Discourse and the Construction of Society Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification

Bruce Lincoln is Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction

Part I: Myth
1. Myth, Sentiment, and the Construction of Social Forms
2. The Politics of Myth
3. Competing Uses of the Future in the Present

Part II: Ritual
4. Ritual, Rebellion, Resistance: Rethinking the Swazi Ncwala
5. Banquets and Brawls: Aspects of Ceremonial Meals
6. Festivals and Massacres: Reflections on St. Bartholomew's Day
7. Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain

Part III: Classification
8. The Tyranny of Taxonomy
9. The Dialectics of Symbolic Inversion
10. The Uses of Anomaly

Part IV: Affinity, Estrangement, Alterity
11. The Mythic Sisterhood of Europe and Asia
12. ''We are all related'': The Limits of Inclusion at a Lakota Sun Dance
13. Food, Filth, and Religious Community

Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index