{"product_id":"automatic-religion-paul-christopher-johnson-9780226749693","title":"Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France","description":"What distinguishes humans from nonhumans? Two common answers--free will and religion--are in some ways fundamentally opposed. Whereas free will enjoys a central place in our ideas of spontaneity, authorship, and deliberation, religious practices seem to involve a suspension of or relief from the exercise of our will. What, then, is agency, and why has it occupied such a central place in theories of the human? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eAutomatic Religion\u003c\/i\u003e explores an unlikely series of episodes from the end of the nineteenth century, when crucial ideas related to automatism and, in a different realm, the study of religion were both being born. Paul Christopher Johnson draws on years of archival and ethnographic research in Brazil and France to explore the crucial boundaries being drawn at the time between humans, \"nearhumans,\" and automata. As agency came to take on a more central place in the philosophical, moral, and legal traditions of the West, certain classes of people were excluded as less-than-human. Tracking the circulation of ideas across the Atlantic, Johnson tests those boundaries, revealing how they were constructed on largely gendered and racial foundations. In the process, he reanimates one of the most mysterious and yet foundational questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Paul Christopher Johnson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 022674969X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226749693\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/15\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 312\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d","brand":"Paul Christopher Johnson","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48013708493055,"sku":"9780226749693","price":115.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_712ed997-c888-402b-ac3f-bad374b7a016.jpg?v=1767744273","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/automatic-religion-paul-christopher-johnson-9780226749693","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}