Indicating Commitment: The Notion of dépense in the Study of Ritual and Religion

By analysing two cases from the recent history of Vaishnavism (a temple festival in Vrindavan; the development of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON), this paper shows that the notion of dépenseas developed by Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz and Georges Bataille can be applied as an analytical tool in the study of rituals and religion as an indicator of religious commitment. At the same time it is possible to show that, by constructing a kind of macro-economic theory that includes religious behaviour, recent theories of religious economics are part of, and reproduce, a modern discourse of rationality that rules out, rather than understands, forms of irrationality such as unproductive expenditure (dépense).

Das Levitenhaus : häusliche Ceremonial- u. Ritual-Gesetze, das Schema-Lesen, Schaufäden u. Denkriemen enthaltend ; Abhandlung in deutscher Sprache, a. d. Hebr. bearb. u. mit Erklärungen versehen

Isaac Landau

Das Levitenhaus : häusliche Ceremonial- u. Ritual-Gesetze, das Schema-Lesen, Schaufäden, Denkriemen, Hebe am Teige, Lichtanzünden, u. das Fleischsalzen enthaltend ; a. d. Hebr. bearb. u. mit Erklärungen versehen

Isaac Landau

Ritual-Mordprozesse : bedeutsame Fälle aus d. Vergangenheit

von Adolph Kohut

Meine Antworten an die Rabbiner oder: 5 Briefe über d. Talmudismus u. d. Blut-Ritual d. Juden

von Aug. Rohling

The Jew and human sacrifice : (Human blood and Jewish ritual) ; an historical and sociological inquiry

by Hermann L. Strack. The English transl. by Henry Blanchamp

The Persian Jews : their books and ritual

by Elkan Nathan Adler [[Elektronische Ressource]]