Armand L. MaussRezensionen

A facinating look at "changing mormon conceptions of race and lineage". Mauss, himself a faithful LDS scholar of sociology and religious studies, shows how the LDS notion of race with regard to "Israelite", "Jew", "Black", "Lamanite" (an LDS term for native americans), "Indian" and others have morphed over time relative to sociological pressures.

Contrary to common belief, early LDS thought did not show the anti-black biases that came to be offical policy under church leader Brigham Young and his heirs to power. Mauss unpacks the notion of race and lineage and shows how it has evolved.

A facinating read that I would like to re-read (I didn't read the entire book during the class I took on the Anthropology of Mormonism, so I'm shelving this one as "currently-reading", but the truth is, I'm going to re-read it from the beginning.