Religion Flashcards
1
Q
Problems with Defining Religions
A
- Many societies don’t have a separate word for religion–it is so integrated into politics, kinship, and economics
- What we consider as supernatural others may not
- Shoshone water babies (pa:unha) or children of the water live in creeks and lakes and are about 1 –1 ½ half feet tall
2
Q
Defining Religion
A
- Myth and worldview
- myth: A religious or sacred story that explains how the world, people, or some event, phenomenon, or practice came to be.
- worldview: A society’s knowledge, beliefs, and perspective on the world.
- Religion (textbook): A system of beliefs and practices involving supernatural powers that functions to provide meaning and a sense of control over unexplainable phenomena
- Three components definition:
- Belief in spirit infusing creation
- Knowledge about supernatural powers – theory about the nature of supernatural power and the relationship between supernatural power, the natural world, and living people
- Practices for interacting with or controlling supernatural power
3
Q
Some Major Works
A
- Primitive Culture (1871) Tylor
- The Golden Bough (1894) Frazer
- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) Durkheim
- Rites and beliefs; sacred and profane
- Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937) Evans-Pritchard
- Witchcraft is logical; it is functional
- The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969) Turner
- Ritual in Ndembu society effects change; rites of passage
- Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality (1990) Tambiah
- Magic, religion, and science as three “orderings of reality”
4
Q
Religion vs Magic
A
- Religion focuses on supernatural beings - establishing rapport by becoming subordinate
- religion: A system of beliefs and practices involving supernatural beings and forces that functions to provide meaning, peace of mind, and a sense of control over unexplainable phenomena.
- Magic focuses on supernatural forces – control using specific rites or practices
- magic: The manipulation of nature using supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims.
5
Q
Frazer’s Types of Magic
A
- Imitative Magic (sympathetic)
- logic is that the effect of the action on the representation will be imitated in the real object
- Contagious magic (homeopathic)
- logic is that the effect will spread from the part to the whole.
6
Q
Witchcraft
A
- Witches are people with unique magical power
- Powerful/dangerous
- Azande witchcraft (mangu)
- Witchcraft can be countered with magic (through witch doctor)
7
Q
The Sacred and Profane
A
- Introduced by Durkheim
- Edmund Leach Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954)
- “Actions fall into place on a continuous scale… From this point of view technique and ritual, profane and sacred, do not denote types of action but aspects of almost any kind of action.”
- sacred: The aspect of such things as places, times, objects, and people that is beyond sensation that makes them special and thus worthy of great respect.
- profane: The utilitarian and secular world of work and routine experience.
8
Q
Rituals
A
- The practices part of religion
- “a ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, or objects, performed in a sequestered place and designed to influence preternatural [magical] entities or forces on behalf of the actor’s goals or interests” Victor Turner
- Within religious context, it is a patterned set of actions, utterances and events for interacting with or manipulating supernatural beings and forces
Some Types of Ritual
- Calendrical rituals occur on a regular schedule
- Rites of solidarity
- Ancestral cult
- A ceremony performed for the sake of enhancing social integration among a group of people.
- Rites of passage
- ritual that celebrates the transition of a person from one social status to another.
- Naming rites, puberty rites, weddings, funerals
- Crisis rituals occur on the basis of need – Rites of affliction (Turner)
9
Q
The Rites of Passage (1908)
A
- ceremonies that mark a change in a person’s social position and also help them through the transformation. These ritualistic ceremonies, which have religious significance, help both individuals and society deal with important life changes such as birth, adolescence, marriage, and death.
1. Separation - Preliminal- purification rites
- rituals symbolize cutting or separating e.g. removal of hair
- seclusion
- Transition - Liminal
- person symbolically placed “outside” society
- observes certain taboos or restrictions
- normal rules of the society suspended
- rite may be seen as a symbolic death, leading to a rebirth
- Incorporation - Postliminal
- Symbolically reborn
- completes transition to a new status
- lifting of restrictions
- wear new clothes and insignia
10
Q
Liminal period
A
- Initiate separated from normal life and secluded is in an ambiguous condition
- Initiate has nothing – no status, property, rank or kinship position
- Initiates may be seen as sexless or bisexual, or considered unclean or polluting
- Treated as an embryo or a newborn infant, or thought of as “dead” (by and to parents and community)
- A suspension of normative obligations
- Stress on servility to absolute authority of the ritual elders
- Secret, esoteric knowledge – the sacra
- = the “crux of liminality”
11
Q
Australian Aborigine Initiation Rites
A
- Initiation ceremonies for young boys culminate in circumcision
- The ceremonies are held at a special ceremonial grounds
- The final rituals are only open to men
- Young initiates are carried to their elders on the ceremonial ground and will stay with them during the all-night “Mandiwala” dance before their circumcision
- Boys are painted up for their “Mandiwala” initiation ceremony. Their circumcision takes place early in the morning
- Initiates during their ceremony in Borroloola; they are looking at a long line of dancers that will dance closely around them at the ceremony ground.
- The initiates act as though they were dead
- About an hour before sunset, the instructors take their charges to an appointed place for a “surprise”
- Several men emerge from the bush swinging their bullroarers
- circumcision initiation: the boy has been removed from his childhood, and his body has been sacrificed. Now he has a man’s body. There’s no chance of relapsing back to boyhood after a show like that
And they emerge as men
- Postliminal phase
- With the rights and duties of men
- With knowledge about skills and myths that properly belong to men
- With information about how to interact with women and children
- They will be socially recognized as men
12
Q
Types of Religious Organizations
A
- Also from Wallace (1966)
- Individualistic or personal
- Shamanistic
- Communal
- Ecclesiastical
13
Q
Individualistic or Personalistic
A
- Each person establishes a direct connection with supernatural beings, who then guard and assist
- Contact with the supernatural usually comes in the form of a vision
- After a time of trial, a being appears and directs the supplicant to do certain things
- No role specialization
- Food forgaging
- Crow vision quest
- individualistic cult: The least complex type of religious organization in which each person is his or her own religious specialist.
14
Q
Shamanistic
A
- A shaman is a person with unusual knowledge of the supernatural
- Shamans usually serve as mediums
- Shamans frequently operate by inducing trance, during which their spirits journey to the spirit land
- Part-time specialization
- Food forgaging, pastoralism, and horticulture
- Tungus shamanism
Shamanistic Complex
- Levi-Strauss: “The Sorcerer and His Magic”
- Shamanistic complex
- Manipulate symbols to generate belief in the healer, patient and social group
- All shaman are potential sorcerers
- shamanistic cult: A type of religious organization in which part-time religious specialists called shamans intervene with the deities on behalf of their clients.
15
Q
Communal
A
- Collective rituals
- Respected elders, but not religious professionals
- Ceremonies often include sacred objects charged with supernatural force
- Communal expression often is associated with the use of totems
- Groups perform rites for community
- Horticulture and pastoralism
- Totemistic rituals
- communal cult: A type of religious organization in which groups of ordinary people conduct religious ceremonies for the well-being of the total community.
