Chapter 4 Vocab Flashcards
Ritual
A patterned, reoccurring sequence of behaviors.
Religious ritual
A ritual that involves the manipulation of religious symbols.
Prescriptive ritual
A ritual that a deity or religious authority requires to be performed.
Situational or crisis ritual
A ritual that arises spontaneously, frequently in times of crisis.
Periodic or calendrical ritual
A ritual that is performed on a regular basis as part of a religious calendar.
Occasional ritual
A ritual that is performed when a particular need arises.
Technological ritual
A ritual that attempts to influence or control nature, especially in those situations that affect human activities and well being.
Hunting and gathering rites of intensification
A ritual whose purpose is to influence nature in the quest for food.
Protective ritual
A ritual that is performed at the start of or during a dangerous activity to protect the participants or to protect the community against disaster.
Divination ritual
: A ritual that is used for the purpose of divination.
Ethnobotany
The anthropological study of the use of plant material, especially in healing.
Therapy ritual
A ritual whose function is to cure.
Anti-therapy ritual
A ritual that is performed to bring about illness, accident, or death.
Cursing ritual
An anti-therapy ritual that involves reciting a curse to bring about illness and death.
Ideological ritual
A ritual that delineates codes of proper behavior, promotes community solidarity, articulates the community’s worldview, and assists the community in managing crises.
Social rite of intensification
A type of ideological ritual that functions to reinforce the belief system and the values of the society, performed as a periodic ritual or an occasional ritual in times of stress.
Rite of passage
A ritual that occurs when an individual changes status, serving to legitimize the new status and to imprint it on the community’s collective memory.
Status
A social position that is defined in terms of appropriate behavior, rights and obligations, and its relationship to other statuses.
Rank
The relative placement of a status in the society.
Separation
The first phase of a rite of passage in which an individual is removed from his or her former status.
Transition
The second phase of a rite of passage during which a person is in a liminal state and is moved from one status to another.
Incorporation
The final stage of a rite of passage in which the individual is reintroduced to the community in his or her new status.
Liminality
The state of ambiguous marginality that characterizes the transition phase of a rite of passage.
Communitas
A state characterized by a sense of equality, community and camaraderie.
Age set
A social group that contains members of one sex within a specific age span.
Clitoridectomy
A surgical procedure characterized by removal of the clitoris as well as parts or all of the labia minora.
Pharaonic infibulation
A surgical procedure performed on women that involves the complete removal of the clitoris and the labia minora and majora, the two sides of the wound then being stitched together, leaving a small opening.
Revitalization ritual
A ritual that is associated with a revitalization movement.
Pilgrimage
A journey to a sacred place or a sequence of sacred spaces at which rituals are performed.
Tabu
Objects and persons that are off limits and are thereby segregated. May also refer to certain behaviors that would bring about negative consequences through supernatural means.
Mana
An impersonal supernatural force.
Weber studied…
− several different cultures with a concern to investigate the relationship between religious orientations and modernization…
− religion and social change
Rationalization
− development of greater standardization, consistency and coordination in organizational structure
− related to concepts of disenchantment and secularization
Charisma
− ‘gift’
− the quality of an individual personality by virtue of which that person is set apart from ordinary people and regarded as endowed with exceptional qualities
Types of Authority
− Traditional (eg monarch – who might be all three)
− Rational-legal (eg. A university president or Canadian prime minister)
− Charismatic (Bono? Obama? Trudeau? Rick Mercer?)
Types of Religious leader
- priest
* prophet
Authority & Weber’s three Ideal types
…is the legitimate exercise of power
− charismatic authority based on the extraordinary quality of…
− rational-legal – legitimated by law… legally qualified office-holder
− traditional – legitimated by past practice
“Alienation is…”
• “… the estrangement of individuals from each other and/or a specific situation or process. It is a consequence of social structures that oppresses people, denying them their humanity” (EPM)
Religious alienation
- “the more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself”
- to Marx, religion was a sign that the society had not finished developing
Sexual Taboos
- Expressed in exogamy (pair-bonding outside the immediate social group)
- Consider the incest taboo
- Tensions between exogamous and endogamous behavior (exogamous – say, at the family level; endogamous at the cultural or religious or ethnic level)
Food Sexual
• Certain foods are off-limits for the entire group; eating foods in a certain order – e.g. the head of the family, the eldest sons, then young children, then the mother eats last…
Syncretism
o A fusing of traits from two cultures to form something new and yet permitting the retention of the old by subsuming the old into a new form
Technological rituals
a ritual that attempts to influence or control nature, especially in those situations that affect human activities and well-being
Protective rituals
A ritual that is performed at the start of, or during, a dangerous activity to protect the participants or to protect the community against disaster
Divination rituals
A ritual that is used for the purpose of divination
Therapy Rituals
A ritual whose function is to cure
Anti-therapy rituals
cursing ritual
Ideological Rituals
o A ritual that delineates codes of proper behavior
• Promotes community solidarity
Social rite of Intensification
o A type of ideological ritual that functions to reinforce the belief system and the values of the society
o Performed as a periodic ritual or an occasional ritual in times of stress
Rite of Passage
• A ritual that occurs when an individual changes status, serving to legitimize the new status and to imprint it on the community’s collective memory
o Birth, puberty, death
• Status
o A social position that is defined in terms of appropriate behavior, rights, and obligations, and its relationship to other statuses.
• Rank
o The relative placement of a status in society
3 phases of rites of passage
o Separation • Symbolized by death o Transition & Liminality • Ambiguous o Incorporation • Symbolized by rebirth o Examples: • Coming of Age Rituals Menarch
