Anthropological debates on function

1
Anthropological debates on function

• 18.10.2006

2
Readings

• Malinowski, B. The Role of Magic and Religion
• 1931 Culture, Encyclopedia of the Social
  Sciences
• Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft Explains
  Unfortunate Events
• 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the
  Azande

3
Study of function

• Early 20th c
• neglection of evolutionist assumptions
• study of origin gt study of function
• emphasis on positive function
• Radcliffe-Brown
• Sir James Frazer accounted for the taboos of
  savage tribes as the application in practice of
  beliefs arrived at by erroneous processes of
  reasoning ....
• My own view is that the negative and positive
  rites of savages exist and persist because they
  are part of the mechanism by which an orderly
  society maintains itself in existence, serving as
  they do to establish certain fundamental social
  values. ... I would suggest that what Sir James
  Frazer sees to regard as the accidental results
  of magical and religious beliefs really
  constitute their essential function and the
  ultimate reason for their existence.

4
Study of function

• Research questions
• What is the function of religion?
• What does religion do for people, and for social
  groups?
• Two perspectives
• Sociological functionalism (society)
• (Robertson Smith, Durkheim), Radcliffe-Brown
• Psychological functionalism (individual)
• Radin, Lowie, Malinowski
• Evans-Pritchard (function meaning)
• gt Religion is universal and essential in society
• Diversity of forms
• Underlying functions similar

5
Psychological functionalism

• Individuals perspective
• Focus on emotional states
• Anxiety and fear
• Religion reduces anxiety
• Religion creates order from disorder
• Religion gives confidence and hope
• gt Origin of religion fear

6
Psychological functionalism

• Euripides
• The gods toss all life into confusion mix
  everything with its reverse that all of us, from
  our ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the
  more worship and reverence.
• Spinoza
• Men would never be superstitious if they could
  govern all their circumstances by set rules, or
  if they were always favored by fortune but being
  frequently driven into straits where rules are
  useless, and being kept fluctuating pitiably
  between hope and fear they are, for the most
  part, very prone to credulity Superstition,
  then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by
  fear.
• Hume
• The first ideas of religion arose not from a
  contemplation of the works of nature, but from a
  concern with regard to the events of life, and
  from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate
  the human mind.

7
Fear as the origin of religion

• Paul Radin
• Life of early men
• fear and economic insecurity
• sense of helplessness
• The idea of the supernatural
• Originates in the attempt to cope with uncertain
  world
• Religion
• means of maintaining life values
• desire for success, happiness, and long life
• Robert Lowie
• Religion
• a response to abnormal phenomena
• fear created gods

8
Malinowski

• Malinowskis functionalism
• Society as an integrate whole
• All elements of the whole interrelated
• All elements fulfill a function / satisfy a
  need
• Organic, psychological, social needs
• any theory of culture has to start from the
  organic need of man
• psychological / individual functionalism

9
Malinowski

• Trobriand Islands (1914-18)
• Trobriand Islanders
• conceptual ideas dominated by magic and
  witchcraft
• all aspects of life associated with magical rites
• But also a considerable body of empirical
  knowledge
• gt Trobriand Islanders as rational as Europeans

10
Malinowski

• Magic, Science and Religion (1925)
• A clear division between magic, science, and
  religion
• following Tylor and Frazer
• Against Tylor
• Tylors theory of religion
• gt makes early man too contemplative and
  rational
• Against Lévy-Bruhl
• preliterate people
• Not immersed in a mystical frame of mind
• Not incurably superstitious
• Not characterized by a "pre-logical mentality"

11
Malinowski

• primitive man
• essentially practical and down-to-earth
• productive activities presuppose
• careful observation of natural processes
• careful reasoning
• gt religion and science
• have coexisted since the beginning of human
  society
• simply have different functions in human affairs
• There are no people however primitive without
  religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be
  added at once, any savage races lacking either in
  the scientific attitude or science.

12
Malinowski

• Against Durkheim
• most deeply religious moments
• in solitude, in detachment from the world
• many strongly effervescent gatherings in tribal
  communities
• purely of secular character
• do not generate religious feelings
• Yet
• public ritual has a social function
• especially funerary rites

13
Malinowski

• Origin of religion
• Psychological explanation
• Humans
• intensely afraid of death
• cannot face the idea of complete annihilation
• desire for immortality
• gt emergence of religion
• religion arises out of an individual crisis, the
  death
• Essence of early religion
• belief in immortality, the idea of spirit
• Form of early religion
• linked to rites concerned with death

14
Malinowski

• gt Function of religion
• Religion
• provides psychological safeguards
• a sense of purpose
• a feeling of peace and well-being
• provides more control over the natural world than
  science
• Religion saves man from a surrender to death and
  destruction
• religion has a positive psychological function
• universal and necessary

15
Malinowski

• Magic
• Psychological functions like religion
• vs religion
• concerned with practical affairs
• consists of acts which have a utilitarian value
• effective only as a means to an end
• magical rites
• practical, straightforward, reasons known to
  practitioners
• religious rites
• no distinct reasons or practical purpose

16
Malinowski

• Magic
• vs science
• not a form of primitive science
• dominated by the sympathetic principle
• complementary relationship between science and
  magic
• magic flourishes wherever man cannot control
  hazard by means of science. It flourishes in
  hunting and fishing, in times of war and in
  seasons of love, in the control of wind, rain and
  sun, in regulating all dangerous enterprises,
  above all in disease and in the shadow of death.
• Especially fishing, sailing, farming,
  relationship, war, health

17
Malinowski

• Eg. fishing
• lagoon fishing
• man can rely completely upon his knowledge and
  skill
• gt no magic required
• open-sea fishing
• full of danger and uncertainty
• gt extensive magical rites to ensure safety and
  good results
• gt Magic
• not utilized when the ends can be achieved by
  ordinary means
• The savage never digs the soil by magic ... or
  sails his canoes by spell.

18
Radcliffe-Brown

• The Andaman Islanders (1922)
• Structural functionalism
• influenced by Durkheim
• focus on a social whole
• how social institutions contribute to society
  staying together
• My own view is that the negative and positive
  rites of savages exist and persist because they
  are part of the mechanism by which an orderly
  society maintains itself in existence, serving as
  they do to establish certain fundamental social
  values
• Taboo (Frazer Lecture, 1939)
• Criticism of Malinowski
• anxiety
• not due to the challenging events in life
• due to not organizing a ritual

19
Function gt meaning

• Talcott Parsons
• Sociology and Social Psychology (1952)
• 2 types of frustration in the human situation
• unforeseeable / uncontrollable events
• eg. premature death
• imbalance between investment and success
• eg. agriculture and uncertain weather
• gt The problem of meaning
• We know how but not why
• Life has to make sense
• gt Religion
• gives meaning to events

20
Function gt meaning

• Clifford Geertz
• Religion as a cultural system (1966)
• Religion gives meaning to human existence
• bafflement (incomprehensibility)
• Suffering / pain
• Ethical / moral paradox
• gt creates order from chaos

21
Evans-Pritchard

• Functionalist / structural functionalist /
  structuralist
• Studies of the Azande (1937) and the Nuer (1940)
• Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
  (1937)
• First anthropological study of an African tribe
• First unprejudiced description of magic and
  witchcraft
• intellectual emphasis
• beliefs and rites form an ideational system
• concerned with understanding and meaning of local
  logic
• point of reference in rationality debate

22
Evans-Pritchard

• Witchcraft, sorcery, magic
• central to Azande religion
• ubiquitious and normal in Azande social life
• mentioned and talked about daily
• Common explanation of misfortunes
• Co-existense of empirical and mystical
  thought
• Causes of misfortune
• Mystical
• Common-sensical

23
Evans-Pritchard

• Mystical causes
• workings of magic, sorcery and witchcraft
• Common-sensical causes
• workings of nature
• based on sound empirical knowledge
• If clearly attributable to incompetence or
  failure
• Eg. telling a lie or committing adultery or a
  theft
• Not due to being bewitched
• Critique of Lévy-Bruhl
• preliterate people are not "essentially"
  prelogical and mystical
• Azande system of thought
• rational, logical and inherently consistent

24
Evans-Pritchard

• witch (boro mangu)
• organic capacity that is inherited
• an oval black swelling near the liver
• witchcraft (mangu)
• psychic act (no rituals)
• misfortunes may be caused unconsciously
• Contrary to magic (ngua)
• conscious manipulation
• combating witchcraft

25
Evans-Pritchard

• Witchcraft accusations
• Follow the social lines of tension
• most common between social equals
• Eg. women bewitched only by women
• Relate to social institutions
• Eg. members of aristocratic clans not accused
• Eg. men accuse women but not vice-versa
• Act as a safety valve
• Make tensions public

26
Evans-Pritchard

• witch doctor (abinza)
• a diviner and a magician
• reveals the identity of the witch
• combats witchcraft
• subtle questioning by the use of oracles
• a witch-doctor divines successfully because he
  says what his listener wishes him to say .
• different forms of divination
• rubbing board oracle
• termite oracle
• benge or poison oracle
• most reliable and the only one used in courts

27
Evans-Pritchard

• Azande system of thought
• rational
• logical
• inherently consistent
• Azande beliefs in withcraft
• a theory of causation
• supplements the theory of natural causation

28
Evans-Pritchard

• Eg. collapse of an old granary
• due to being weakened by termites
• people sitting beneath it injured
• The problem of meaning
• We know how but not why
• Why these particular people were sitting under
  this particular granary at this particular moment
  when it collapsed?
• Western thought
• simple coincidence in time and space
• no theory of causation to link these facts
• Azande thought
• due to witchcraft
• supplies the missing link between the facts
• does not contradict the empirical knowledge of
  cause and effect

29
Evans-Pritchard

• Why dont the Azande perceive the futility of
  their magic?  
• 1) Witchcraft and magic form an intellectually
  coherent system
• Use of magic
• to combat other mystical powers
• not to change the objective world
• 2) Unsuccessful medicines and magicians
• Skepticism extends only to certain medicines and
  magicians

30
Evans-Pritchard

• 3) Failure of the rites
• due to
• stronger witchcraft
• counter-magic
• breach of taboos
• 4) Selective use of magic
• utilized only to produce events that are likely
  to happen
• always accompanied by an empirical action
• "man makes beer by proven methods, and uses
  medicine (magic) only to hasten the brew".

31
Film

• Strange Beliefs I
• (Evans-Pritchard among the Azande)
• 1985
• Bruce Dakowski
• Central Independent Television (Birmingham)