Download ANT 2410 Fall 2015 Religion and worldview

Religion and World View
• Overview
I. Anthropology of religion
II. Expressions of religion
III. Religion & social change
World religion symbols
Buddhist temple in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I. Anthropology of religion
• A. Wallace: “religion is belief and ritual
concerned with supernatural beings,
powers and forces.”
• Anthropologists focus on the collective,
shared nature of religion and the meanings
it embodies
– Durkheim: religious “effervescence”- collective
emotional intensity
– Turner: “communitas”- intense community
spirit and solidarity
Emile Durkheim,
1858-1917 (French sociologist and author of Elementary Forms of Religious Life)
What is Religion?
 Seeking a Working
Definition



1) a belief in some form of
supernatural power
2) myths and stories
about the meaning and
purpose of life
3) A set of ritual
activities that reinforce or
instill these collective
beliefs
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What is Religion?
 Seeking a Working
Definition
 4) A symbol system
used in religious
practice
 5) Identifiable
specialists (i.e.
priests)
 6) Institutions
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
7) A community of
believers
Anthropology of religion
• Religion is a cultural universal but societies
have unique ways of conceptualizing
divinity, spirituality, and religious practice
• Codes of ethics and morality
• Associated with social divisions
• Means to establish social order,
resolve conflict, and promote
peaceful coexistence
Ancient spiral symbol used in pre-Christian
Gaelic and Druid religions in northern Europe
and Wiccan revival traditions
II. Expressions of religion
• E.B. Tylor: early
anthropologist of religion
– Proposed 3 stages of
religious development:
– Animism = belief in
spiritual beings found in
nature and objects
– Polytheism = belief in
multiple gods
– Monotheism = belief in 1
deity/God
Ancient Egyptian tombs
Buddhist monk in Sarnath, India
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Émile Durkheim: The
Sacred and the Profane
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Émile Durkheim: The
Sacred and the Profane
 Religion and Ritual
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Émile Durkheim: The
Sacred and the Profane
 Religion and Ritual
 Karl Marx: Religion as
“The Opiate of the
Masses”
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Émile Durkheim: The
Sacred and the Profane
 Religion and Ritual
 Karl Marx: Religion as
“The Opiate of the
Masses”

Religion and Cultural
Materialism
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Max Weber: The
Protestant Ethic
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Max Weber: The
Protestant Ethic
 Shamanism
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
Shamanic religion
• Often associated with foragers
and agriculturalists
• Examples: healers, mediums,
astrologers, diviners, herbalists
• Shamans sometimes assume a
different or ambiguous
sex/gender role to set them
apart from others
Shamans in Nepal (l.) & Thailand (r.)
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Max Weber: The
Protestant Ethic
 Shamanism
 Religion and Magic
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
Magic and religion
• Magic - supernatural techniques to
accomplish specific aims
• Malinowski viewed magic as a means
of control in situations of uncertainty
or danger (like kula expeditions)
• In many contemporary societies,
forms of magic and superstition
persist as a means of reducing psych.
anxiety (examples?)
Magician card
in tarot deck
What Tools do Anthropologists Use to
Understand How Religion Works?
 Max Weber: The
Protestant Ethic
 Shamanism
 Religion and Magic

E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company
Rituals
• Ritual = behavior that is formal (stylized and repetitive)
and performed in sacred places at set times
• Performers of the ritual accept a common moral and
social order
• Customs associated with a transition from one stage of
life to another
• 3 Phases of Rites of Passage (Victor Turner):
– 1. Separation from the group
– 2. Liminality: in-between state, ambiguous
– 3. Incorporation: re-enter society with a new status
after completing the rite
Totemism
• Native Australian (aboriginal)
societies and in N. American
groups in N. Pacific coast
(U.S./Canada)
• Totem represented origin of
descent group
• Members of totemic group did
not kill or eat their totem,
except at special annual
ceremonies
• People related to nature
through their totemic
associations with species
Totem pole designs in N. America
Australian aboriginals carving a totem pole
Monotheistic religions
• Belief in a single
eternal, omniscient,
omnipotent,
omnipresent God.
• Judaism (14 mill.),
Christianity (2.1 bill.),
Islam (1.5 bill.) share a
common religious
lineage back to Prophet
Abraham
• Islam is the fastest
growing religion (2.9%
per year)
III. Religion & social change
Revitalization movements Nongqawuse (c1842-1898)
• occur in times of change
• Religious leaders emerge
and direct people to
alter/revitalize society
• Examples:
–
–
–
–
–
beginnings of Christianity
Protestant Reformation
Liberation theology
Xhosa cattle killings (1857)
Ghost dance movement
(1890)
Cargo cults
• Revitalization movements
that occur when
traditional communities
come into contact with
industrial societies and
attempt to achieve similar
wealth and power through
magic by imitating
European behavior and
symbols
• Common in the South
Pacific
Cargo cults on the Pacific Island of Vanuatu
How is Globalization Changing
Religion?
Copyright © 2014, W.W. Norton & Company