Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
In the 1880s, the religious life in Finland was in the midst of a turbulent period which, for some, presented a threat to traditional moral values and social cohesion while for others it was the beginning of a new, more liberal era. Du…
Western esotericism appears to be a field most precarious in terms of positioning. This article will highlight the divide between ‘critics’ and ‘religionists’ from a pre-Enlightenment position by discussing René Descartes’ role within esote…
This article discusses the theosophy of Vera Hjelt (1857–1947), who was inspired by Annie Besant. Hjelt led an active life as a schoolteacher, factory owner, writer, occupational safety inspector and member of parliament. Hjelt experienced …
The subject matter of this special issue is anything but new: religious diversity has already been widely discussed in theology, philosophy, history and sociology. (Too) many times, however, diversity has been measured against the yar…
With the emergence of the neologism ‘intangible cultural heritage’ in 2003 and the adoption of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Law of the People’sRepublic of China in 2011 various popular religious practices in China which used to be consi…
Prayers in Christianity are often considered to be a theological or pastoral topic; while social scientific studies generally tend to reduce them, like prayers in other religious contexts, to the status of psychological responses bringing c…
Economic exchange in the Zangskar valley (in the high Indian Himalayas) was a tightly integrated element of the social and political network of this Buddhist–Muslim society . Accordingly people of the lower stratum could not take part in th…
This article looks at religious diversity among late imperial and modern Chinese elites; by contrast with most of the existing literature, which looks at correlations between social class and religiosity, this article adds the dimension of …
This paper aims at reopening the debate regarding ‘religious diversity’ in religious studies. A review of (recent or ancient) literature demonstrates that we have not finished with the complexity of the issue of ‘diversity’, whether in acad…
This is the editorial for the special issue ‘Pentecostalism around the Baltic Sea’.
Jesus’ antagonistic encounters with the Pharisees serve traditionally as a basis for the poor relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The conflict stories epitomized by Jesus’ parables have been assessed as descriptions of how he eit…
This article intends to contribute to the understanding of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The author studies the entry, which is found in all the Gospels, in its Jewish context. The author argues that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on an ass is …
This article focuses on contemporary interpretive knowledge projects that engage critically with Islamic religious sciences, and which are driven by the question of gender justice. These projects, which have been loosely termed as Islamic F…
Turkish environmentalism is gaining ground but has not yet become a serious source of influence in society. The environmental movements have long been held as left wing politics and less religious, but today environmental awreness is also r…
This article argues for the importance of a dialogue for strategic engagement and presents an analytical approach to it with reference to three different peacebuilding strategies in terms of conflict resolution theories. As a case study exa…
The Arab revolts that erupted in late 2010, forcing from power the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and dragging Syria through a ferocious civil war, reactivated the public debate on government in Islamic countries. In all those c…
Hezbollah has been an important political and military actor in Lebanon and the Middle East since the mid-1980s. Its popularity grew especially after successfully deterring the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. With the emergence of the …
The purpose of this article is to study cubas – small architectural structures known for their whitewash-painted domes – and specifically, those located in the kûra of Beja in Portugal. Although we can pinpoint the existence of many of thes…
For both Jews and Muslims the Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem constitute highly important religious, cultural, political and national centres. For centuries Jews in the diaspora prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, vowed never t…
This study demonstrates how profoundly Turkey’s main social clevage –Islam versus Secularism – is produced and reproduced by political parties in their attempts to form coherent sociopolitical bloc as a basis of mass support. The main purpo…
This is the editorial for the special issue ‘Concord, Conflict and Co-existence: Religion and Society in the Middle East and North Africa’.
This article has two aims. The first is to show that the search for ethnicity in archaeology is dependent on the way ethnicity is defined and on written sources. The second is to review studies of Iron Age I ‘ethnic Israel’. There is an ong…
Since the mid-90s, archaeology has been a powerful tool for changing landscape and narrative in the Old City of Jerusalem and the village of Silwan – the “Historic Basin of Jerusalem”. As archaeological excavations relate directly to the ap…
The myth of the reborn nation’ was one of the results of my recent research on figurines, the history of the religion of Yehud, and the rise of monotheism. The purpose of this paper is presenting a discussion about ‘the myth of the reborn n…
This is the editorial for the special issue ‘The Legacy of Lauri Honko: Contemporary Conversations’.