This volume begins with a portrait of Bruce Kapferer, whose complex and rich contributions to the study of religion and ritual have had an influence that extends far beyond his own research concerns. His interests encompass many of the themes in this volume, including the political dimensions and potentialities of religion through ritual, rituals as generative events, ritual time, and the intersection of psychoanalysis and anthropology. Also in this volume, the 2012 buzz surrounding the Mayan calendar conjures a debate concerning the intersection of religion and environmental apocalypticism; a celebration of the centenary of the publication of Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo; problems of generation and belief; rethinking Christianity from an urban perspective; secularism and its ramifications; the implicit and explicit temporalizations involved in the study of animism; and the invocation of phenomenological approaches in the study of materiality and animism.
