If it weren't for the price, this would be the single best introduction to the anthropology of religion yet composed. In fact, even with the price, it's the best. Too bad about the price....In essence, the volume is a compendium of classic works on the anthropology of religion, from across the twentieth century. Everybody's here, jammed in hugger-mugger. The organization is thematic, and you can certainly argue that the particular themes are weak or that the works chosen don't always fit them, but really it's the sheer breadth of the articles that makes the volume so useful.
If you are interested in the anthropology of religion, the table of contents will stun you. You already have some of these articles xeroxed somewhere -- but where? You may have made copies for your students, or put them on reserve. But then you have to do it again, because chances are the reserve desk has lost them, or some stinker student has taken the copies away so only he can study for the exam.
If this book cost, let's say, $50, you could simply assign it and save the trouble. You'd probably require the students to read half the articles, and the rest would serve admirably for additional background reading or alternative viewpoints. Leach, Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Frazer, Radcliffe-Brown, Homans, Turner, Ortner, Geertz, etc. etc.
If you are a professional and don't own this, go buy it: you'll thank me later, when the bills are paid. Try reading it cover to cover: I promise you will learn something, however expert you are, simply by being confronted with this mass of great work in the field.
My only criticism, really, is that it's so exclusively anthropolgical in a strictly disciplinary sense. Eliade and his ilk simply don't show up on the horizon, nor the developments that arose from his influence (e.g. Jonathan Z. Smith). Beyond that, I have nothing but praise for the book.
Pity it's so damn expensive!
Great, but too expensive
