CORE TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION

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CORE TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION

• (758200302 / 4 ov)

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• Times Thurs 12-14
• Location D113
• Instructor Toomas Gross
• Email toomas.gross_at_helsinki.fi
• Phone [phone]
• Office Hours Thurs 11-12, E309

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Course description (I)

• Topics covered
• core topics classical themes
• theory (origin, function, meaning)
• symbol, taboo, myth, ritual
• religion and individual
• religion and community

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Course description (II)

• Topics not covered
• religion and power
• religion and gender
• social change
• new religious movements
• secularization
• civil religion
• Course on Religious Movements in Social Change
  in spring

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Course requirements

• lecture-discussion format
• 3 short essays
• essays are due on 23 October, 13 November, and 4
  December
• 4-5 pages, using at least 3 sources
• no final exam

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Texts and reading materials

• Readers and textbooks
• Required readings
• Suggested readings for essays (the list is not
  exclusive)

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2. Lecture (25.9) - Religion as an object of
anthropological study

• Readings
• Asad, T. 1982. The Construction of Religion as an
  Anthropological Category.
• Geertz, C. 1973. Religion as a cultural system.
• Discussion topics
• An introduction to different theoretical
  approaches
• Geertz "religion as culture"
• The critique of Talal Asad
• Anthropological studies of major world religions

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• The following lectures in three blocks
• Theory
• Cosmology
• Praxis

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3. Lecture (2.10) Anthropological debates on
origin

• Readings
• Durkheim, E. 1995 1912. The Elementary Forms of
  the Religious Life.
• Tylor, E.B. 1873. Primitive Culture.
• Discussion topics
• Briefly on Hegel, Engels and Weber
• On evolutionary anthropology Max Müller, Herbert
  Spencer, Sir Edward B. Tylor, James Frazer, and
  particularly on Emile Durkheim

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4. Lecture (9.10) Anthropological debates on
function religion, magic and witchcraft

• Readings
• Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles
  and Magic Among the Azande.
• Malinowski, B. 1979. The Role of Magic and
  Religion
• Film
• Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
• Discussion topics  
• Psychological approach (Otto, Radin, Lowie,
  James, Freud, Jung)
• Malinowski's utilitarian functionalism
• Evans-Pritchard on magic and witchcraft
• Phenomenological approach as critique (Mircea
  Eliade)

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5. Lecture (16.10) Anthropological debates on
rationality and modes of thought

• Readings
• Lukes, S 1967. Some Problems about Rationality.
• Horton, R. 1967. African Traditional Thought and
  Western Science.
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• Discussion topics
• Lévy-Bruhl and "prelogical thinking"
• Durkheim and bifurcation of thought
• Lévi-Strauss and "savage mind"
• Robin Horton and "African mode of thought
• The question of rationality in religion 
• The critique and limits of Western "rationality"

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II Cosmology6. Lecture (23.10) Symbols

• Essay 1 deadline
• Readings
• Gossen, G. 1997. Temporal and Spatial Equivalents
  in Chamula Ritual Symbolism. (In Lessa and Vogt)
• Ortner, S. 1973. On Key Symbols.
• Discussion topics
• Ernst Cassirer and animal symbolicum
• Edmund Leach ritual symbolism vs social
  structure
• Mary Douglas and "natural symbols"
• Victor Turner and the Meaning of ritual symbols

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7. Lecture (30.10)Classification and taboo

• Readings
• Douglas, M. 1999. Leviticus as Literature.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1939. Taboo.
• Discussion topics  
• Radcliffe-Brown on the essence of taboo
• Durkheim and Mauss on cosmology and social
  structure
• Mary Douglas and Purity and Danger
  classification of food, animals and the natural
  world in the example of Lele and the Jews

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8. Lecture (6.11) Myth

• Readings
• Lévi-Strauss, C. 1955. The Structural Study of
  Myth.
• Willis, R. 1967. The Head and the Loins
  Lévi-Strauss and Beyond.
• Discussion topics
• Myth, legend, epic, folklore etc
• Lévi-Strauss and the structural study of myth

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9. Lecture (13.11) Ritual

• Essay 2 deadline
• Readings
• Leach, E. R. 1966. Ritualisation in Man in
  Relation to Conceptual and Social Development.
• Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process Structure
  and Anti-Structure.
• Film
• Yoruba rituals
• Discussion topics
• Van Gennep and rites of passage
• Gluckman and rituals of rebellion
• Turner and liminality

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10. Lecture (20.11) Religion and agency

• Readings
• Lewis, I. 1986. Shaman's Career
• Turner, V.  2001 1989. Religious Specialists.
• Film
• Three shamans
• Discussion topics
• Shamanism and ecstasy
• Ioan Lewis on spirit possession
• Weber on prophets

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11. Lecture (27.11) Religion and Community

• Readings
• Brandes, S. H. 1988. Power and Persuasion
  Fiestas and Social (NOT INTRODUCTION BUT CHAPTER
  9!)
• Rappaport, R. 2002. Enactments of Meaning. In
  Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.
• Film
• Fiesta of Santiago in Juxtlahuaca
• Discussion topics
• Social aspects of religion
• Durkheim and the social function of religion
• Religion and community in the Sierra Juárez in
  Oaxaca, Mexico
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• Essay 3 deadline (4.12)
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• Final grades posted in the department and
  feedback (11.12)

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Essay topics (I)

• I Theory
• Do anthropologists exaggerate the extent to which
  the religions of non-literate societies
  constitute ordered systems?
• Why do magic and witchcraft pose problems
  concerning rationality?
• In what social situations are witchcraft
  accusations made?
• Is rationality culturally specific?

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Essay topics (II)

• II Cosmology 
• How can the focus on classification illuminate
  the study of taboo?
• Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering
  and classification of matter. Discuss.
• Where is the meaning of myth?
• Why are symbols powerful?

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Essay topics (III)

• III Praxis
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• Why should changes in status be an occasion for
  ritual and ceremony?
• Why is ritual inversion a common feature of rites
  of passage?
• Discuss the role of ritual in the transmission of
  cultural values and knowledge.
• What can the study of religious agents tell us
  about power relationships in a society?

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Anthropology of religion

• Four big themes in anthropology
• Economy
• Politics
• Kinship
• Religion
• Anthropology of religion since the birth of the
  discipline in the 19th century

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Religion as a universal phenomenon

• All societies have some notion of the sacred
• Secular religion
• Sir Samuel Baker (1866) about Nilotic people
  Without any exception they are without a belief
  in a supreme being, neither have they any form of
  worship or idolatry nor is the darkness of their
  minds enlightened by even a ray of superstition.
  

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Problems with anthropology of religion

• Reductivism and trying to explain away religion
  
• Eg. Conversion in the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca
• Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade

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Rudolf Otto

• The Idea of the Holy (1917)
• divinity in theological terms as an inborn
  faculty
• the notion of holiness, numinous experience
• Those who have not experienced the feeling of
  numinous, need not bother to read the book, Otto
  suggests.

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Mircea Eliade

• religion must be understood within its own frame
  of reference
• fundamentally irreducible character of the
  religious experience
• to try to grasp the essence of such a phenomenon
  by means of physiology, psychology, sociology,
  economics, linguistics, art or any other study is
  false it misses the one unique and irreducible
  element in it the element of the sacred.

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The study of belief and its theoretical problems

• anthropology of religion - study of belief, (
  study of action)
• How do we know what people really believe?
• If belief is an "internal state" unrelated to
  language, then it is inaccessible to the
  "external" conscious reflection of the native and
  hence to the anthropologist.
• If belief can be described, then it is dependent
  on language, and that language of description may
  be more formulaic than reflective of the inner
  state which is supposed to generate belief.
• Needham's Belief, Language, and Experience
  (1972). how to say "I believe in God" in Penana?

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Videos

• Semana Santa (Easter Week) in Capulalpam (Sierra
  Juarez, Oaxaca)
• Fiesta de San Mateo (19-21.9) in Capulalpam
  (Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca)
• Carnival in Carupano (Venezuela)
• SACRED ltgt PROFANE