Download 4, “20th century theories of religion”

Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture
Questions on chapter 4, “20th century theories of religion”
The major trend in the early 20th century study of religion was a shift from ________ to
________.
The two figures who shaped anthropology in Great Britain in the early 20th century were _______
and ________, who in their approach to religion had been more influenced by the functionalist
approach of ________ than the evolutionist approach of _______.
Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown (d. 1945) was one of the first students of religion who actually did
fieldwork. He did fieldwork in _________, _________, and _______. Basing his study of
society and religion on biological analogies, his three key concepts were ______, _____, and
_____. His core working hypothesis was that each feature of social life has a ______ which
contributes to maintenance of ________. The main purpose of research, in his view, was to
discover __________. As for religion, he assumed that the function of ritual was to
____________ on which social unity depends.
Bronislaw Malinowski (d. 1942) is best known for his fieldwork among the ___________.
Though he was also interested in the functions of religion, his view of “function” was not the
maintenance of social structure, as with Radcliffe-Brown, but with individual ________. He
distinguished magic from religion: magical acts had _______, whereas religious acts were
performed __________. Marriage ceremonies are religious, because ___________. Pregnancy
rituals are magic, because ___________________. Whereas magic aims for specific results,
religion ___________ the values of a society.
In the early 19th century in the U.S., an interest in anthropological studies was provoked by the
two year Lewis and Clark expedition which began in the year _______ under the President
_______.
American anthropologists of the early 20th century placed a heavier emphasis than Europeans
because of ___________.
The lawyer Lewis Henry Morgan (d. 1881) developed a theory of cultural evolution based on his
knowledge of the ___________ Indians. He focused on the evolution of ______ rather than of
religion. His writings had an important influence upon _________ and _________.
The anthropologist who had the heaviest impact on the shaping of early American Anthropology
was Franz Boas (d. 1942) . Boas major contribution was to root Anthropology in ________. He
was concerned that ________ and he collected large numbers of ________. He was most
interested in showing how myths ________. He compared the elements of myths in order to
find __________. When he examined religion, he did not look at the entire system but at
specific _______. The element in American Indian religion on which he focused most heavily
was _______.
Leslie Spier (d. 1961) studied two American Indian religious movements, the __________ and
the ________. He was less interested in studying the structure or function of these movements
than in _________________.
American Anthropology was less speculative than European anthropology because of
___________.
Alexander Goldenweiser (d. 1940) challenged earlier speculative theories of totemism by doing
fieldwork that showed that features that had once been thought to be universal were really not so.
Four of these features are _____. What was universal were not individual traits, but two generic
phenomena _______ and _________. Since social groups are universal and totemism is not, he
concluded that _____________. The logical steps by which totemic taboos might arise are
_____________
Paul Radin (d. 1959) focused on myth and religion among the ________. His contribution was
the method of ___________. The earlier romantic notion that all members of tribes believe in
their religion was demolished by Radin’s informant ___________, who admitted that he had
faked his way through the adolescent ________ and came to believe only when he began to have
visions because of ___________. Radin did propose a four stage evolution of religion from
magic. Whereas Freud had said that religion had originated in the Oedipus complex, Radin said
that it originated in ____________. Radin said that a universal characteristic of all shamans is
that they ________. Radin’s approach to understanding religion is most akin to the discipline
of __________.
Robert Lowie (d. 1957), like Radin, attempts psychological explanations, but unlike Radin denies
that religious leaders need be ________. He works out his theories by analysis of _________,
started by the prophet __________who predicted that __________ and said that people must
prepare by _________.
Ruth Benedict (d. 1948) studied two North American groups, _______, and _______, and one
Melanesian group ___________. She identified two types of societies: ________ characterized
by _____, and _______ characterized by ______. She stated that every society has a
___________ that is transmitted via __________. The Ghost Dance and Vision Quest were
rejected by the _________ because they were ___________.