Table of Contents

1. An Intellectual Biography 2. Breaking the Glass and Striking the Rock 3. Symbols, Memory and Anticipation: Sociology from Durkheim to Gurvitch 4. Civilizations Neither Meet Nor Clash; People Do 5. The Three Books on Afro-Brazilian Religions 6. The Paris Career: The World of French Ethnologists 7. Leaving Safe Ground: Acknowledging the Fluidity of Human Interaction 8. Candomblé as Paradigm for Translocal Religion 9. O Sagrado Selvagem as Corner Stone of a Theory of Religion 10. Study of Religion and Sociology of Knowledge 11. The Aesthetic Dimension, or the Black Hen Lays White Eggs

About the Author

Michel Despland is Professor of Religion at Concordia University in Montreal and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has published books and articles on the history of the study of religion, most specifically in Nineteenth Century France. More recently he also showed how works of literature can be used as documents for a history of Nineteenth Century religious mentalities in Reading an Erased Code: Romantic Religion and Literary Aesthetics in France (University of Toronto Press, 1994) and Les Romans Victoriens et l'Apprentissage du Discernment Moral (Presses de l'Universite Laval, 2006)