Work Useful to Religion and the Humanities

Description: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 Bartolomé 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.Endorsements:''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 McCloudAssociate Professor of Religious StudiesThe 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 BassettAssistant ProfessorGeorgia 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, Sahagún, and Acosta. A definite must-read for all those interested in the history of religions in the Americas.''--Sylvia Marcos Professor of Gender and AnthropologyUniversidad 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 TavesProfessor of Religious StudiesUC Santa BarbaraAbout the Contributor(s):Laura Ammon is Assistant Professor of Religion and Faculty Fellow at Appalachian State University, North Carolina.