Week 2 - Theories in the Anthropology of Religion Flashcards
Functionalism
- in 1900s the preoccupation with religion was replaced by other theoredical concerns
- questioning what the function of religion was
What are the 2 questions concerning functionalism?
1) What is the function of religion?
2) What does religion do for the people ans for social groups?
Emile Durkheim
French sociologist who explored the role of religion in shaping social cohesion and moral order
What were Emile Durkheim’s view on religion?
- atheist but believed that religion isn’t just an illusion or irrational, that the need for religion, rituals or myths are based on some type of human need
- wasn’t happy with Tylor’s definition that religion was the “belief in spiritual beings” and wanted a broader definition
Profane
the ordinary, everyday aspects of life not imbued with religious or extraordinary significance -> anything not sacred and could damage or pollute the sacred by contact
Sacred
- aspects of life reguarded as extraordinary, set apart and endowed with special significance or holiness
- a recognition of belief or power or force that evokes feelings of awe, reverance and respect
What makes something sacred?
not connection to the “divine” but prohibitions setting it apart from the profane
Totem
denotes an object, especially an animal, which is sacred to a clan, family, or social unit
Totemism
ppl have mystical relationship/kinship w/ totem, and is though to interact with a given kin group or individual and to serve as their emblem or group
Totemic Societies
societies whose social, religious, & cultural structures are based on totems and totemic practices
Why did Durkheim assume Totemism was the most basic original form of religion?
the “division of labour” in totemic societies weren’t divided as much and wererelatively “simple societies”
What was the special type of kinship clan members consider themselves bond together by?
not based on blood, but the fact they share the same last name
What is are names and totems usually based on?
animals
What does each totemic group have?
a collection of ritual objects
What are the 5 characteristics of Totemism?
1) often viewed as a companion, relative, protector, progenitor or helper
2) superhuman powers and abilities often ascribed to totems
3) not only offered respect or occasional veneration, but also can become objects of awe and fear
4) often prohibited from killing, eating, or touching, even as a rule to shun it
5) hereditary transmission
What makes a totem sacred?
- totemic emblem
- totemic entity
- human clan members
totemic emblem
- essential to totemic belief
- a design that represents the clan’s totemic identity
- confers sacredness to whatever it’s marked on
- marks the sacred from the profane
totemic entity
- animal or plant species
- dietary prohibition
What did Durkheim believe about totemic beliefs in regaurd to the sacredness of totems?
images, animals, and clan members all sacred in the same way, thus their sacred character is not due to sacred properties of one or the other, but derived from some common principle shared by all
What did Durkheim believe Totemism is actually about?
the clan itself and not the totemic entity or the emblem, that the expirences of the social group alone can generate in people intense feelings that sustain religion
What did Durkheim believe a totem was?
a god or a divinity, the symbol for the group of society -> therefore the god and society are one, and the power attributed to the totem is actually the power of society
What do Totems do?
- create a common center via representation, to and for a group
- create a shared set of values, mores, based in beliefs but also communal gatherings and ritual
- function to promote unity in totemic groups
What was Durkheim’s definition of Ritual?
a communal activity which not only gives members ideas and beliefs in common but operates at a lower and more instinctive level as well as through the psychological power of “effervescence”
Effervescence
intense, electrified, emotional energy one recieves from shared identity and unity from a collective ritual expirence
Collective Worship creates ….
a feeling of effervescence, invigorates the individual and produces energy and power in people
What is Durkheim’s definition of religion?
a religion constitutes the union of beliefs and rituals
Why did Durkheim believe that any definition of religion must exclude magic
bc magic is individualistic, insturmental and immanent
Why did Durkheim believe magic was individualistic and self-serving?
- magic doesn’t bind together those who adhere to it, nor unite them into a group leading a common life
- selfish and often involves rituals performed by individuals seeking to manipulate supernatural forces for personal gain or profit
why did Durkheim believe that magic was instumental?
- is seen as a means to achieve specific, practical goals, such as healing, fertility, or protection
- often characterized by a utilitarian or instumental approach to supernatual forces
Why did Durkheim belive that magic was immanent?
magical practices focused on immediate, tangible outcomes in the here and now, the supernatural forces are believed to be directly and immediately responsive to the magician’s actions
What were Durkheim’s characteristics of religion?
collective, unifying, trancendent
What were the 4 main critiques of Durkheim’s theories of religion?
1) too rigid separation between the sacred and the profane
2) many hunter gatherers lack corporate kin groups and totems but had religion
3) society’s not a homogenous entity, but divided into social categories based on sex, class, ethnic affiliation and religion
4) religious beliefs may have ideological function legitimating the domination of 1 group or class over another
Bronislaw Malinowski
known for pioneering field work with participant observations in particular long-term immersions -> Trobriand Islands, stumbling across long-term immersion -> got text about islanders: religion, sex, etc
What are the 2 main critques Malinowski had about Durkheim’s theory of religion?
- the most deeply religious moments come in solitude, in detachment from the world
- many strongly “effervescent” gatherings in tribal communities don’t neccessarly generate religious feelings (ex: gathering for trade purposes)
What did Malinowski accept about Durkheim’s theories on religion?
public ritual had a social function -> especially funerary rites
Who stated: “Any theory of culture has to start from the organic need of man” and what does it mean?
Malinowski, that religion and magic serve human needs
What was Maliowski’s reaction to the Trobriand Islanders’ growth of yams and why?
surprised bc came w/ preconcieved notions about about other cultures, that they are just noble savages, but their yam shelters showed evidence of generations of observation data to come up the the construction of these structures to continue the harvest
What did Malinowski notice was involved in the growth of yams?
magic was involved
How was magic involved in the harvest of yams, and crops in general?
- yams need magic to make them grow properly, so magicians have a magic flint and bless the herbs
- specific garden spells needed to ensure good harvest
What did Malinowski say about science and magic among Trobrianders?
- the success around agriculture depends on lots observations and scientific methods and that these “savages” were rational and that they had emperical skills that were transmitted over generations
- magic wasn’t a social function but a pyschological need
what does: “magic flourishes wherever man cannot control hazards by means of science. It flourishes in hunting and fishing, in times of war and in seasons of love, in the control of wind, rain, and sun, in regulatinf all dangerous enterprises, above all in disease and in the shadow of death” mean?
the idea of magic does the best and is more popular in situations where science is unable to help and when the times are out of your’s and sciences scope of thing
What is the distinction between religion and science?
- Religion: other-worldly -> provides a feeling of peace and well-being
- Science: this-worldly -> concerned w/ control over the natural world
What is the distinction between magic and science?
- complementary to each other
- magic is used where science is inadequate
Science vs Religion and Magic
- Scientific Methods: careful observations through learning and transmitting knowledge
- Religion and Magic: universal -> supersititons present in Western societies
What are Malinowski’s views on religion (Functionalist Theory of Religion)?
- links religion to death and life-cycle rituals
- humans are afriad of death and can’t face the idea of complete annihalation -> religion provides psychological safeguards
- “religion saves man from a surrender to death and destruction”
What did Malinowski believe was the essence of religion?
- the idea of spirit and the belief in immortality
- both have a psychological origin
Sigmund Freud
scholar who contributed to the psychological explanations of religion, emphisizing the role of unconcious processes, emotions, and inner religious beliefs and practices
What was Freud’s view on religion?
proposed that religious beliefs involve projection of universal unconcious desires, fears, and conflicts onto the spiritual realm
Oedipus Complex
theory Freud had based on the myth of Oedipus that all males have an unconcious desire to kill their fathers and marry their mothers
How do religious beliefs relate to the Oedipus Complex, in Freud’s views?
religious beliefs = manefestations of unresolved psychological conflicts from the Oedipal Period -> tendency to envision a strong deity stems from father figure in Oedipus Complex -> child feels love, fear and rivalry and projects emotions onto idea of divine, all powerful father figures
Religion - Freud’s Version (in relation to Oedpius Complex)
Oedipus Complex involves guilt over child’s forbidden desires and fantasies -> religion offers framework for dealing with this guilt through rituals, moral coded and promise of redemption or forgiveness
Freud’s Views on Religion
- believed religion is an illusion and a collective neurosis to help to help overcome inner psychological (sexual) trauma; a form of wish fulfillment
- religion provides rules or restrictions that keep worse anti-social instincts, like Oedipus Complex, suppressed
What is the conflict between nature and civilization?
nature of our society conflicts with our basic desires -> if Oedipus Complex acted out, society wouldn’t be able to operate, it depends on structure and order
What are the 4 main critiques of Freud’s theories of religion?
- no anthropological evidence (Malinowski: Trobriand Islanders have no evidence of Oedipal complex but have religion)
- narrow selection of evidence (only looked at father figures in Christianity and Judaism - not universal)
- vidence moulded to fit conclusions and his negative view of religion
- considered science to be “objective truth” and religion to be “illusion”
Karl Marx’s views on religion
- attempts to justify inequalities in power and status
- creates an illusion of happiness that helped people cope with the economic difficulties of life under capitalism
- obedience and conformity avdvocated by religious leaders as a means of reaching heaven = also persuades ppl not to fight for better economic or social conditions in their current lives
- religion legitimizes inequality -> ex: divine right of kings, taking religious oaths as elected official
What is Karl Marx’s views on religion concerning the afterlife?
encourages ordinary people to orient themselves towards the afterlife, where they could expect to recieve comfort and happiness
Karl Marx believes that religion is the “____ of the people”
opium
What are the 8 functions of religion in terms of psychology?
- gives meaning to life
- a means for dealing with crises deaths and illness, famine, flood, failure
- reduces anxiety
- provides comfort
- helps ppl cope w/ reality
- tells them how to behave
- removes burden of responsibility
- participation in religious ceremonies provided reassurance, security, and even ecstacy, closeness, etc
What are the functions of religion in a sociological appraoch?
- social control
- conflict resolution
- group solidarity
How does religion corelate with social control?
- religion stems from society and provides for societal needs
- religions validaten the social: sustains the moral and social order
How does religion correlate with conflict resolution?
- provides notion of right and wrong, acceptable behaviour, group norms
- provides moral sanctions for individual conduct
How does religion correlate to group solidarity?
education through ritual used to learn oral traditions
In the 1950s what was the shift of focus on the subject of religion?
shift of ethnographic attention -> moved from looking at religion in tribal and primitive areas, and shifted to looking at larger world religions in the local context (ex: Christianity in America)
In the 1950’s what was the shift in theordical ideas of religion?
shift from Durkheim’s functionalism to meaning of/in religion for ppl
Clifford Geertz
interpretations of culture, how we can read culture as text and how we interpret it
Interpretive Anthropology
focus on meaning of symbols in terms of how they relate to ppl w/i specific cultures -> the native’s pov
Symbol
an object, gesture, sound, or image that “stands for” some other idea, concept, or object, something that has “meaning”, particularly when meaning is arbitrary and conventional and thus culturally relative
Culture is not ________ but rather a ________
a set of symbols that fit into a structured analysis; series of complex “webs”
What is Geertz’s definition of religion?
religion is a system of symbols that influences people to create structure, find meaning, and believe in certian ideas and ideologies through the interpretation of these symbols bc they mean something to them
What is Geertz’s approach to religion?
- religion should be approached from standpoint of interpretive anthropology -> too look at it in terms of the meanings of symbols and how they refer to different ideas about a meaningful life
Geertz’s view on religion
- essentially a cultural system that gives meaning to human existance
What does making and using symbols entail?
the cognitive ability to find or create and place meaning where it otherwise “is not”
According to Geertz, how do religious beliefs provide meaning?
offers set of ethical criteria to guide human behaviour, helping individuals navigate moral landscape and help make sense of moral discrepencies they encounter
For Geertz, religious symbolisim is intrisically linked to what?
“the problem of meaning”
The Problem of Meaning
challenge of dechiphering and interpreting the symbolic structures within the culture to understand the significance that individuals ascribe to their actions, rituals, and social interactions
What is the 2 steps in the 2 step operation in the anthropological study of religion
- an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the religious symbolism
- the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes
What is the distinct perspective and a universal and unique function that Geertz gives religion?
to establish meaning
Mary Douglas view on beliefs in the context of Symbolic Classification
beliefs are logical and symbolic efforts to impose order and meaning on the world through use of contrasting categories -> how symbols can be used to create order, how meaning of symbols help create distinctions btw ppl and cultures through contrast in categories
What is the book “Purity and Danger” about?
highlights role of symbolism in construction and maintenance of cultural categories related to purity and impurity
Victor Turner’s Ritual and Symbolism
- rituals often involve symbolic actions and objects that convey deeper meanings
- symbols can be interpreted in many ways
Referential Symbols
used in ordinary speech or writing that have a relationship w/ some concrete item or fact
Liminality
transitional or in-between phases within rituals or social processes
What happens in liminal phases?
individuals experience a suspension of normal social roles and structures
Why is symbolism important in the context of liminality?
it represents the transformation of individuals or groups from one state to another
Communitas
a state of unstructured and equal community that arises during liminal periods
What is symbolism’s relation to communitas?
symbolism helps create shared sense of identity and belonging amoung invidiuals in communitas, ritual symbols, gestures, or objects become potent expressions of collective experience and solidarity
What do rituals and ceremonies as performative acts rich in symbolism do?
communicate meanings and actively engage participants in the creation of shared cultural narratives and identities
