SOC1016A-Lecture

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SOC1016A-Lecture

• Religion and cosmologies

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Last time

• How can we make sense of the acts and emotions of
  distant peoples (in space, in time)? Is it
  possible? Is it right?

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Why exploring distant ways of feeling, thinking,
doing?

• Because they can be enlightening about what is
  most characteristic of human societies culture

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Culture

• Culture is at the same time what is common to all
  human beings who live in societies and what
  distinguishes societies from one another.
• It is at the same time about ways of thinking AND
  about ways of doing about ideas and about
  action, about what we think and what we do.
• A culture is a whole, something that integrates
  parts (beliefs, rules, norms, patterns of
  behaviour, the place everything/one has in a
  society and in the world).
• A culture is shared and exists within a group, it
  pre-exists the individual and is transmitted to
  him/her, it is learned.

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• Edward B. Tylor on culture (1871)
• That complex whole which includes knowledge,
  beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom and any other
  capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
  member of society.
• Ruth Benedict (1929) that complex whole which
  includes all the habits acquired by man as a
  member of society

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1. Culture universal human phenomenon studied by
   anthropology. A defining characteristic of human
   condition (what all humans share).
2. Particular cultural phenomena studied by
   anthropologists as they explore cultural
   processes (ritual, symbol, kinship structure,
   etc.).
3. Traits, ideas, values, behaviours that
   characterise specific human groups (i.e. Japanese
   culture).

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Religion

• Why focus on religion?
• It is a way of studying culture

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• We will explore this topic with Emile Durkheims
  The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
• Why Durkheim? He is known as one of the founding
  fathers of sociology.

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Durkheim studied social facts as things What
are social facts? Ways of thinking and of doing
which are not psychological nor purely
biological, they are external to the individual,
and can have upon the individual consciousness a
certain coercive influence. Why are they
things? Cannot be studied, known, understood
via introspection, but by observation. We wont
find the answer inside us, they correspond to a
reality that is external to each individual the
social.
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• Why using Durkheim in anthropology?
• Because his approach is anthropological
• Relativism
• Universalism
• Studying particular and distant cultures will
  tell us something about the human. The particular
  here are the totemic religions of Australia,
  which he identifies as the simplest religious
  systems which should give us the keys to
  understand religion as a universal phenomenon we
  find in all human societies.

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What is religion?

• Durkheim criticises previous studies on religion
  (Spencer, Tylor) where religion was seen either
  as originating in
• a psychological need of the individual to
  understand a duality of the self the man who
  dreams thinks he is body soul he travels and
  sees the dead in his dreams for instance.
• from a need to explain the natural world. Here
  religion was seen as an attempt to reflect the
  natural world.
• These approaches lead to see religious systems as
  irrational and not reflecting reality as
  delirium.
• Durkheim it cannot be, the primitive is not
  stupid. Religions are universal, they reflect
  something different, their function must be
  another one.
• RELIGIONS DIVIDE THE WORLD INTO TWO DISTINCT
  CATEGORIES THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE
• Is religion the same as magic then?

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Religion is different from magic
RELIGION MAGIC
Common beliefs that bound believers of a defined collectivity A church which foundation is always a defined group a church is a moral body Believers and priests participate to religious acts The violation of a religious prohibition is sacrilege, it is a sin, that who violates religious prohibitions puts herself in physical/psychological danger BUT ALSO at social risk for he has broken the order of society Can be spread among large population but no bond between followers into a single group living same life no moral body A magician has a clientele made of unrelated individuals who may even be unaware of each others existence Only the magicians make the magic, clients are not included The violation of a magical prohibition makes the violator run personal risks, but there is no notion of sin. It is like the patient who does not follow the treatment that has been given to him by a doctor.
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Totemic systems and religion

• Religion is a symbolic representation of society
  the totem is a sacred symbol which stands for the
  clan, the phratrie is what links different clans.
• Religion is a symbolic representation of a force
  that is outside the individual, that pre-exists
  him.
• This force is real and individuals feel it
• when they are together and follow rituals
  society is only felt as a collective
• when they feel its coercive power individuals
  feel respect for society and this is expressed
  through their respect for moral obligations.
• The sacredness is this force individuals feel as
  members of a group, a force that makes them
  capable of more.
• But this implies a discipline controlling
  instincts, immediate desires, being driven by
  purely individualistic needs.
• Society does the same as religion here living in
  society, participating of its sacredness, imposes
  upon each of us a discipline, the control of our
  instincts, impulses, immediate desires.

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• Gods, religion, are the symbolic expression not
  of nature or of the world as an abstract entity,
  but of society.
• ANYTHING CAN BE SACRED
• ANYTHING CAN BE MADE SACRED
• ANYTHING CAN CEASE TO BE SACRED

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• This is the universal, anthropological conclusion
  of Durkheim after having studied a case study,
  he gets to this general conclusion
• Religious life answers everywhere to the same
  need and derives form the same state of mind. In
  all its forms its purpose is to raise man above
  himself and to make him live a superior life to
  the one he would lead if he were only to obey his
  individual impulses. Beliefs express this life in
  terms of representations, rites organise it and
  regulate its functioning. (309)
• How is this possible? Individuals are born into
  existing societies, the force of society is felt
  by individuals. They are educated, introduced to
  the ways of thinking and doing of a specific
  society, that is, to culture. And they are
  introduced to what is sacred in this culture.

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• Remember
• Cultures are integrated systems including ways of
  thinking and ways of doing.
• Religion is what is sacred, holy.

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Cosmologies
Cosmologies are part of culture and are reflected
in religion as systems of beliefs. A cosmology is
a system of broad ideas and explanations people
have about the world in which they live and their
place in that world.
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• Mary Douglas and the fiction of the speleology
  mission
• (Douglas, How Institutions Think, 1986 4-8)
• Douglas argument is inspired from an article by
  Lon Fuller, a philosopher of law (The case of
  the Speluncean Explorers, Harvard Law Review,
  1949, 62 614-645).

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• 5 speleologist in a cave
• Rescue team
• They are told they do not have enough food to
  survive until the cave is open
• Eating one of them would keep them alive until
  rescued
• What will they do?
• Original story they decide to throw a dice that
  would designate one of them as the one who will
  be eaten for the sake of the others.
• They are judged by a Court when freed.

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• Douglas imagines 3 possibilities depending on the
  kind of society the speleologists were originally
  from, depending on their cosmology
• They come from a hierarchical/tightly structured
  society (the chief, the youngest or the eldest
  may be sacrificed)
• They come from a religious sect (they will
  celebrate and wait for death as deliverance)
• They come from our society (they may choose
  arbitrary one to be sacrificed cannibalism with
  guilt they would be judged when freed).

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• Only the individualists, bound by no ties to one
  another and imbued by no principles of solidarity
  would hit upon the cannibal gamble as the proper
  course. (Douglas, 1986 8)

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Conclusion

• It is this principle of solidarity, at the origin
  of the social bond that members of a society feel
  exists outside and inside themselves, that is at
  the core of religion, of the idea of the sacred
  in all societies.
• Anything can be (made) sacred an object (ie a
  flag), a person, an idea, an institution.