Download Sociologist Peter Berger`s definition of religion as a

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Religion: Culture & the Supernatural
Culture and the Supernatural
 What is religion?
- Anthropological / sociological perspectives
 What are religion’s identifying features?
 What functions does religion serve?
Defining RELIGION
 Sociologist Peter
Anthropologist
Berger’s definition of
Wallace’s definition
religion as a
(1966):
“cultural system of
“a set of rituals,
commonly shared
rationalized by myth, beliefs and rituals
which mobilizes
that provides a sense
supernatural powers
of ultimate meaning
for the purpose of
and purpose by
achieving or
creating an idea of
preventing
reality that is sacred,
transformations of
all-encompassing,
state in man and
and supernatural,”
nature.”
What is religion?
- Organized beliefs in the supernatural that
guide humans in their attempts to make
sense of the world and deal with problems
they as important but defy solution through
application of known technology or
techniques of organization.
- To overcome these limitations, people
appeal to, or seek to influence and even
manipulate supernatural beings and powers.
- Part of all cultures (cultural universal)
“Problem” with the anthropological/ sociological
definition of religion (from a Euro-centric
perspective)
 There is no mention of God.
 Sociologists / anthropologists are not
concerned with whether religion is true or
false but with the social organization of
religion.
 Religion/superstition dichotomy
 “Religious economy” – religions can be
best understood as organizations in
competition with one another for followers.
How sociologists think about religion
 Sociologist are NOT concerned with
whether religious beliefs are true or false;
 Sociologists are esp. concerned with the
social organization of religion.
 Sociologists often view religions as a
major source of social solidarity.
 Sociologists tend to explain the appeal of
religion in terms of social forces rather
than personal, spiritual, or psychological
factors.
The sociological significance of religion
 Marx: Religion and IEQUALITY
 Marx argued that religion is “the opium of the
people.” In this sense, he posited that happiness
is deferred to the afterlife and therefore people
become accustomed to a sort of “resigned
acceptance” of conditions in the here and now.
Attention is diverted from inequalities and
injustices of everyday life in favor of rewards
after death.
 Religion contains a strong ideological element –
the religious beliefs can provide justification for
those in power.
Weber: The World Religions and Social
Change
 Weber contended that religiously inspired
social movements produced dramatic social
transformation.
 Focus on the relationship between
Protestantism and capitalism.
Durkheim: Religion and Functionalism
 Durkheim argued that religion had the
function of coalescing society by ensuring
that people regularly to affirm common and
values.
 Distinction between the sacred (actions,
images, and symbols associated with religion
that are held to be divine) and profane the
profane (which represents the routine aspects
of everyday life)
Ex. Totems as sacred objects.
Totemism 图腾
 Totemism is a religion
in which elements of
nature act as sacred
templates for society by
means of symbolic
association. Totemism
uses nature as a model
for society
Totems and Modernity
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Identifying features of religion
 Various beliefs and rituals – prayers, songs,
dances, offerings, and sacrifices people use to
interpret, appeal to, and manipulate
supernatural beings and powers (gods and
goddesses, ancestral and other spirits or
impersonal powers) to their advantage.
 Certain individuals are especially skilled at
dealing with supernatural beings and powers
and assist other members of society in their
ritual activities.
 A body of myths rationalize or “explains” the
system in a manner consistent with people’s
experience in the world in which they live.
The PRACTICE of Religion



-
Supernatural Beings and Powers
Gods & Goddesses
Ancestral Spirits
Animism (Tylor)
Religious Specialists
Priests & Priestesses
Shaman
Rituals and Ceremonies
Rites of Passage
Rites of Intensification
Magic & Witchcraft
Gods & Goddesses
 How men and women
relate to one another in
everyday life. Societies that
subordinate women to men
define the god godhead in
exclusive masculine terms.
 Goddess are apt to be most
prominent in societies
where women make a
major contribution to
economy and enjoy relative
equality with men.
 The patriarchal nature
of Western society is
expressed in its
theology, in which a
masculine God gives
life to the first man.
The first woman is
created from the first
man.
Ancestral Spirits
 Consistent with the wide-spread notion that human
beings are made up of two parts, a body and a
some kind of vital spirit (the idea that the spirit
being free from the body by death and have an
existence seems logical).
 Ancestral spirits resemble living human beings in
their appetites, feelings, emotions, and behavior.
 Belief in Ancestral spirits is found in societies
with unilineal descent systems.
 The vital importance of deceased ancestors in the
patrilineal society of pre-revolutionary China.
Ancestor Worship and Food Exchange
 For the gift of life, one is
forever indebted to
his/her parents, owing
them obedience, deference,
and a comfortable old age
& provide for their in the
spiritual world after
death. Offering food,
money and incense on the
anniversaries of their
births and deaths.
Ancestor Worship and Food Exchange in Hong Kong
(research by Harvard anthropologist Watson in the 1970s)
Descendants of Man lineage 文氏宗族
are gathered at tomb of their
ancestor. Roast pigs are presented
at the tomb. The local school
master is reading a annual report
to the ancestor (in classical Chinese)
detailing the accounts of the
founder’s estate.
Major lineages in the HK New
Territories share pork among
the male descendants of key
ancestors. Elders of the Man
lineage carefully weigh and
divide shares of meat “paid for”
by the ancestor himself (who
was “alive” socially through the
mechanism of his ancestral
Animism
Sir E. B. Tylor’s original contribution
to the anthropological study of
religion. Animism was seen as the
most primitive and is defined as a
belief in souls that derives from the
first attempt to explain dreams and
like phenomena. A belief in spirit
beings thought to animate nature.
EX: Trees, plants, rocks, and
mountains have a life of their own.
Orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy
(James Watson)
 Orthodoxy (correct belief)
Ex. Hindus, Orthodox Jews, and Taliban
 Orthopraxy (correct practice)
Confucianism in practice (EX. Man lineage
members participating in ancestor worship)
Priests & Priestesses
 Societies with the
resources to
support full-time
occupational
specialists give the
role of guiding
religious practices
and influencing the
supernatural to the
priests or priestess.
Shaman
 Part-time religious
specialist whose special
power to contact and
manipulate supernatural
beings are forces in an
altered state of
consciousness comes to
him or her thorough
some personal
experience.
 Religious entrepreneur
acting on behalf of some
human client.
Religious Specialists
 Deities are the “clients”  Shamans are
of the Priests and
Priestesses who tell
people what to do.
 Accept donations.
essentially religious
entrepreneurs acting
on behalf of some
human client, often to
bring about a cure or
foretell some future
event. Shamans tell
supernaturals what to
do.
 May collect a fee.
Functions and Expressions of Religion
 Rituals are:
- formal, performed in sacred contexts.
- convey information about the culture of
the participants and, hence, the participants
themselves.
- inherently social, and participation in them
necessarily implies social commitment.
(DURKHEIM)
NOTE: this is where you see the
anthropological contribution to the study of
religion!
Functions of ritual: the Durkheimian
perspective
 Collective
consciousness
 Group solidarity
 Collective identity
 Sense of
community
 Relationship
 Collective
representation
Rituals and Ceremonies
 Rites of Passage
Rituals that mark important stages in the lives
of individuals, such as birth, marriage, and
death.
 Rites of Intensification
Religious rituals enacted during a group’s real
of potential crisis.
Rites of Passage:
religious rituals which mark and facilitate a person's
movement from one (social) state of being to
another.
1) Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the
group and begins moving from one place to
another.
2) Transition (Liminality) – the period between
states, during which the participant(s) has left one
place but has not yet entered the next.
3) Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society
with a new status having completed the rite.
Transition / Liminality is part of every rite of passage
involving the temporary suspension and even
reversal of everyday social distinctions.
Wedding as rite of passage in prerevolutionary China
 Ethnographic Example: the transfer of bride
Separation – the bride withdraws from the group
she belongs (natal home) and begins moving
from one place to another (wife-takers) .
Transition/Liminality – the period between states
(transfer), during which the bride has left one
place but has not yet entered the next (Note:
bride is considered to be dangerous and has the
potential to “pollute” if not properly protected.
Incorporation – the bride reenters society with a
new status: The death of the daughter (for the
wife-givers) and the birth of the daughter (for
the wife-takers)!
“Ritual cannibalism” in
Christianity
 It’s SYMBOLIC
rather than actual,
although some
Christians believe that
the communion water
actually becomes the
body of the Christ (the
Eucharist meal).
Functions and Expressions of Religion
Magic
1. Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended
to accomplish specific aims.
2. Magic may be imitative or contagious
(accomplished through contact).
Witchcraft
1. Explanation of events based on the belief that
certain individuals possess an innate psychic
power capable of causing harm, including
sickness and death.
EX: the practice of fengshui; the strategy employed
by the Boxers （义和团）
Functions of Magic and Witchcraft
 Although many
westerners seek to
objectify and demytholgize their world
& try to suppress the
existence of magic
mysteries in their own
consciousness, they
continue to be
fascinated by them.
 Ex. Abraham Lincoln’s
wife & Nancy Reagan
Functions and Expressions of Religion
 Anxiety, Control, Solace
1. Magic/witchcraft is an instrument of
control, but religion serves to provide
stability when no control or
understanding is possible.
2. Malinowski saw tribal religions as
being focused on life crises.
Functions of Religion
 Psychological & Social
 Reduce anxiety by explaining the unknown
and making it understandable
 Provide comfort with the belief supernatural
aid is available in times of crisis
 Sanction human conduct by providing
notions of right and wrong and transfer the
burden of decision making from individuals
to supernatural powers.
 Maintain social solidarity.
 Religion and Cultural Ecology
 Western economic development experts erroneously
cite the Indian cattle taboo to illustrate the idea that
religious beliefs stand in the way of rational
economic decisions.
 Hindus seem to be ignoring a valuable food (beef)?
 Don’t Indians even know how to raise proper cattle?
Sacred Cow
 Gau Mata (cow) as
the central symbol
of Hindu veneration
 Indians revere zebu
cattle protected by
the Hindu doctrine
of ahimsa
(principle of
nonviolence which
forbids the killing
of animals)
 Divine Mother
Sacred Cow
 Hindus use cattle for transportation,
traction, and manure.
 Bigger cattle eat more, making them
more expensive to keep.
Lesson: the material and spiritual are
inseparable!
Note: we may explain the Kosher rules
in the same line of analysis
Mosaic Food Restrictions
 Summary:
 Orthodox Jewish rules prohibit eating meat
and dairy products at the same meal;
proscribe eating meat which has not been
drained of blood, or made kosher
 Ban on pork eating
 Food laws were important in Jesus’ time.
Each Jewish sects interpreted God’s
gastronomic intentions in its own way.
Food rules stand for the whole of their law.
 KOSHER DIETARY RESTRICTIONS
Kosher
Treyf
 (“clean/fit”)
(“unclean/torn”)
Separation of Milk and Meat:
 “Thou shalt not seeth a kid in its
mother’s milk.”
Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21.
 Kashrut/Kashruth (“Fit, Appropriate,
suitable”)
 Kasher/Kosher (“Clean, Fit”)
More Consumers Ask: Is It Kosher (Hunter 1997)
 Kosher foods, formerly
sought by devout Jews,
are now purchased by
Seventh Day Adventists,
Muslims, Buddhists,
vegetarians, individuals
with milk allergies, and
health-conscious
people… Currently,
more than 75% if
certified kosher foods
are purchased by nonJews, who favor them
because of a perception
that such foods are of
good quality due to high
standards and strict
supervision (p. 10)
 Kosher kitchen at
Smith College
 Kosher dining at
Mont Holyoke
College
Halal: The pig as haram
 Islamic rejection of pig and pork was commonly
accompanied by strong feelings of revulsion and
scrupulous avoidance of both pigs and their flesh. The
writings of western travelers contain abundant references
to Muslims ridiculing Christian pork eating. At the close
of the 15th century, Venetian merchants had to pay a
substantial sum for the right to keep pig at their
establishment in Alexandra. Christian minorities living in
Muslim lands were special targets too. Some of them gave
up raising pigs and denied they ate pork. The Armenians
who lived in Turkey prior to WWI would capture young
wild swine to raise for their flesh.
 The contrast between Muslim and Christian practices has
made the present-day pattern of pig keeping in the
Mediterranean and Near East fairly simple. Christians on
the north shores of the Mediterranean generally keep pigs
and eat pork though Muslims of the Balkans do not. In
North Africa, pork has been eaten by European Christian
settlers in various places. And to the east of Mediterranean
pork is rejected by Orthodox Jews and Muslims.
Ramadan 斋 月
 Keeping the fast during Ramadan, the month-long period
set aside for that purpose, distinguishes pious Muslims
from those who casually follow Islam’s precepts. No one
in the Muslim community publicly admits to breaking the
fast. Accordingly accusing anyone of failing to fast
constitutes a serious charge that can lead to fighting,
bloodshed, and even murder.
 Fasting has simple, unambiguous rules; during Ramadan
nothing should pass one’s lips during the time between the
calls to morning and evening prayers. Muslims should not
eat, drink, smoke, and take snuff. Nor should Muslims
reorganize their daily activities to escape feeling the
uncomfortable effects of the fast. One should not sleep
excessive amounts of time during the day but, to the
contrary, should fully experience fasting so that one can
contemplates, and most importantly, wholly embraces
Islamic faith. Keeping the fast continually reinvigorates
the power of Muslim identity to dominate self.
Religion as a control mechanism
The power of religion affects action
1. Religion can be used to mobilize large segments
of society through systems of real and perceived
rewards and punishments.
2. Witch hunts play an important role in limiting
social deviancy in addition to functioning as
leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in
wealth and status between members of society.
3. Many religions have a formal code of ethics that
prohibit certain behavior while promoting other
kinds of behavior.
Ex: Religion and Social Control in
Afghanistan
 Social conditions in Afghanistan under
Taliban rule.
 The Taliban are invoking a very strict
interpretation of the Koran as the basis for
social behavior: Women are required to
wear veils, remain indoors, and are not
allowed to be with males who are not blood
relatives. Men are required to grow bushy
beards and are barred from playing cards,
flying kites, and keeping pigeons.
Religion and the development of capitalism
 Christian Values:
Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism
to the values central to the Protestant
faith: independent, entrepreneurial, hard
working, future-oriented, and free
thinking.
The emphasis Catholics placed on
immediate happiness and security, and
the notion that salvation was attainable
only when a priest mediated on one’s
behalf, did not fit well with capitalism.
England vs. France
 The Industrial Revolution began in England but
not in France.
 The French did not have to transform their
domestic manufacturing system in order to
increase production because it could draw on a
larger labor force.
 England was already operating at maximum
production so that in order to increase yields
innovation was necessary.
 Weber argued that the pervasiveness of Protestant
beliefs in values contributed to the spread and
success of industrialization in England, while
Catholicism inhibited industrialization in France.
Religion and Change
Revitalization Movements
 Religious movements that act as mediums
for social change are called revitalization
movements.
 Examples: Mormanism, Unification Church
of Sun Myung Moon, the Branch Davidians
(David Koresh)
Revitalization movement in the US
New Age Religions
 Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in
formal organized religions.
 New Age religions have appropriated ideas,
themes, symbols, and ways of life from the
religious practices of Native Americans,
Australian Aborigines, and east Asian
religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Fengshui
/geomancy).
Globalization & New Age Movement
Explaining the popularity of NAM
 New Agers deny that there is much value in
clinging to well-defined religions traditions
(which have become too ritualistic and
devoid of spiritual meaning)
 Individuals possess unparalleled degrees
autonomy/freedom to chart their own lives;
one should pick and choose spiritual beliefs
and practices that suit him/her best; listen to
one’s intuition or “inner voice”
 Response to the rise of scientism
NAM Philosophy
 Relativism- it is absolutely true that no absolute truth exists;
and there is no absolute Creator God
 Tolerance
 Monism – all reality is one (一 元 论 )
 Pantheism – god is the universe (泛 神 论 )
 Humanity is God - human sin is only an illusion brought
about by ignorance of one’s own divinity
 A change in consciousness - through alteration of
consciousness we are opened up to a salvation through
knowledge of deeper truths, reality, and the escape from
ignorance and illusion
 Syncretism - all religions are one
 A Cosmic Evolutionary Optimism -- giving voice to a
hope in a coming universal order of peace and tranquility
Christian Responses to NAM
 Dialogue / Bridging / Addressing issues of
mutual concern
 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to
you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they
are ferocious wolves"
Sociological perspectives on NAM
 Differing from traditional forms of
religiosity: not a unified, traditional cult
system of beliefs and practices; no official
leader, headquarters, nor membership list
 a network of groups seeking out and
developing alternative ways of life in order
to coping with challenges of modernity
EX. the popularity of holistic healing
practices
Sociological Perspectives
 Compared to a serious religious
commitment, participation in NAM appears
little more than a hobby or lifestyle choice
(acquiring cultural/symbolic capital)
-- the appeals of fengshui /geomancy
-- celebrities who are involved in NAM:
Shirley MacLaine, ex-Beatle George Harrison,
Tom Cruise and Tina Turner.
Hare Krishna
New Age Movement and Popular Culture