Anthropology of Religion What is Religion o Belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings powers and forces Religion is a cultural universal Religion has several purposes o It maintains social order o It explains the unexplainable things o It provides cultural cohesion Provides a framework for understanding these A base for how people explain their relationships and position with others o It gives context for everyday experiences Expressions of Religion not specific religions Animism o Belief in souls spirits In people and or all living things o First development of religious behavior Mana o Belief in supernatural impersonal force That can give some people more power than others o Word comes from Polynesia o Chief families have more mana than others That s what allows them to be the chief family o Magic o Supernatural techniques intended for specific aims o Accessing supernatural begins through specific techniques Imitative magic EX voodoo dolls Contagious magic someone Ritual Magic EX objects that are connected with Different from rituals EX faith healing in the US o All about controlling the uncontrollable Sports magic the idea about luck Baseball players do rituals with their bats before going up to bat Rituals o Stylized repetitive social practice set off from the social routine of everyday life Social acts 1 Liturgical orders EX Church services stylized repetitive predictable About the shared cultural experience it is not an individual act EX military funerals EX The Super Bowl sporting events We know what is going to happen when we go to these events 2 Rites of passage Marks important stages in a life cycle EX getting married when you become a parent Totemism o Belief that they descend from or are connected through a mythical being or force Heavily tied with kinship Creates group solidarity o Celebration of descent In a totem poles EX in northwest clans o Totems tell the story of the descent o College mascots count as a totem EX Uga o Not about if the descent is true or not it s about what the belief in the totem creates Kinds of Religion types not specific religions themselves Shamanic o Animistic practices with part time specialists o Beliefs in spirits have rituals to reach these spirits o Not very structured There are not any full time specialists They often do something else o Associated with small and or private societies Communal o Pretty much the same as shamanic religion but with Community Rituals o More common among horticulturalists Chiefdoms o Still have part time specialists Olympian o Belief in a pantheon of Gods with full time religious specialists o Belief in more than one God o Gods are seen As supernatural creatures that don t live in the real world but can interact with the real world o Associated with larger groups of people o Starts with social hierarchy becomes more complex Monotheism o Full time religious specialists with belief in a single omnipotent deity o Associated with state level societies o Overlaps a lot with political hierarchy Religious Diversity Religious affiliation and faith varies o Both culturally and geographically o By ethnicity and national identity EX Christianity denominations Religious Cohesiveness o Variation in homogeneity of beliefs o Some are more structured and organized while others are more flexible Functions of Religion Cultural ecology o Environmental adaptation Adapting human behavior to local ecosystems EX Sacred cattle in India Social Control Ahimsa o A means for influencing beliefs and behavior Engages emotional responses Religion and Change Cultural change Defining right versus wrong Morals Codes of ethics EX the Ten Commandments Provides the basis of what is right and what is Stressing the reality of an afterlife Explains what happens to people after they wrong die o Revitalization movements Bettering the lives of people through a single religion o Syncretism Bettering the lives of people that are there Mixture of different faiths and beliefs that are new EX voodoo o Antimodernism Going back to old ideas or not changing at all Believe that the way they live is the way that they are supposed to live EX the Amish o Fundamentalism A modernists movement More interested in creating change See a set of beliefs from the past and they try to go back to those beliefs when live was better Then to be politically and socially active o New religious movements New age religions o change o Ex in situations of poverty Religions change and people use religions to create cultural Religion and Secular Problems with defining religion versus secularism secular life o 1 beliefs of the supernatural in secular contexts o 2 Distinguishing the supernatural from the natural worlds Accessing magic or mana Bad luck versus good luck This is religious behavior o 3 What makes religious behavior since it varies greatly o 4 Distinguishing religion from the secular EX Disney World Things that you do separately from everyday life something that you do with your family In America religion is separated from politics
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