Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-Cultural Perspective (Dress, Body, Culture Series)

From Islam to Confucianism to Voodoo, dress plays a pivotal role in religious expression. This book investigates how dress symbolically evidences both religious and social systems across a wide range of cultures - from Africa and South America to Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Caribbean. In some of these cultures, dress is part of a system of social control. Gender issues feature prominently since the control of female sexuality is often of great importance to the world's religions. Members of each ethno-religious group actively construct their own lives, and use dress symbolically. A central tenet for many of these groups is that the soul is visually manifested on the body through dress. Drawing on rich ethnographic case studies, this wide-ranging and interdisciplinary volume represents a major contribution to the study of both religion and dress. Cloth And Conversion: Yoruba Textiles And Ecclesiastical Dress / Elisha P. Renne -- Minkisi Do Not Die; Bakongo Cosmology In The Christian Rituals Of Simon Kimbangu And Simon Mpadi / Shannen Hill -- Dressing The Divine Horsemen: Clothing As Spirit Indentification In Haitian Vodou / Susan Tselos -- Christianity, Cloth, And Dress In The Andes / Lynn A. Meisch -- Clothed With Authority: The Rationalization Of Marist Dress-culture / William J.f. Keenan -- Confucianism Manifested In Korean Dress From The Sixteenth To The Seventeenth Centuries / Inwoo Chang And Haekyung L. Yu. Islamic Religion And Women's Dress Code: The Islamic Republic Of Iran / Faegheh Shirazi -- The Afghan Woman's Chaadaree: An Evocative Religious Expression? / M. Catherine Daly -- Sartorial Entanglements Of A Gujarati Wife / Emma Tarlo -- Veiling And Unveiling: Reconstructing Malay Female Identity In Singapore / Joseph Stimpfl -- Continuation And Change In Tenganan Pegeringsingan, Bali / L. Kaye Crippen And Patricia M. Mulready -- School Uniforms As A Symbolic Metaphor For Competing Ideologies In Indonesia / Linda B. Arthur. Edited By Linda B. Arthur. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. From Islam to Confucianism to Voodoo, dress plays a pivotal role in religious expression. Through ethnographic case studies, this book investigates how dress symbolically evidences both religious and social systems across a wide range of cultures. [from publisher's advertisement] This volume investigates how dress symbolically evidences both religious and social systems across a wide range of cultures, from Africa and South America to Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Caribbean.