Chapter 8 Final Flashcards
Soul
The noncorporeal, spiritual component of an individual.
Transmigration
A situation in which a soul passes from one body to another – human animal, or even an inanimate object
Purgatory
A place for souls who die with lesser faults for which there is no repentance or for which the penalty is not wholly paid during the lifetime.
Reincarnation
A belief in an immortal, eternal soul that is born again and again in different bodies.
Karma
The effect of a person’s behavior during the series of phases of a person’s existence. Karma is seen as determining the person’s destiny.
Ancestor worship
The veneration of ancestors, who may bring aid to their descendants or, if
neglected, may bring misfortune
Ghost
A soul of an individual after death that remains in the vicinity of the community
Vampire
A person who has died before his or her time and who brings about the death of friends and relatives until his or her corpse is “killed.”
Zombie
A corpse that has been raised from the grave and animated
Forensic anthropologist:
A specialist in the analysis of the human skeleton in a legal context.
Relic
An object of religious veneration, especially a piece of the body or a personal item of a religiously important person, such as an ancestor or saint.
Religiosity
• Measure of the strength of beliefs and practices o How religious are you? o How are you religious? • How does one become religious? o Socialization o Conversion • Commitment o And disengagement
Socialization
• The internalization of the values of a social group
o Also the ability to perform the roles that need to be played throughout life → lifelong process, but most of it occurs early
• In terms of religious socialization – it is the terms of getting this form of socialization in the views of religious beliefs
Ages and Stages of ‘being religious’
• Childhood • Adolescence • Marriage and procreation • Middle age (rituals?) • Old age, dying o → consider the sequence of rites of passage that might mark the stages of an individual’s biography
Childhood : 2 societies - • Learning • Knowledge • Family • Meaning • Belonging • Identity
. homogenous societies (small scale, or historic)
usually two-gendered, and you do not think about what is about to happen, you just become (i.e. you just become a man)
• → religion pervades in all roles of these types of societies
• 2. Societies that are pluralistic – have different world views
if you are growing up with an awareness of other world views and differences between your group and another group means that you develop a “we” and “they”
Individuals identity and social location are intentionally nurtured by the social group so that the individual has an answer to the question “who am I?”
Family
- Naming
- Kinship ties
- Relationship between human community and concepts of the divine
Community
• Clan, tribe, ethnic group, nation
• Exogamy/endogamy
• Tensions between group and society
o Privatization
o Individualization
o Weakened norms
o Withdrawal
• Adolescence
o Ritual expression (rites of passage)
• Marriage
o Sexuality and procreation
o For women in traditional cultures, often the route to adult status (sometimes requires the birth of a son for full ‘adult’/wife status)
• Middle Age
o More or less modern phenomenon
o Indeterminate length, characterized by new forms of rituals (anniversaries, retirement parties) but not necessarily religious ones
• Old age
o Elderly respected in traditional communities
• Religion traditionally gives meaning and dignity to old age
• In modern communities, may be separated from family and community
• Aware of immanence of death
There is a difference between actual death and social death (we will go over this later)
Conversion
• (Rapid) resocialization
• the transformation of one’s self concurrent with a transformation of one’s meaning system
• (not “switching”)
• systematic interpretations of conversion
o predisposition
• age –most common age for conversion is in adolescence
• 14-15 for young women, 16-17 for young men
o conditions
• moments of crisis in people’s lives (deaths in the family, being fired, mid-life…_
• (liminality – where the person’s identity is in flux)
• sudden change?
• Assimilation (rite of passage)
John R. Lofland’s stages
• Picking up
o A little conversation …
• Hooking
o Bringing the recruit back to the group’s space (a home, for example)
• Encapsulating
o Getting the person involved to the point that there’s nothing else – ‘weekend retreats’, sleep-dep, lots of activity, lots of food, drink….
• Loving
o Unconditional love offered from the outset
• Committing
o Because the conditions have been created (no outside contact, nobody to disrupt the socialization process)
How Religious?
• Dimensions of religiosity (strength of religious beliefs and practice)
o Belief, strength of
o Practice, what people do and how often they do it (go to temple, do the rituals, prayers … )
o Experience
o Knowledge, how well do you know the religious text, for example
o Consequences, as in consequences for not doing the religion properly?
Reginald W. Bibby
• Career began in the 1970’s, when hired by the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church in Canada to help them measure the effectiveness of their ability to socialize their own children and adults into the religious worldview
o “curriculum evaluation and review”
• Bibby’s work stood on the shoulders of Americans named Glock, Stark, Demerath; who had found that their skills as anthropologists and sociologists of religion were very popular among religious institutions who wanted to find out what was happening to their young adults.
