Contents: Introduction, Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart; Part I Definitions and Fundamentals: Variation and indexicality in the Maring ritual cycle, Roy A. Rappaport; Ritual symbols, syntax, and praxis: questions of cultural meaning and interpretation, Catherine Bell; Symbols, song, dance and features of articulation: is religion an extreme form of traditional authority?, Maurice Bloch; Embodiment and communication: 2 frames for the analysis of ritual, Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart. Part II Further Theoretical Categories and Considerations: The original significance of animal sacrifice, William Robertson Smith; The problem and its setting, Edmund R. Leach; Taboo, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown; The symbolic rite of 'giving thanks', Raymond Firth; Liminality and communitas, Victor W. Turner; Oracles support divine justice, Mary Douglas; Towards an integration of ethnography, history and the cognitive science of religion, Harvey Whitehouse; Against 'ritual': loosely structured thoughts on a loosely defined topic, Jack Goody; Toward a genealogy of the concept of ritual, Talal Asad; The body as geometer: cosmogonic practice, Pierre Bourdieu. Part III Topical Arenas and Examples: The rhetoric of transformation in ritual healing, Thomas J. Csordas; Shamanic performances: issues of performativity and comparison, Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart; Shamanic performance and cosmological praxis, Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; Ritual communication and linguistic ideology: a reading and partial reformulation of Rappaport's theory of ritual, Joel Robbins; The Gardens of Omarakana: early work, Bronislaw Malinowski; The magical power of words, S.J. Tambiah; Puberty rites, women's naven, and initiation: women's rituals of transition in Abelam and Iatmul culture, Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin; Female spirit cults as a window on gender relations in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Pamela J, Stewart and Andrew Strathern; Silent forms but natural symbols?, Gilbert Lewis; Power and placement in blood practices, Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; Pietas in ancestor worship: the Henry Myers Lecture, 1960, Meyer Fortes; Cosmology, resources, and landscape: agencies of the dead and the living in Duna, Papua New Guinea, Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; Israel, America, and the ancestors: narratives of spiritual warfare in a Pentecostal denomination in Solomon Islands, Jolene Marie Stritecky; Blood, fire, and word: Luo, Christian and Luo-Christian sacrifice, Parker Shipton; Sacrifice and social structure among the Kuranko, Michael Jackson; The meaning of sacrifice, Edward E. Evans-Pritchard; 'Cattle aren't killed for nothing': Christianity, conversion, and the enduring importance of prophets, Sharon Hutchinson; Ritual and social change: a Javanese example, Clifford Geertz; Name Index.
