Anthropology 152 Culture and Humanity

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Anthropology 152 Culture and Humanity

• Chapter 13
• Spirituality, Religion, and the Supernatural

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What do you believe?

• A well known scientist once gave a public lecture
  on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits
  around the sun, and how the sun, in turn, orbits
  around the center of a vast collection of stars
  called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a
  little old lady in the back of the room got up
  and said "What you have told is is rubbish. The
  world is really a flat plate supported on the
  back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a
  superior smile before replying, "What is the
  tortoise standing on?"
• "You are very clever young man, very clever,"
  said the old lady. "but it's turtles all the way
  down!
• How do you answer the big questions?

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Ch. 13 What to know

• 1. Why religion?
• 2. Various forms of religious belief
• animatism
• animism
• shamanism
• belief in ancestral spirits
• belief in gods and goddesses
• 3. Function of rites of passage and
  intensification.
• 4. Relationship between religion, magic, and
  witchcraft
• functions of each
• 5. The role of religion in cultural change.

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Religion

• Organized system of ideas about spiritual
  reality, or the supernatural, with associated
  beliefs and ceremonial practices by which people
  try to interpret and control aspects of the
  universe otherwise beyond their control.
• A means of managing or understanding that which
  is beyond human power to control or know
• Fulfills social and psychological needs
• our origin, our death etc
• No known group of people anywhere on the face of
  the earth, at any time over the past 100,000
  years, have been without religion.

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World Religions
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Supernatural Beings and Powers Religion is
characterized by a belief in supernatural beings
and forces which can be appealed to for aid
through prayer, sacrifice, and other rituals.

• Gods and Goddesses
• Remote, controlling the universe
• Monotheism, Polytheism, Pantheon
• Link to subsistence - gender roles
• Ancestral Spirits
• Body/spirit separation at death
• Closer involved with the living
• Like living persons
• Benevolent, malevolent, hungry
• Spirit Beings
• Animism, Animatism

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Animism Animatism

• Animism
• A belief in spirit beings, other than ancestors,
  who are believed to animate all of nature.
• These spirit beings are closer to humans than
  gods and goddesses and are concerned with human
  activities.
• Animism is typical of peoples who see themselves
  as a part of nature rather than superior to it.
• Animatism
• A belief that nature is enlivened or energized by
  an impersonal spiritual power or supernatural
  potency which may make itself manifest in any
  object.

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Religious Specialists

• Priests and Priestesses
• Full-time specialists
• In societies with the resources to support
• Trained to guide and supplement the religious
  practices of others.
• Shaman
• A person who enters an altered state of
  consciousness - at will - to contact and utilize
  an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire
  knowledge, power, and to help others.
• Provides a focal point of attention for society
  and can help maintain social control.
• Benefits for the shaman are prestige, wealth, and
  an outlet for artistic self-expression.
• Similar across cultures Trance human nervous
  system

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Witchcraft and Magic

• Witchcraft - An explanation of events based on
  the belief certain individuals possess an innate
  psychic power capable of causing harm, including
  sickness and death.
• Provides an outlet for feelings of hostility and
  frustration without disturbing the norms of the
  larger group.
• Magic - Religious ritual believed to produce a
  mechanical effect by supernatural means. When
  magic ritual is done correctly, believers think
  it must have the desired effect.
• imitative magic (image), contagious magic (hair)
• Do you believe in magic?
• Sports and Magic
• Ritual - Food, clothing, warm-up
• Taboo - no-hitter, hair cut
• Fetishes - Clothes, rabbits feet

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Malinowski Magic

• Trobriand Islanders did not practice magic when
  they fished inside a protected coral reef because
  they were able to predict catch and safety by
  weather sea conditions.
• In contrast, they did rely on magic when they
  went ocean fishing because it was difficult to
  predict unknown dangers and the amount of fish
  they might harvest.
• The essential function of magic is to extend
  control over uncontrollable elements of nature
  and thereby reduce anxiety.

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Functions of Religion

• Sanctions a range of conduct
• notions of right and wrong/acceptable behavior
• Helps perpetuate the existing social order
• Lifts the burden of decision making from
  individuals
• places responsibility with gods
• Maintains social solidarity
• rituals rites of intensification
• Education

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Religion and Cultural Change

• Rites of Intensification
• Rituals to mark occasions of crisis in the life
  of the group. (Funerals, Harvest)
• Function 1) unite people, 2) allay fear of the
  crisis, 3) prompt collective action.
• Revitalization movements
• Movements for radical cultural reform in response
  to widespread social disruption and collective
  feelings of anxiety and despair.
• Ghost Dance (Sioux Wounded knee)
• peaceful end of the westward expansion of whites
  and a return of the land to the Native Americans.
  
• Cargo Cults
• Spiritual movements in Melanesia in reaction to
  disruptive contact with Western capitalism
  promising resurrection of deceased relatives,
  destruction or enslavement of white foreigners,
  and the magical arrival of utopian riches.

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Between two worlds the Hmong shaman in America
(1989) 1370 28min.

• Describes the art of Shamanism and the role of
  the Shaman in Hmong society.
• Examines the conflict between the ancient
  religion and traditions of the Hmong and their
  new way of life in the United States.