Prey into Hunter The Politics of Religious Experience

In this book Maurice Bloch synthesises a radical theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the transcience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants themselves, so allowing them to share in the immortality of a transcendant entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing of animals. He develops the theme with reference to rituals of many types and concludes by considering the indirect relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.Bloch, Maurice is the author of 'Prey into Hunter The Politics of Religious Experience', published 1991 under ISBN 9780521423120 and ISBN 0521423120.