ANTH 1101 Religion and Ritual Rites of Passage 27 November o Separation withdrawal from larger group and beginning of transformation to new status or place o Liminality limbo period between states o Reincorporation reentry into society Crossing the line U S Navy at the Equator o Separation Uninitiated pollywogs Initiated shellbacks o Liminality Wog dog auction and wog queen pageant The trial guilty of being a pollywog face punishment like guillotine getting something out of a toilet Inverting the rules sexual play o Reincorporation o Who does it o What does it do Becoming reborn into a new social position Presumably heterosexual men Turns uninitiated feminine homosexual weak submissive into initiated masculine heterosexual strong dominant o Why should we study it Helps understand the role gender sexual orientation have on military policy Study guide for Becoming a Woman in Okrika o What does this rite of passage do for its participants Allows women to marry have children o What corresponds to each of the three stages Separation go into the middle of the village naked to ensure they re not pregnant etc and have brass rings attached to legs Liminality isolated to fattening house for three weeks to prepare for future motherhood by eating a ton Reincorporation race away from the river Culture and the supernatural Religion o Beliefs Worldview Moral order Invisible beings o Practices Ritual and worship Moral behavior ANTH 1101 27 November Magic and witchcraft o Manipulation of unseen forces o Ritual practices o Moral order o Witchcraft in Africa Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande E E Evans Pritchard 1937 The Zande mind is logical and inquiring within the framework of its culture and insists on the coherence of its own idiom Witchcraft provides them with a natural philosophy by which the relations between men and unfortunate events are explained Witchcraft explains coincidences natural logic tells you what happened magical logic tells you why it happened to you Witchcraft beliefs also embrace a system of values which regulate human conduct Witchcraft today and islam The influence of monotheistic religions christianity General definition any practices outside of these monotheistic religions usually identified as part of African traditional religion Specific definition magical practices intended to protect heal or injure usually undertaken by a doctor o Worldviews members of the same society make use of shared assumptions about how the world works As they interpret everyday experiences in light of these assumptions they make sense of their lives and their lives make sense to other members of the society The encompassing pictures of reality that result are called worldviews Mental illnesses as deviating from a worldview DSM IV advises clinicians to take worldview into account when assessing schizophrenia other disorders Do Muslim Really Need Saving o Western rationality science and psychotherapy oracles How is meaning constructed in social situations Sociologist Peter McHugh 1968 conducted an experiment in which college students were told they were participating in a new form of psychotherapy Unbeknown to the student the therapist delivering his answer from another room over an intercom determined his response by reference to a list of random numbers Science and Religion rational v mystical or different domains of meaning ANTH 1101 27 November Cultural borrowing embrace or appropriation The search for white identity Appropriate take in the cultural realm appropriation refers to using some element form another culture in a way which in some sense hurts the people of that culture Embrace refers to taking on some element of another culture without your relationship with members of that culture