Religion

1
Religion
This presentation discusses the role of religion
in a variety of societies. It focuses on the
types of religion and the situations in which
religions can change rapidly. It concludes with
a discussion of secular rituals and the way in
which a trip to Walt Disney World might be
studied as a secular ritual.
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Introduction

• Religion (Wallace)
• belief and ritual concerned with supernatural
  beings, powers, and forces.
• So defined, religion is a cultural universal.
• Neanderthal mortuary remains
• earliest evidence of what probably was religious
  activity.

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Animism

• Animism is seen as the most primitive form of
  religion
• defined as a belief in souls that derives from
  the first attempt to explain dreams and like
  phenomena.

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Animatism

• Animatism is the belief that all animate and
  inanimate objects are infused with a common life
  force
• the assignment to inanimate objects, forces, and
  plants of personalities and wills, but not souls.

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Mana and Taboo

• Mana is defined as belief in an imminent
  supernatural domain or life-force, potentially
  subject to human manipulation.
• Melanesian mana
• a sacred impersonal force that is much like the
  Western concept of luck.
• Examples in your own life?
• Polynesian mana and the related concept of taboo
• related to the more hierarchical nature of
  Polynesian society.

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Magic and Religion

• Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended
  to accomplish specific aims.
• Magic may be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or
  contagious (accomplished through contact).
• Have you tried this?

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Anxiety, Control, Solace

• Magic is an instrument of control,
• Religion serves to provide stability when no
  control or understanding is possible.

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Rituals

• Rituals are formal, performed in sacred contexts.
• Rituals convey information about the culture of
  the participants and, hence, the participants
  themselves.
• Rituals are inherently social
• participation in them necessarily implies social
  commitment.

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Rites of Passage

• Rites of passage which mark and facilitate a
  person's movement from one state to another
• Rites of passage have three phases
• Separation the participant(s) withdraws from
  the group and begins moving from one place to
  another.
• Liminality the period between states, during
  which the participant(s) has left one place but
  has not yet entered the next.
• Incorporation the participant(s) reenters
  society with a new status having completed the
  rite.

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Rites of Passage

• Liminality is part of every rite of passage and
  involves the temporary suspension and even
  reversal of everyday social distinctions.
• Communitas refers to collective liminality,
  characterized by enhanced feelings of social
  solidarity and minimized distinctions.

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Totemism

• Rituals play an important role in creating and
  maintaining group solidarity.
• In totemic societies, each descent group has an
  animal, plant, or geographical feature from which
  they claim descent.
• Totems are the apical ancestor of clans.
• The members of a clan did not kill or eat their
  totem, except once a year when the members of the
  clan gathered for ceremonies dedicated to the
  totem.

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Totemism

• Totemism is a religion in which elements of
  nature act as sacred templates for society by
  means of symbolic association.
• Totemism uses nature as a model for society.
• Each descent group has a totem, which occupies a
  specific niche in nature.
• Social differences mirror the natural order of
  the environment.
• The unity of the human social order is enhanced
  by symbolic association with and imitation of the
  natural order.

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Totemism
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Religion and Cultural Ecology Sacred Cattle in
India

• Ahimsa is the Hindu doctrine of nonviolence that
  forbids the killing of animals.
• Western economic development experts often use
  this principle as an example of how religion can
  stand in the way of development.
• Hindus seem to irrationally ignore a valuable
  food source (beef).
• Hindus also raise scraggly and thin cows, unlike
  the bigger cattle of Europe and the U.S.

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Religion and Cultural Ecology Sacred Cattle in
India

• These views are ethnocentric and wrong as cattle
  play an important adaptive role in an Indian
  ecosystem that has evolved over thousands of
  years
• Hindus use cattle for transportation, traction,
  and manure.
• Bigger cattle eat more, making them more
  expensive to keep.
• Another example pig taboo in Middle East

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Social Control

• The power of religion affects action.
• Religion can be used to mobilize large segments
  of society through systems of real and perceived
  rewards and punishments.
• Witch hunts play an important role in limiting
  social deviancy in addition to functioning as
  leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in
  wealth and status between members of society.

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Social Control

• Many religions have a formal code of ethics that
  prohibit certain behavior while promoting other
  kinds of behavior.
• Examples in your society?
• Religions also maintain social control by
  stressing the fleeting nature of life.

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Religion and Social Control in Afghanistan

• The Taliban invoked a very strict interpretation
  of the Koran as the basis for social behavior.
• Women were required to wear veils, remain
  indoors, and were not allowed to be with males
  who are not blood relatives.
• Men were required to grow bushy beards and were
  barred from playing cards, flying kites, and
  keeping pigeons.

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Kinds of Religion

• Religious forms vary from culture to culture, but
  there are correlations between political
  organization and religious type.
• Religious Practitioners and Types
• Wallace defined religion as consisting of all a
  societys cult institutions (rituals and
  associated beliefs) and developed four categories
  from this.
• Shamanic religions
• shamans are part-time religious intermediaries
  who may act as curers--these religions are most
  characteristic of foragers.

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Kinds of Religion (continued)

• Communal religions
• have shamans, community rituals, multiple nature
  gods, and are more characteristic of food
  producers than foragers.
• Olympian religions
• first appeared with states, have full-time
  religious specialists whose organization may
  mimic the states, and have potent anthropomorphic
  gods who may exist as a pantheon.
• Monotheistic religions
• have all the attributes of Olympian religions,
  except that the pantheon of gods is subsumed
  under a single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent,
  and omnipresent being.

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Christian Values

• Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to the
  values central to the Protestant faith
  independent, entrepreneurial, hard working,
  future-oriented, and free thinking.
• The emphasis Catholics placed on immediate
  happiness and security, and the notion that
  salvation was attainable only when a priest
  mediated on ones behalf, did not fit well with
  capitalism.

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World Religions

• In the U.S. Protestants outnumber Catholics, but
  in Canada the reverse is true.
• Religious affiliation in North America varies
  with ethnic background, age, and geography.

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Revitalization Movements

• Religious movements that act as mediums for
  social change are called revitalization
  movements.
• The colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by
  Handsome Lake is an example of a revitalization
  movement.

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Syncretisms

• A syncretism is a cultural mix, including
  religious blends, that emerge when two or more
  cultural traditions come into contact.
• Examples include voodoo, santeria, and candomlé.
• The cargo cults of Melanesia and Papua New Guinea
  are syncretisms of Christian doctrine with
  aboriginal beliefs.
• Syncretisms often emerge when traditional,
  non-Western societies have regular contact with
  industrialized societies.
• Syncretisms attempt to explain European
  domination and wealth and to achieve similar
  success magically by mimicking European behavior
  and symbols.

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A New Age

• Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in
  formal organized religions.
• New Age religions have appropriated ideas,
  themes, symbols, and ways of life from the
  religious practices of Native Americans,
  Australian Aborigines, and east Asian religions.

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A Pilgrimage to Walt Disney World

• Walt Disney World functions much like a sacred
  shrine that is a major pilgrimage destination
• It has an inner, sacred center surrounded by an
  outer more secular domain.
• Parking lot designations are distinguished with
  totemlike images of the Disney cast of
  characters.
• The monorail provides travelers with a brief
  liminal period as they cross between the outer,
  secular world into the inner, sacred center of
  the Magic Kingdom.
• Within the Magic Kingdom
• Spending time in the Magic Kingdom reaffirms,
  maintains, and solidifies the world of Disney as
  all of the pilgrims share a common status as
  visitors while experiencing the same adventures.
• Most of the structures and attractions at the
  Magic Kingdom are designed to reaffirm and recall
  a traditional set of American values.

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Recognizing Religion

• It is difficult to distinguish between sacred and
  secular rituals as behavior can simultaneously
  have sacred and secular aspects.
• Americans try to maintain a strict division
  between the sacred and the profane, but many
  other societies do not.
• The future?
• Wade Davis on the Ethnosphere