Work Useful to Religion and the Humanities: A History of the Comparative Method in the Study of Religion from Las Casas to Tylor
Ebook
Overview
In many ways, the method of comparison in the study of religion is connected to European expansion and empire building. This work explores the early modern origins of the comparative method for the cross-cultural study of religion, beginning with its roots in the earliest missionary contact in the Spanish conquest and concluding with the Victorian anthropologists of the British Empire. Ammon explores the development of the comparative method in religion from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, approaching the history of comparison by tracing its development from the first moments of contact with the New World through the recognized origin of the discipline of anthropology. This work delineates the comparative method from Bartolome de Las Casas to Edward Burnett Tylor, exploring a piece of the story we can tell about the development of the comparative methods and religious transformation in the disciplines of anthropology, ethnology, and comparative religion.
”Ammon’s book is a useful addition to the cultural history of
the study of religion, one that adds to the genealogy of
comparative methods."
--Sean McCloud
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
“Ammon’s work speaks to long-standing preoccupations and practices
within the study of religions: origins and comparisons. In bringing
to our attention a comparative engagement with religions that
stretches from the fifteenth-century ‘discovery’ of New World
religions to the nineteenth-century emergence of anthropology, she
presents a crucial phase of the field’s history and adds an
important work--one full of keen insights--to its
historiography."
--Molly Bassett
Assistant Professor
Georgia State University
"Laura Ammon’s book is a comparative historical analysis of the
works of Lafitau and Tylor. Not only does it guide the reader to a
rigorous review of their writings, including masterful revisions of
their treatment of religious transformations. Beyond a careful
analysis of the methodological differences between them, it invites
the scholar/reader to unravel the contributions of missionary
ethnographers of the contact period like Las Casas, Sahagun, and
Acosta. A definite must-read for all those interested in the
history of religions in the Americas."
--Sylvia Marcos
Professor of Gender and Anthropology
Universidad de la Tierra, Chiapas, Mexico
"Ammon provides us with an engaging reconsideration of the roots of
the comparative study of religion in light of anthropologist E. B.
Tylor’s debt to Catholic missionary-ethnographers, such as Lafitau,
Acosta, Sahagun, and Las Casas."
--Ann Taves
Professor of Religious Studies
UC Santa Barbara
- Title: Work Useful to Religion and the Humanities: A History of the Comparative Method in the Study of Religion from Las Casas to Tylor
- Author: Laura Ammon
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2012
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781621899280, 9781498253444, 9781606080986, 1621899284, 149825344X, 1606080989
- Resource ID: LLS:9781621899280
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T18:22:17Z
Laura Ammon is Assistant Professor of Religion and Faculty Fellow at Appalachian State University, North Carolina.