H. Sidky Livres

Long before the political mass-murders witnessed in the present century, western Europe experienced another kind of holocaust – the witch-hunts of the early modern period. Condemned of flying through the air, changing into animals, and worshipping the Devil, over a hundred thousand people were brutally tortured, systematically maimed and burned alive. Why did these persecutions take place? Was it superstition, irrationality, or mass delusion that led to the witch-hunts? This study seeks explanations in the tangible actions of human actors and their worldly circumstances. The approach taken is anthropological; inferences are grounded on a wide spectrum of variables, ranging from the political and ideological practices used to mystify earthly affairs, to the logical structure of witch-beliefs, torture technology, and the role of psychotropic drugs and epidemic diseases.

The book delves into the relationship between irrigation and political development in Hunza, a high-mountain kingdom. It posits that the state's emergence was closely tied to extensive irrigation projects initiated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Influenced by anthropological theories, particularly Karl Wittfogel's hydraulic hypothesis, the author examines how ecological factors and hydraulic agriculture shaped the region's socioeconomic and political structures. This insightful analysis is aimed at historians, anthropologists, cultural geographers, and South Asian experts.

The book explores the impact of American academics, influenced by French postmodern philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s, on the current challenges to science and truth. It highlights how these intellectual movements have empowered corporate interests, post-truth politicians, religious extremists, and right-wing populists, contributing to the erosion of objective truth in contemporary society. Through this analysis, the author delves into the complex interplay between academia and the rise of post-truth ideologies.

In The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity, H. Sidky uses first-hand ethnographic fieldwork and scientific theoretical work in archaeology, psychology, and neurotheology to explore the origins of shamanism, spirit beliefs, the evolution of human consciousness, and the origins of ritual behavior and religiosity.

Religion: An Anthropological Perspective provides a critical view of religion focusing upon important but overlooked topics such as religion, cognition, and prehistory; science, rationality, and religion; altered states of consciousness, entheogens and religious experience; religion and the paranormal; magic and divination; religion and ecology; fundamentalism; and religion and violence. In addition, this book offers a unique and concise coverage of traditional topics of the anthropology of religion such as shamanism and witchcraft (past and present), ritual, myth, religious symbols, and revitalization movements. A vast range of findings from ethnography, ethnology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, prehistory, history, and cognitive science are brought to bear on the subject. Written in clear jargon-free prose, this book provides an accessible and comprehensive yet critical view of the anthropology of religion both for graduate and undergraduate students and general audiences. Its scope and critical scientific orientation sets Religion: An Anthropological Perspective apart from all other treatments of the subject.