Armin W Geertz
Biographic Data
| ID | 416395 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Armin W Geertz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Armin W |
| FAMILY NAME | Geertz |
| SIGNATURE | GEERTZ A W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5426-5368 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 96 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 91 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Reflections on the Cognitive Science of Religion
Welcome to volume 10.1–2 of the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion! In looking back at the first ten volumes of this journal, one is struck by the excitement and diversity of this ever-growing research field
An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and its Role in Moral Formation, By Angela Kim Harkins
Exciting developments are happening in cognitive approaches to ancient and modern texts. During the past decade, a new understanding of cognition called “enactivism” has led to a method in cognitive literary studies called “enactive reading.” The new understanding of cognition as enactive was first promoted by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in 1991 (The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Revised ed. MIT …
Enactivism, Buddhism, and Neurotheology
Editorial
The Neurotheology of Contemporary Spirituality: A Review Essay of The Varieties of Spiritual Experience
The Varieties of Spiritual Experience: 21st Century Research and Perspectives, by David B. Yaden and Andrew B. Newberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. x + 430 pages, £26.49. ISBN: 9780190665678
On Methodological Agnosticism and Neurotheology: A Reply to David B. Yaden
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Embodiment, Deity Yoga, Cognitive and Evolutionary Approaches to Religion
Editorial til 9.1
What exactly is the “spirit” of enactivism
This is a commentary on a target article by John Teehan titled "Toward an embodied cognitive science of religion: Enaction, evolution, emergence"
A Neurocognitive Model for Analyzing End Time Narratives: The Book of Revelation 14–16 as a Test Case
In this article, we introduce a neurocognitive model as a useful analytical approach to a wide range of representations (written, oral, and/or visual) of a comprehensive and dramatic collapse of the world order (cosmic, social, and/or moral). We gather these variegated representations under the term End Time Narratives ( ETN ). The widespread reception of ETN s, and their popularity and variability across different periods and cultures, is eviden…
Disparate Ontologies: Revisiting Descola’s Ontological Schema among Northern Societies
Disparate Ontologies? Takes a critical look at Philippe Descola’s four-field anthropological model for ontologies among hunter-gatherer societies. Descola’s model juxtaposes animism, totemism, analogism, and naturalism as reflecting different expressions of interiority and physicality and queries those four ontological concepts as comparative units of analysis. While Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture (2013) was a ground-breaking exploration of …
Somethings New and Somethings Old: A Review Essay of The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion
The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion, edited by James R. Liddle and Todd K. Shackelford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xii + 386 pages, £115.00. ISBN: 9780199397747
Data-testing competing hypotheses for beginners: How can we ordinary mortals wade through the mathematics of religion
Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience
Om marionetdukker og andre sælsomme ting
Denne artikel bygger på en hypotese om, at religiøse ritualer og andres sociale adfærd påvirker vore kropslige og nervesystemer. Især ritualer og farverige ceremonier kan føre til samklang/samstemmighed (‘attunement’) med gruppen og til at opnå bestemte følelsesmæssige og mentale tilstande (opstemthed, meningsfuldhed, frygt eller angst). De manipulerer vore somatiske og mentale tilstande som derved giver andre adgang til vore indre verdener. Diss…
Homines Emotionales and Religion as an Evolutionary Exaptation: A Response to Leonardo Ambasciano
This article offers a critical reply to Leonardo Ambasciano’s commentary on our volume (Turner et al. 2018) available in this same issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography
An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion
Lexical Primes and The Ritual Animal
affiliated to the Department of Psychology at
Brief Overview of Claire White’s An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion
This article provides a brief overview of Claire White’s An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion for the benefit of readers who have not had access to the book but are interested in following the critical discussion raised in this issue
Cognitive Templates and LGAT Seminars
T.M. Luhrmann, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others
T.M. Luhrmann, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), xv + 235pp., $29.95 (cloth), ISBN: 9780691164465
Methodology in the Cognitive Science of Religion
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Fine Lines between Mental Disorders and Religious Experiences
Cognitive Science of Religion: Wherefrom, Whereto
Please join us in celebrating the first five volumes of the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion (JCSR) with this special issue on cognitive approaches to religion and imagination, edited by Valerie van Mulukom
Explaining the evolution of religion: A response to commentators
A response to commentaries in the Book Symposium: The Emergence and Evolution of Religion: By Means of Natural Selection by Jonathan H. Turner, Alexandra Maryanski, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, and Armin W. Geertz (Routledge 2018). The commentators are Loriliai Biernacki, Daniel Cohen, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, John H. Shaver, John Teehan, and Ina Wunn
Religion og medier i et religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The religion and media field has grown strongly as an academic subject in recent years, especially regarding studies of religion in contemporary mass media, TV, film, internet, social media etc., and in relation to popular culture. Scholars of religion have also begun to pay attention to the important role that media, mediation, and mediatization have played in the history of religions. It is this growing awareness that we wish …
Les araignées et les insectes dans la mythologie et la religion des Indiens hopis1
Les araignées et les insectes jouent un rôle important dans la mythologie et la religion des Indiens hopis. Ils apparaissent souvent dans l’art rupestre, sur les peintures murales et les objets cérémoniels. Ils sont également très présents dans les mythes et les histoires, où ils jouent des rôles de héros ou de méchants. Les insectes sont en effet conceptualisés comme des créatures bénéfiques portant la vie dans les mythes fondateurs des rituels,…
The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion
Armin Geertz corrects what he sees as basic American and European tendencies to misrepresent non-Western cultures. Carefully documenting the historical role of prophecy in Hopi Indian religion, Geertz shows how prophecies about the end of the world have been created by the Hopi Traditionalist Movement and used by non-Indian movements, cults, and interest groups. Many of the seeming peculiarities of Hopi religion and culture have been invented, he…
Autobiographical Memory in a Fire-Walking Ritual
Anthropological theories have discussed the effects of participation in high-arousal rituals in the formation of autobiographical memory; however, precise measurements for such effects are lacking. In this study, we examined episodic recall among participants in a highly arousing fire-walking ritual. To assess arousal, we used heart rate measurements. To assess the dynamics of episodic memories, we obtained reports immediately after the event and…
Religion is natural, atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong
After discussing evidence of irreligion and the rise of the so called ''New Atheism'', the authors refute the claim that this poses a problem for the cognitive science of religion and its hypothesis that religion is natural. The ''naturalness hypothesis'' is not deterministic but probabilistic and thus leaves room for atheism. This, the authors maintain, is true of both the by-product and adaptationist stances within the cognitive science of reli…
Ethnohermeneutics and Worldview Analysis in the Study of Hopi Indian Religion
Ethnohermeneutics grew out of the ethnosciences' emphasis on discourse analysis, componential analysis and cultural grammar. Ethnohermeneutics as interpreted in this article closely follows developments in symbolic anthropology, cognitive anthropology and semiotics. Ethnohermeneutics attempts to locate the scholar and the people under study in each their own network of discourses, traditions, texts and meanings in the context of their social and …
Hopi Indian Altar Iconography
This study focuses on the altars of the major annual Hopi ceremonials which display ritual objects, the possession and use of which give religious and secular power. With the importance of such objects in mind, an iconographic study of Hopi religion is particularly illuminating. This study aims to demonstrate how to view Hopi altars and is supplemented by a theory of the mechanics of efficacy in the Hopi altar context. The text provides a general…
Long-lost Brothers: On the Co-histories and Interactions Between the Comparative Science of Religion and the Anthropology of Religion
This article briefly surveys and compares the histories of research in the comparative science of religion (beginning with Friedrich Max Müller) and the anthropology of religion. The article notes the close interactions between these two fields and argues that the comparative science of religion drew significant inspiration from anthropology and sociology during the twentieth century until about the 1970s when anthropology came under heavy fire f…
Brain, Body and Culture: A Biocultural Theory of Religion
This essay sketches out a biocultural theory of religion which is based on an expanded view of cognition that is anchored in brain and body (embrained and embodied), deeply dependent on culture (enculturated) and extended and distributed beyond the borders of individual brains. Such an approach uniquely accommodates contemporary cultural and neurobiological sciences. Since the challenge that the study of religion faces, in my opinion, is at the i…
How Not to Do the Cognitive Science of Religion Today
This article is a critical examination of Dennett's book Breaking the Spell. The main argument is that there are good and effective ways of doing the cognitive science of religion and there are poor and ineffective ways of doing it. Dennett's book is poorly done on a number of fronts: it is exceedingly hostile and rhetorical, thus missing the public audience he wishes to persuade, it is arrogant towards and shows clear ignorance of the profession…
Religion og medier i et religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The religion and media field has grown strongly as an academic subject in recent years, especially regarding studies of religion in contemporary mass media, TV, film, internet, social media etc., and in relation to popular culture. Scholars of religion have also begun to pay attention to the important role that media, mediation, and mediatization have played in the history of religions. It is this growing awareness that we wish …
Do Big Gods cause anything
Although the author is sympathetic to Norenzayan's book, he takes issue with three crucial problems, namely the issues of causality, atheism, and hunter-gatherer cultures. He argues that assigning Big Gods a causal role in the development of large-scale, complex societies is highly problematic, that attempts to explain atheism are also based on misplaced causal assumptions, and that evidence on hunter-gatherers collected on the basis of evolution…
Global Perspectives On Methodology in the Study of Religion
Dette kapitel er en genudgivelse af en artikel som blev publiceret i 2000 med samme titel i Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Kapitlet er genudgivet i anledning af tidsskriftets 25 års jubilæum og blev valgt som et eksempel blandt mange til en "best of"-publikation. Men de valgte artikler er ikke kun genudgivet. De indledes med vurderende kapitler skrevet af kolleger som tager stilling til, hvorvidt artiklen er stadig relevant i dag. Mi…
From the History of Religions to the Study of Religion in Denmark: An Essay on the Subject, Organizational History and Research Themes
The history of the academic study of religion in Denmark resembles developments in other Nordic and European countries as it has moved from a primarily historical-philological and comparative 'history of religions' towards a broader 'study of religion(s)' that includes history of religions together with theories and methods from a wide variety of the human, social and today also natural sciences. Uppsala University was one of the three main cente…
Pain and Sacrifice: Experience and Modulation of Pain in a Religious Piercing Ritual
Fascinating pain-related rituals have been observed throughout the world, but so far no systematic evidence exists to support previous ethnographic reports of analgesic states and dissociative symptoms during these events. To address this issue, we combined quantitative and qualitative measures with the aim of investigating pain experience and modulation of pain during the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual in Mauritius. In Study 1, results indicated low le…
Om religion og evolution: En introduktion
I denne artikel introduceres indledningsvis evolutionsteoriens idéhistorie i korte træk. Efter en kritisk beskrivelse af evolutionspsykologiens antagelser, metoder og foretrukne emner opstilles en alternativ anskuelsesmåde, som afviser dele af evolutionspsykologiens grundlag og som argumenterer for kulturens kausale virkning på den menneskelige kognition og ikke mindst den hominine evolution. Ud fra, hvad vi ved om den menneskelige evolution, ses…
Om religion og kognition
On Religion and Cognition: A Brief Historical and Thematic Introduction”. This article is a brief introduction to the cognitive study of religion. Ten problems are identified which serve as the backdrop of the article. These concern the problems of historical depth in the study of cognition; the increase of many different disciplinary approaches; the resultant terminological confusion; the weaknesses of the natural sciences in terms of the philo…
Contemporary Problems in the Study of Native North American Religions with Special Reference to the Hopis
Armin W. Geertz, Contemporary Problems in the Study of Native North American Religions with Special Reference to the Hopis, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3/4, Special Issue: To Hear the Eagles Cry: Contemporary Themes in Native American Spirituality (Summer - Autumn, 1996), pp. 393-414
On reciprocity and mutual reflection in the study of Native American religions
Based on field research among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this essay explores problems that broadly can be defined as postmodern reflections on the study of religion. In dealing with the religions of living cultures and especially with cultures that have been subject to colonialism, students of religion are faced with the difficult issues of orientalism, the construction of the exotic, the representation or misrepresentation of other cultures, a…
Religion: Tradition and Renewal
No abstract available
Hopi Indian Witchcraft and Healing: On Good, Evil, and Gossip
Artiklen undersøger hekseri, sygdom og helbredelse hos hopi-indianerne dels på baggrund af egne indsamlede interviews og af litteraturen. Hekseri anskues delvis som narrativ strategi således at sladder fungerer som en omvendt etisk redskab. Desuden inddrages kognitive teorier
When cognitive scientists become religious, science is in trouble: On neurotheology from a philosophy of science perspective
Artiklen diskuterer neuroteologien i USA og advarer mod religiøse dagsordener i neurovidenskabelige publikationer om religion, bevidsthed, mystik og religiøs erfaring. Se det engelske abstrakt
Rekonstruktion af Hopi-indianernes religion, kultur og mentalitet
Mange antropologiske, litteraturvidenskabelige og religionsvidenskabelige indianerstudier hjemsøges af primitivisme-romantik, og megen postmoderne og postkolonial litteratur svækkes af religiøse og etniske dagsordener, trods al berettiget fag- og samfundskritik. Jeg appellerer derfor til en ‘no nonsense’ tilgang til religion, en tilgang som jeg sammenfatter i begrebet etno-hermeneutik. Bidraget dokumenterer min egen vandring fra religionshistoris…
The Role of Method and Theory in the Iahr1
Uto-Aztecan studies: A discussion
This article grew out of participation in the Workshop on Uto-Aztecan Religions and Cosmologies. The goal of the workshop was to explore similarities and differences in the religions and cosmologies of the various Uto-Aztecan societies. In this article I follow two lines of inquiry: The one promotes a comparative discussion of cosmological structural systems, and the other attempts to identify one or more motifs which might prove to be evident in…
Archaic ontology and white shamanism
John D. Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century, (Religion in North America), Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991. xxi, 168 pp., $19.95. ISBN 0 253 33517 5. Felicitas D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990. xii, 242 pp., ISBN 0 253 20566 2
A Reed Pierced the Sky
Præsentation
af RvTs temanummer om fortællingen og det religiøse sprog
Introduktion til Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift
This editorial announces the founding of a new scientific journal in Denmark entitled Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (“Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion”). The goal of the Journal is to create a forum of research, information and debate within the field of the humanistic, scientific study of religion. “Religionsvidenskabeligt” does not in any way refer to a particular school or a special area of the study of religion. It refers, in…
Hopi-indianernes kosmografiske forestillinger på tredie mesa, Arizona
Formålet med denne artikel har været at illustrere, at tidligere forsøg på at fortolke Hopi kosmologi postulerer en enkelhed, som det indfødte bevismateriale ikke tillader. At reducere alt til polar binære filer hverken er nyttigt eller tilrådeligt. Ved at koncentrere sig om kosmografi alene har jeg illustreret de involverede kompleksitet. Jeg har fundet ikke blot dualitet, men også flere variationer af verdens akser, verdens centre og modsatrett…
A Reed Pierced the Sky
A Reed Pierced the Sky: Hopi Indian Cosmography on Third Mesa, Arizona
Origine de l'humanite| axe du monde, centre du monde, mondes opposes| fertilite| Soleil| rituel, ancetres, morts, etres dans l'atmosphere, symbolisme numerique, sphere etoilee et epreuve initiatique des enfants
Anmeldelse af "From Temple to Meetinghouse. The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship" af Harold W. Turner
Anmeldelse af "Gads religionshistoriske tekster" af Bendt Alster og Christian Lindtner
Religion and Rituals
Religiøs ikonografi hos nordamerikanske indianere - En introduktion
After a brief introduction to the literature on art and iconography among native peoples of the world, Erwin Panofsky’s definition of iconological studies and its implications are accepted with certain reservations. A typology of the religions iconography of native North Americans is then developed in this article based upon the epistemology of the History of Religions. This is accomplished by focussing upon the inherent typology exhibited by ind…
A Typology of Hopi Indian Ritual
No abstract available
Children of Cottonwood: Piety and Ceremonialism in Hopi Indian Puppetry
Religion: Tradition and Renewal
No abstract available
Hopi Coyote: Trickster, Corpse, or God? Hopi Coyote Tales: Istutuwutsi . Ekkehart Malotki , Michael Lomatuway'ma Gullible Coyote: Una'ihu: A Bilingual Collection of Hopi Coyote Tales . Ekkehart Malotk…
Hopi Indian Altar Iconography
This study focuses on the altars of the major annual Hopi ceremonials which display ritual objects, the possession and use of which give religious and secular power. With the importance of such objects in mind, an iconographic study of Hopi religion is particularly illuminating. This study aims to demonstrate how to view Hopi altars and is supplemented by a theory of the mechanics of efficacy in the Hopi altar context. The text provides a general…
The Second Warsaw Conference on Methodology and Theory
No abstract available
Om polemik og apologetik / Mystik / At indkredse begrebet mystik
3 debatartikler, der tager udgangspunkt i Else Marie wiberg Pedersens "kritik" af Mystik - Den indre vej
The Iahr regional conference on the study of religions in Africa at the University of Zimbabwe
No abstract available
Conference on comparative studies in Copenhagen
No abstract available
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Archaic ontology and white shamanism
John D. Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century, (Religion in North America), Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991. xxi, 168 pp., $19.95. ISBN 0 253 33517 5. Felicitas D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990. xii, 242 pp., ISBN 0 253 20566 2
Religionsvidenskabens primitivitetsopfattelser
This article explores notions of primitivism through a critical examination of the implicit and explicit assumptions behind these notions against the background of recent developments in the philosophy of science. In the section on terms and definitions the empirical and theoretical problems involved in the use of these terms are raised. The section on primitivism and literacy explores the weaknes of the stance known as "The Great Divide" thesis.…
The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion
Armin Geertz corrects what he sees as basic American and European tendencies to misrepresent non-Western cultures. Carefully documenting the historical role of prophecy in Hopi Indian religion, Geertz shows how prophecies about the end of the world have been created by the Hopi Traditionalist Movement and used by non-Indian movements, cults, and interest groups. Many of the seeming peculiarities of Hopi religion and culture have been invented, he…
On reciprocity and mutual reflection in the study of Native American religions
Based on field research among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this essay explores problems that broadly can be defined as postmodern reflections on the study of religion. In dealing with the religions of living cultures and especially with cultures that have been subject to colonialism, students of religion are faced with the difficult issues of orientalism, the construction of the exotic, the representation or misrepresentation of other cultures, a…
Maasaw: Profile of a Hopi God
Philosophy (57 works) · Sociology (51 works) · Epistemology (31 works) · History (30 works) · Psychology (27 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (24 works) · Anthropology (21 works) · Study and Philosophy of Religion (19 works) · Art (17 works)