Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased

«William W. McCorkle, Jr. makes a significant contribution to the study of mortuary ritual. 'Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased' should be essential reading for those interested in explaining this remarkable aspect of human behavior.» (Harvey Whitehouse, Professor of Social Anthropology, Fellow of Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
«In this exciting, controversial, and scholarly work, William W. McCorkle, Jr. combines a sophisticated historical knowledge of Buddhism with insights from cognitive and evolutionary psychology, as well as ethnography, to make sense of the widespread practice among humans to ritually dispose of dead bodies in bizarre and unexpected ways. McCorkle punctures claims that Buddhism ignores such practices by producing evidence to the contrary. This book is not only a good read but represents an important moment in the continually developing cognitive science of religion.» (E. Thomas Lawson, Editor, 'Journal of Cognition and Culture')
«William W. McCorkle, Jr. stands firmly in the excellent tradition of reading Buddhist texts with the same kind of historical-critical acumen developed in dispassionate Biblical studies. Furthermore, he pays more attention to actual behavior than to proclaimed beliefs. It turns out that even among those Buddhists who explicitly reject supernatural assumptions connected with death and the dead, their behavior is steeped in superstitious behavior and references to superhuman and non-natural agents. McCorkle adds a much-needed corrective to a long history of scholarship that ideologically reproduces religious rhetoric and ignores actual behavior.» (Armin W. Geertz, Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University)
«'Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased' is an outstanding contribution to our growing understanding of why humans engage in what are, from an evolutionary perspective, costly and seemingly useless behaviors that we call 'religion'. William W. McCorkle, Jr. offers a persuasive case that like many

The Author: William W. McCorkle, Jr. is an evolutionary and cognitive anthropologist interested in ritual, language, and communication. He earned his Ph.D. from the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University in Belfast, one of the world's premiere centers for research on cognition, culture, and religion. He has conducted fieldwork in India and Japan and devised original experiments to test his theory on the ritualized burial of dead bodies by humans. He regularly gives papers and presentations internationally on ritual and human behavior. Most recently, he has served as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.

«William W. McCorkle, Jr. makes a significant contribution to the study of mortuary ritual. 'Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased' should be essential reading for those interested in explaining this remarkable aspect of human behavior.» (Harvey Whitehouse, Professor of Social Anthropology, Fellow of Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
«In this exciting, controversial, and scholarly work, William W. McCorkle, Jr. combines a sophisticated historical knowledge of Buddhism with insights from cognitive and evolutionary psychology, as well as ethnography, to make sense of the widespread practice among humans to ritually dispose of dead bodies in bizarre and unexpected ways. McCorkle punctures claims that Buddhism ignores such practices by producing evidence to the contrary. This book is not only a good read but represents an important moment in the continually developing cognitive science of religion.» (E. Thomas Lawson, Editor, 'Journal of Cognition and Culture')
«William W. McCorkle, Jr. stands firmly in the excellent tradition of reading Buddhist texts with the same kind of historical-critical acumen developed in dispassionate Biblical studies. Furthermore, he pays more attention to actual behavior than to proclaimed beliefs. It turns out that even among those Buddhists who explicitly reject supernatural assumptions connected with death and the dead, their behavior is steeped in superstitious behavior and references to superhuman and non-natural agents. McCorkle adds a much-needed corrective to a long history of scholarship that ideologically reproduces religious rhetoric and ignores actual behavior.» (Armin W. Geertz, Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University)
«'Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased' is an outstanding contribution to our growing understanding of why humans engage in what are, from an evolutionary perspective, costly and seemingly useless behaviors that we call 'religion'. William W. McCorkle, Jr. offers a persuasive case that like many