Chapter 14 EE

Raymond Hames Author

09/10/2017 Added

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ANTH 212 Chapter 14 EE

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[00:00:01.023]Okay.
[00:00:02.360]Good Sunday morning,
[00:00:03.752]at least it is Sunday morning right now as I record this.
[00:00:07.633]Chapter 14, ending with religion and magic.
[00:00:10.770]And some might wonder why magic is juxtaposed with religion.
[00:00:14.750]Because in anthropology the answer is
[00:00:17.221]that magic just has to do with
[00:00:20.371]the methods we use to deal with the supernatural.
[00:00:22.980]And religion is all about the supernatural.
[00:00:24.967]So let's talk about the universality of religion
[00:00:27.401]and why we think it appears,
[00:00:28.688]or some of the ideas that we have
[00:00:30.355]about why it appears everywhere we look in all cultures.
[00:00:33.610]Variation in religious beliefs.
[00:00:36.341]Variation of religious practices,
[00:00:38.879]that is a special focus on religious leadership
[00:00:42.808]and the assortment of individuals
[00:00:44.988]from shamans to cardinals to diviners
[00:00:48.545]who engage in religious practices.
[00:00:53.355]Religion and adaptation, that is is religion adaptive.
[00:00:57.428]And here, we'll talk about some recent research
[00:01:00.645]about how religion may lead to greater social solidarity.
[00:01:06.588]And then finally on religious change.
[00:01:10.141]So religion is defined
[00:01:11.508]as any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices
[00:01:13.760]pertaining to supernatural power,
[00:01:16.704]whether that power be
[00:01:17.793]forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons.
[00:01:21.177]And so the supernatural is out there and there are agents.
[00:01:27.111]And people believe in these agents,
[00:01:29.831]and especially what they've done in the past
[00:01:32.912]and what they may do in the future.
[00:01:38.048]Some ideas about the universality of religion.
[00:01:41.181]I would kind of focus on the need to understand,
[00:01:44.686]one way to look at a religion as it's kind of like science,
[00:01:48.640]to tell us how the world was created,
[00:01:52.713]why things are the way the are.
[00:01:56.141]The psychological close reversion to childhood feelings
[00:01:58.945]I think is probably not really a good kind of theory.
[00:02:04.248]And also as a means to reduce anxiety and uncertainty,
[00:02:09.333]that does occur.
[00:02:10.662]Religion can give people a sense of well being,
[00:02:16.644]but also it can cause plenty of anxiety.
[00:02:19.603]For example in Christian religion,
[00:02:22.834]not going to heaven or hell.
[00:02:24.651]That's going to create some anxiety.
[00:02:26.780]So it doesn't reduce anxiety in many cases.
[00:02:30.451]The need for community and the need for cooperation
[00:02:32.832]I think are also important elements
[00:02:34.827]of why religion is found everywhere.
[00:02:37.724]A group of believers is more cohesive
[00:02:39.998]than a group of people who have seperate different beliefs
[00:02:44.094]and this leads to greater cooperation
[00:02:46.591]in activities that require other cooperation of groups.
[00:02:50.290]So I would say the last two are really important,
[00:02:54.369]and also the first one to some extent too,
[00:02:56.728]probably explains why religion is found everywhere,
[00:03:00.807]even though it's in radically different forms sometimes.
[00:03:06.503]So we'll look at variation in religious beliefs.
[00:03:09.313]Types of supernatural forces and beings,
[00:03:11.871]the character of supernatural beings.
[00:03:13.907]One thing that's really interesting
[00:03:15.897]in more complex societies,
[00:03:19.095]the supernatural beings, as we're beginning to find out
[00:03:23.059]are really concerned about the moral behavior
[00:03:24.913]of individuals.
[00:03:26.613]And then we'll look at the structure, or hierarchy,
[00:03:28.396]of supernatural beings.
[00:03:30.345]Again, we're looking at the ideas
[00:03:32.121]of polytheism and monotheism.
[00:03:34.100]The intervention of gods in human affairs.
[00:03:37.560]And also life after death.
[00:03:41.748]So we're looking at variation in religious beliefs.
[00:03:44.993]We'll look at different kinds of forces.
[00:03:47.007]There are some supernatural forces,
[00:03:49.331]for example, mana, described in the textbook.
[00:03:52.582]And actually not really clearly mentioned in the textbook,
[00:03:55.349]this is what we refer to as animatism.
[00:03:58.643]Which means that the forces
[00:04:00.293]really don't have a bodily form, they can do things.
[00:04:04.273]And think about something like, in Christianity,
[00:04:08.671]the Holy Ghost.
[00:04:09.863]We really don't have an idea
[00:04:11.322]of what the Holy Ghost looks like.
[00:04:13.600]Or, think about another kind of animatistic belief,
[00:04:17.873]in Star Wars, the force.
[00:04:19.995]What is it?
[00:04:20.828]Well it exists, but doesn't have any kind of bodily form.
[00:04:24.385]More commonly, supernatural beings
[00:04:27.387]have human or animalistic forms
[00:04:29.885]and this is called an animistic belief.
[00:04:32.923]In that we can kind of picture what they look like.
[00:04:35.625]And then we have a whole host
[00:04:37.061]of different kinds of supernatural beings,
[00:04:40.712]gods, spirits, ghosts, ancestor spirits.
[00:04:44.368]These are all supernatural in nature,
[00:04:46.988]but their form varies from culture to culture.
[00:04:49.424]One thing that's really interesting about ghosts
[00:04:51.449]is that they just about occur in every society.
[00:04:56.823]And they essentially are the deceased
[00:04:59.940]who formally lived with us,
[00:05:01.234]and now who are wandering around.
[00:05:04.574]In many cases they have to propitiated
[00:05:08.286]by doing a variety of different ceremonies.
[00:05:14.009]If you look at the structure of supernatural beings,
[00:05:16.562]or the structural hierarchy of supernatural beings,
[00:05:18.627]we have monotheistic religions and polytheistic religions.
[00:05:22.582]Now monotheistic doesn't mean one god,
[00:05:26.429]it really means one chief or superior god,
[00:05:30.162]and there may be whole series of other beings
[00:05:34.937]that are in the supernatural pantheons.
[00:05:37.827]So we have the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost,
[00:05:42.215]and then we got angels.
[00:05:44.923]So we have this kind of hierarchy.
[00:05:46.550]And so a hierarchal system is characteristic
[00:05:50.548]of monotheistic religions.
[00:05:52.363]Polytheistic religions are a bit different.
[00:05:54.588]The hierarchy is very weak or nonexistent.
[00:05:57.702]Each god or spirit has its own kind of sphere
[00:06:01.306]of power and control.
[00:06:03.682]And people may pray to a variety of these different gods
[00:06:08.852]in a polytheistic religion.
[00:06:10.996]And so this is the kind of distinction we make
[00:06:12.816]in anthropology.
[00:06:14.170]Monotheistic, hierarchal system with an all powerful god,
[00:06:18.283]whereas the polytheistic system,
[00:06:19.828]where's the multiple gods with kind of overlapping powers.
[00:06:22.501]And no one really is in charge.
[00:06:25.338]Even the creator god in polytheistic religions
[00:06:29.224]can have existed a long time ago
[00:06:31.178]and now takes a kind of backseat,
[00:06:33.578]and other gods work on day to day life
[00:06:37.681]and interactions with humans.
[00:06:40.097]Ways to interact with the supernatural.
[00:06:43.520]And various methods have been used
[00:06:45.109]to attempt to communicate with the supernatural,
[00:06:47.492]such as prayer, drug taking, simulation, feasts, sacrifices.
[00:06:53.669]And many of these things lead to
[00:06:56.809]altered states of consciousness,
[00:06:58.407]that is you have to put your head in a special place
[00:07:01.700]in order to interact with the gods.
[00:07:05.541]And technically, as we'll learn in the next couple slides,
[00:07:10.152]magic is any attempt to influence the supernatural.
[00:07:14.205]So take away that kind of like evil demonic sense
[00:07:19.019]of what we talked about, magic something,
[00:07:21.148]is this illegal, improper.
[00:07:23.263]But from anthropologic perspective
[00:07:24.657]magic is the variety of means
[00:07:26.990]that the ceremonies, rituals, prayers, et cetera,
[00:07:29.880]that people use to communicate and interact
[00:07:34.462]with the supernatural, that's what magic is about.
[00:07:37.829]So magic, again, is interacting with supernaturals.
[00:07:42.040]Sorcery may include the use of
[00:07:43.864]materials, objects, and medicines
[00:07:45.201]to invoke supernatural malevolence.
[00:07:47.548]So sorcery typically is what we call,
[00:07:51.485]loosely termed, black magic.
[00:07:53.791]And where people try to harm other people
[00:07:56.286]through manipulation of the supernatural
[00:08:00.208]through a variety of different means.
[00:08:02.800]Witchcraft is said to accomplish the same ills
[00:08:06.322]by means or thoughts, and emotional level.
[00:08:09.902]That is the witch often times doesn't know
[00:08:12.905]that he or she have something that is harmful
[00:08:16.568]within himself or herself that causes harm to others.
[00:08:21.218]They're typically not conscious of it,
[00:08:24.541]and so sorcery is kind of like conscious harm,
[00:08:31.634]whereas witchcraft is unconscious harm.
[00:08:36.862]Type of practitioners.
[00:08:38.921]Again, we have,
[00:08:41.454]and this varies with the levels
[00:08:43.449]of social cultural complexity,
[00:08:46.273]in banned and tribal societies
[00:08:48.184]that we learned about in the previous chapter, the shaman.
[00:08:52.583]You know, he's an all purpose religious practitioner.
[00:08:55.870]His goal, and sometimes her goal,
[00:08:58.269]but more often than not shamans are males and not females,
[00:09:02.390]is to diagnose the causes of illnesses.
[00:09:05.459]Those causes typically are believed to be supernatural
[00:09:07.720]and so the shaman is an individual
[00:09:09.988]who engages in a kind of pro-social curing or diagnoses
[00:09:15.967]in curing activities.
[00:09:18.342]And there are sorcerers or witches,
[00:09:20.272]people who interact with supernatural to cause harm,
[00:09:24.221]either consciously or unconsciously, as mentioned before.
[00:09:27.200]Mediums are individuals that others can use
[00:09:31.117]to communicate with the spiritual world.
[00:09:35.644]And then of course priests in organized religions.
[00:09:38.363]And of course we have all kinds of complexity
[00:09:40.572]when we get into organized religion,
[00:09:43.356]again using normally common hierarchy.
[00:09:46.102]And then we've got cardinals, archbishops, popes,
[00:09:50.603]priests, brothers, sisters, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:09:53.819]And they all have their kind of special duties.
[00:09:56.281]And what we find in these larger kind of religions
[00:10:01.087]is a bureaucracy.
[00:10:03.966]And a divisional labor among individuals
[00:10:06.015]in that bureaucracy.
[00:10:11.021]Again, noting something from your text,
[00:10:12.929]shamans are usually male,
[00:10:14.827]but here we have some female shamans,
[00:10:17.555]that, again, engaged in healing ritual,
[00:10:20.736]and this the kind of time honored activity that shamans do.
[00:10:25.059]They diagnose the cause of an illness
[00:10:27.240]and then figure out what the proper supernatural cure is.
[00:10:31.353]Because the cause typically is believed to be supernatural.
[00:10:37.547]As I mentioned, the number of types of practitioners
[00:10:40.982]seems to vary with degree of social complexity.
[00:10:44.341]And the more complex the society,
[00:10:45.697]then the more types of practitioners.
[00:10:48.013]So we have this kind of growing division of labor
[00:10:51.487]that matches what goes on economically in complex societies.
[00:10:55.113]And so the development of these religious bureaucracies.
[00:10:58.122]We also have a more and more complex form
[00:11:04.214]of offices, in particular, practitioners.
[00:11:11.355]Religion adaptation.
[00:11:13.722]There's some recognition of the work of Malinowski,
[00:11:16.941]and many anthropologists take that view that
[00:11:19.189]religions are adaptive because they reduce
[00:11:21.213]the anxieties and uncertainties that afflict people.
[00:11:24.818]That could be true to some extent,
[00:11:26.084]but I don't think it's really important.
[00:11:27.690]And as I noted earlier, they can enhance anxiety.
[00:11:32.139]You know, am I going to heaven or hell,
[00:11:34.219]according to whether I'm following the rules
[00:11:37.006]prescribed my religion.
[00:11:38.559]So it can amplify anxieties.
[00:11:41.026]However, more recent approaches suggest
[00:11:42.928]that religion in large political organization
[00:11:44.540]is for social control and coordination.
[00:11:47.919]And there's some really good research that has come out
[00:11:51.411]since the textbook has published
[00:11:53.391]on moralistic and high gods.
[00:11:55.851]And here, what I'm gonna talk about,
[00:11:58.515]and this is mentioned in one of the highlights,
[00:12:00.684]is that in many societies,
[00:12:03.178]gods, especially simple societies,
[00:12:06.567]gods often are not concerned about the moral behavior
[00:12:10.000]of individuals.
[00:12:11.071]That is whether they're generous, brave, helpful,
[00:12:16.276]et cetera, et cetera.
[00:12:17.892]But in more complex societies, gods begin to focus on
[00:12:22.907]whether or not you are following the rules
[00:12:25.771]prescribed in your society or by your religions.
[00:12:28.267]So we call this kind of moralistic gods.
[00:12:30.877]In simple societies you have powerful gods,
[00:12:33.707]but not moralistic.
[00:12:35.192]All they really care about is whether you pay them
[00:12:37.751]correct homage and don't break taboos that insult them.
[00:12:42.303]But if you kind of are subservient to them
[00:12:45.689]they're really not concerned
[00:12:47.151]with the interaction you have with other people.
[00:12:50.151]And then also, when we get more complex societies,
[00:12:52.540]we have these high gods.
[00:12:54.358]That is the gods that are essentially the creators,
[00:12:56.558]the most powerful.
[00:12:58.171]We have the development of monotheistic religions.
[00:13:01.314]And sometimes, for example in Islam or Christianity,
[00:13:07.243]we have a god who is both concerned with human morality
[00:13:11.861]and is the highest god in the hierarchy.
[00:13:16.093]And again, this kind of mirrors developments
[00:13:18.878]in complex civilizations where we have a single ruler,
[00:13:24.402]who could be a despot, he could be a prime minister,
[00:13:26.726]but nevertheless he represents
[00:13:29.535]the greatest governmental power in a social group
[00:13:33.565]just as these high gods represent the greatest power
[00:13:37.950]in a religious setting, supernatural.
[00:13:41.922]The history of religion includes periods
[00:13:43.756]of strong resistance to change
[00:13:46.791]and periods of radical change.
[00:13:48.276]So we're looking at religious change.
[00:13:50.529]And one of the things in anthropology we study
[00:13:53.144]are revitalization movements.
[00:13:55.420]And revitalization movements happen all over the world.
[00:13:58.430]Anthropologists have documented these sorts of movements.
[00:14:04.930]And a good example is the ghost dance,
[00:14:07.970]which was a Pan-Native American,
[00:14:10.686]Native North American, kind of religious movement.
[00:14:14.036]And the idea here was that
[00:14:17.193]the reason they were in such terrible plight
[00:14:19.699]being wiped out and pushed out by euro-Americans,
[00:14:24.017]was because they failed to adhere
[00:14:27.271]to the fundamental beliefs of their original religions.
[00:14:29.718]And so the idea was that if they could get back
[00:14:33.275]to following these fundamental beliefs,
[00:14:36.690]then they believe your plight would be better.
[00:14:40.466]And you know same thing that we see
[00:14:42.580]in some call it Christian fundamentalist churches.
[00:14:46.377]Or Islamic fundamentalist.
[00:14:49.458]The idea that you're in a bad state now,
[00:14:52.605]salvation is in jeopardy,
[00:14:56.992]your economic situation isn't good,
[00:14:59.388]and the reason for this is that you strayed from
[00:15:02.485]the fundamental teachings.
[00:15:04.776]And so these revitalization movements
[00:15:07.398]kind of go back to the common core
[00:15:09.644]and use that as the basis for imagining a better world.
[00:15:17.457]Religious change.
[00:15:19.014]Conversion to one of the world's religions
[00:15:21.580]has often been associated
[00:15:22.684]with colonization and the expansion of the state.
[00:15:25.311]There are specific examples of Christianity on Tikopia,
[00:15:28.171]which is a South Pacific island.
[00:15:31.866]And also anthropologic allures to that
[00:15:37.227]tries to explain the conversion.
[00:15:39.511]One thing that really makes
[00:15:42.743]certain kinds of religions,
[00:15:45.049]and again, the textbook doesn't emphasize this enough
[00:15:47.988]called universalistic religion.
[00:15:49.795]Universalistic religions
[00:15:51.772]cross cut cultural, ethnic, racial boundaries
[00:15:57.544]and they try to convert people.
[00:16:00.207]And so this is, for example again, Islam, Christianity.
[00:16:05.043]Often times conversion is forceful.
[00:16:09.143]But this contrast, with what we call,
[00:16:12.571]so we have universalistic religions on one hand
[00:16:14.851]then we have what we call ethnic religions
[00:16:16.675]on the other hand.
[00:16:18.151]Ethnic religions are powerfully associated
[00:16:21.103]with one's culture.
[00:16:22.474]And there's really no attempt to convert others,
[00:16:25.314]to bring others into the pool.
[00:16:26.832]For example, you don't have Jewish missionaries.
[00:16:30.067]Judaism is an ethnic religion.
[00:16:32.163]You don't have Navajo missionaries.
[00:16:34.247]Because the Navajo beliefs pertain to the Navajo people.
[00:16:38.391]And so there's this kind of big disjunction
[00:16:40.950]between the kinds of religions
[00:16:43.130]that we see in simpler societies
[00:16:45.164]as opposed to the religions that we see
[00:16:46.860]in more complex societies where there's a great emphasis
[00:16:51.089]in conversion.
[00:16:56.785]More again, on this probably slide should have been
[00:16:59.712]a little bit earlier by two slides,
[00:17:02.503]the Seneca and the Religion of the Handsome Lake,
[00:17:06.441]cargo cults and fundamentalism.
[00:17:07.913]These are all different kinds of revivalistic movements
[00:17:11.152]that are reviewed in the text.
[00:17:13.128]So take a look at that.
[00:17:15.067]And one of the key sorts of things is that
[00:17:19.222]people are facing tough times,
[00:17:20.636]they're strayed from the fundamental tendencies
[00:17:23.595]of their religion.
[00:17:24.567]And getting back to those fundamental tendencies
[00:17:27.730]will help them improve their life chances.
[00:17:30.715]Here are some important concepts and terms
[00:17:33.016]that you should be ready to answer
[00:17:35.835]because it'll be on the exam probably,
[00:17:38.804]at least a number of them.
[00:17:40.162]The difference between monotheism and polytheism,
[00:17:42.599]the difference between magic and sorcery,
[00:17:45.755]and again, and witchcraft.
[00:17:48.310]But again magic is a means of communication,
[00:17:51.711]either manipulation of the supernatural,
[00:17:54.211]supernatural agents, a whole post of them,
[00:17:57.077]ghost, gods, demons, ancestor spirits.
[00:18:00.641]Religious practitioners,
[00:18:02.599]again, moving from very simple societies
[00:18:05.520]who just have shamans,
[00:18:07.385]who are all kind of all purpose religious practitioners.
[00:18:11.089]And then as society becomes more complex
[00:18:15.482]we get greater complexity
[00:18:16.836]in the number of practitioners with a division of labor.
[00:18:20.135]Mediums, diviners, et cetera, cetera.
[00:18:23.383]Revitalization movements
[00:18:24.546]that we just kind of went through
[00:18:26.058]whether it has to do with ghosts at Seneca Lake,
[00:18:29.440]fundamentalist Christianity,
[00:18:31.909]and then the recent research again on
[00:18:34.639]moralistic and high gods,
[00:18:36.224]which should emphasize and highlight religion cooperation.
[00:18:40.053]And here the idea is that
[00:18:43.221]religion is a means to maintain the solidarity
[00:18:46.511]and integrity of the population.
[00:18:49.059]Because one of the things that occurs
[00:18:51.472]under these kind of gods that are moralistic
[00:18:55.587]is to make sure people do the proper thing
[00:18:58.074]like pay their taxes
[00:19:00.079]and volunteer for the armed forces.
[00:19:04.216]Cooperate with one another during periods of disaster.
[00:19:08.514]And so this is achieved through religious means.
[00:19:12.274]And then finally, the distinction I just made
[00:19:14.696]between ethnic versus universalistic religions.
[00:19:20.730]And that's an important one
[00:19:22.479]because the universalistic religions
[00:19:24.297]are essentially taking over.
[00:19:26.458]Okay, so that's all for our chapter.

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Chapter 14 EE

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