock, via la « privatisation » du politique) ce que pourraient etre les traits d'une etape plus « informelle » de la dynamique civilisatrice. C'est donc une œuvre essentielle de la sociologie moderne qui est ainsi actualisee.

Norbert Élias et la théorie de la civilisation

Introduction Ce texte propose quelques réflexions autour des tendances à la violence extrême qui ... more Introduction Ce texte propose quelques réflexions autour des tendances à la violence extrême qui se sont manifestées dans des guerres en ex-Yougoslavie pendant les années quatre-vingt-dix. Après la fin du communisme, le génocide et l´épuration ethnique en ex-Yougoslavie ont choqué le monde occidental. Il est apparu que la fin du communisme ne correspondait pas à l´arrivée d´un monde démocratique et pacifique désiré par les tenants des théories de la modernisation. Ainsi les guerres en Yougosl..

Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition, 2000

Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition, 2000

This paper examines the imitation of models in the Polish transition. The reconstruction of an ec... more This paper examines the imitation of models in the Polish transition. The reconstruction of an economic and political order in 1989 has widely been interpreted as the imitation of capitalism and democracy. This paper conceives of imitation as aiming to overcome the distance to a desired model. By applying Bruno Latour's concept of action at a distance, it is argued that institutions and practices of capitalism and democracy were not the principal models of imitation in the Polish transition. Essentially, Poland wanted to shorten the distance to model-like 'islands' in the West and in its own past. Rather than to Team' capitalism or democracy as of 1989, Poland sought identification with the image of the West and with the image of the trade union Solidarity.

Journal of International Political Theory, 2015

This article argues that quests for sacrality are creative forces in the formation of collective ... more This article argues that quests for sacrality are creative forces in the formation of collective identities in the global age. Shifting the vantage point towards extraordinary politics of liminal globality, the first part captures borderline experiences where political reality is broken and markers of certainty dissolve. Taking the lead from mimetic theory, the second part looks at the ambivalent sources of the sacred. Symbols of peace, reconciliation and order originate in violence. The third part illustrates varieties of the global sacred by looking at the democratic imagination and the politics of humanitarian reason. Finally, the constitutive role of the sacred is examined for the background of cultural frames and with a view to the unconscious and non-agentive drivers of global processes. Rather than a fundamentalist remainder in a secular world or a foundational principle, the sacred is a transitional and processual reality that performs a hinge function that balances the frag...

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy, 2007

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy, 2007

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy

Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with autho... more Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This 2007 book connects the study of democratisation in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratisation is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.

The Sociological Review, 2000

In this chapter, Harald Wydra argues that the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe has been a long... more In this chapter, Harald Wydra argues that the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe has been a long-term social process interwoven with the collapse of communism whose origins are long before 1989. He challenges the vision of East and West as two isolated blocs that prevailed in the 1950s and the assumption of gradual convergence that became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. His main focus is upon the East where, he believes, dissident movements created a ‘second reality’, undermining the myths propounded by the official communist establishment. He argues that there was an increase in self-restraint on the part of the communist state accompanied by the growth of civil society and non-violent political opposition. The East experienced a feeling of ‘unrequited love’ in its relationship to the West. Dissidents took their standards and aspirations from Western experience but found themselves largely ignored by the West. Since 1989, democratisation has increased the influence of western m...

International Political Anthropology , 2018

International Political Anthropology , 2011

Bernhard Giesen (2010) Zwischenlagen. Das Ausserordentliche als Grund der sozialen Wirklichkeit. ... more Bernhard Giesen (2010) Zwischenlagen. Das Ausserordentliche als Grund der sozialen Wirklichkeit. Göttingen: Velbrück, 2010, pp.351. ISBN: 978-3938808931

International Political Anthropology, 2019

Hans Joas has written an ambitious book which aims to resituate the sacred 1 within the spheres o... more Hans Joas has written an ambitious book which aims to resituate the sacred 1 within the spheres of power. The subject matter aligns with a growing trend in the humanities and social sciences, which not only disputes the secularisation thesis but even would take issue with the idea of a post-secular age. Within Joas's own distinguished and prolific oeuvre, this book can be read as the culmination of an earlier range of books dedicated to the question of how values and ideals in an immanent social world can have some pre-rational foundations, thus connecting individual rationality and moral universalism. While in The Genesis of Values (2001), Joas had argued that values emerge in experiences of self-transcendence, the more recent The Sacredness of the Person (2013) investigated the historical-moral sources of human dignity. This book has a related purpose of rereading modernity through the lenses of processes of sacralisation. In order to clear the way for this enterprise, Joas aims to break the spell of process notions that seemingly provide historical foundations to sociological analysis. In particular, Joas attacks rationalisation, functional differentiation and modernisation. In order to do this, he launches a frontal attack against one of Max Weber's most famous notions, that of Entzauberung. With the careful dissection (begriffliche Zerlegung) of the term Entzauberung, Joas pays certain respect to Weber as a seminal thinker and also claims that a judgement on Entzauberung is no final word on Weber's life work (208). In essence, however, Weber is reprimanded for sloppiness, inconsistency and lack of differentiation. Underpinned by a healthy degree of scepticism regarding Weber's canonical status as one of the founding fathers of sociology, Joas treats Weber's life work not as the expression of superior insight but as the construction of an extremely influential but also deeply problematic narrative, which is the story of Entzauberung (206). His fundamental thesis holds that the formidable efficiency of the narrative of Entzauberung is due to its conceptual ambiguity (begriffliche Uneindeutigkeit) (207). Joas argues that Weber's conceptualisation of Entzauberung contains many diverse and mutually contradictory elements. While none of the phenomena described by Weber should be denied, the strong suggestive power of their connectivity by means of an ongoing permanent process of Entzauberung must be taken with great caution (422). Not only do we need different notions to grasp Entzauberung-and Joas proposes a differentiation into Entmagisierung, Entsakralisierung and Enttranszendentalisierung-but we also need to understand how Weber's initial concern with the growth of rationalising religious experiences was eventually overtaken by postulating process notions that would be applied to diagnose contemporary predicaments. Substantially, this book engages with pioneering works that understood religion as a product of man's historical consciousness (in the first chapter, on David Hume), explored the psychological depth of religious experience (in the second chapter, on William James) and claimed the deeply rooted religious foundations of societies (in the third chapter, on Émile Durkheim). The most comprehensive chapter is comparative in nature but also contains the

Call for Papers for on-line conference organised by International Political Anthropology 'Limin... more Call for Papers for on-line conference organised by International Political Anthropology

'Liminality, disease and politics', 20-21 May 2021