Book description
Devotional "occasions" or experiences by Irish Catholics
form the foundation of this consummate anthropological study of Irish
Catholicism. Lawrence Taylor's twenty years of field work in Banagh in
south-west Donegal have yielded rich ethnographic material that is
illuminated by wide-ranging archival sources, vivid renderings of
individual experiences, and sympathetic scrutiny of religious
questions and theories. In answering questions central to the study of
religion (What is it? How do official and popular religions differ?
What is the relation between power and meaning, and the roles of
political and religious "regimes" in the social construction
of religion?), Taylor draws upon two major theoretical traditions:
that of Geertz, Durkheim and Turner, and that of Marx, Foucault and
Asad. Basic fears and needs propel the people of south-west Donegal -
and all of us, Taylor contends - to respond creatively to strong
personal religious experiences and to invent forms to express them.
'The world of Occasions of Faith is the world of Synge's The Well of
the Saints and Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa and Wonderful
Tennessee, the world that provides the central axis for Seamus
Heaney's Station Island. If for no other reason, read it for the light
it sheds on those works and others. But read it too for its own
distinctive pleasures.' - Katherine McKenna, The Recorder '...a
delight... Moving with remarkable ease from vivid descriptive accounts
of both landscape and individual action to a syncretistic mode of
analysis that accords importance to local discourse, social context
and historical process, the reader is taken on a voyage of discovery
through some of the principal dimensions of Irish Catholic religious
experience. This is a book that should be read by all those interested
in the anthropological study of religion, in the role of religion in
Irish society, in Catholicism, and in the anthropological study of
Europe.' - Michael Allen, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 'A work of major importance. Informed by a deep knowledge of
anthropological writings on religion and a wide-ranging and thorough
engagement with Ireland, it furnishes a compelling and perceptive
exploration of Irish Catholicism.' - Irish Review 'A marvellous book -
thoughtful, insightful and inspiring: we are greatly in Lawrence
Taylor's debt for this compelling, comprehensive, yet highly
sympathetic study.' - Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Lawrence J. Taylor is Professor of Anthropology at the National
University of Ireland, Maynooth
