Appreciating Human Diversity Fifteenth Edition Conrad Phillip Kottak University of Michigan A n t h r o p o l o g y McGraw-Hill © 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

21-2 RELIGION C H A P T E R 21-2

21-3 RELIGION What Is Religion? Expressions of Religion Religion and Cultural Ecology Social Control Kinds of Religion World Religions Religion and Change Secular Rituals

21-4 RELIGION What is religion, and what are its various forms, social correlates, and functions? What is ritual, and what are its various forms and expressions? What role does religion play in maintaining and changing societies?

21-5 WHAT IS RELIGION? Religion Wallace: belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces Durkheim: religious effervescence Reese: bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship Turner: communitas: Intense feeling of social solidarity Religion is a cultural universal

21-6 EXPRESSIONS OF RELIGION: SPIRITUAL BEINGS Tylor: religion evolved through stages Animism: belief in spiritual beings Polytheism: belief in multiple gods Monotheism: belief in a single, all-powerful deity Tylor: religion declines as science offers better explanations for things

21-7 POWERS AND FORCES Mana: sacred impersonal force existing in the universe Melanesian mana similar to good luck Polynesian mana attached to political offices Because high chiefs had so much mana, their bodies and possessions were taboo: sacred and forbidden; prohibition backed by supernatural sanctions

21-8 MAGIC AND RELIGION Magic: supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims May be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or contagious (accomplished through contact) Magic exists in cultures with diverse religious beliefs

21-9 UNCERTAINTY, ANXIETY, SOLACE Religion and magic don’t just explain things and help people accomplish goals They serve emotional and cognitive needs Malinowski: magic is used to establish control, but religion “is born out of…the real tragedies of human life”

21-10 RITUALS Ritual: formal—stylized, repetitive, stereotyped behavior, based on a liturgical order Rituals convey information about participants and their culture Rituals are social acts

21-11 RITES OF PASSAGE Rites of passage: customs associated with transition from one stage of life to another Contemporary rites of passage include confirmations, baptisms, bar and bat mitzvahs, initiations, weddings, and applying for Social Security and Medicare Liminality: in-between phase of passage rite

21-12 RITES OF PASSAGE Liminality is basic to rites of passage Involves a temporary suspension and reversal of social distinctions Such phenomena as humility, poverty, equality, obedience, and sexual abstinence; silence may be required from the sect or cult members

21-13 RECAP 21.1: Oppositions between Liminality and Normal Social Life

21-14 TOTEMISM Totem: animal, plant, or geographic feature associated with specific social group, to which that totem is sacred or symbolically important Members of each totemic group believed themselves to be descendants of their totem Uses nature as model for society Cosmology: system, often religious, for imagining and understanding the Universe Totemic principles continue to demarcate groups

21-15 RELIGION AND CULTURAL ECOLOGY: SACRED CATTLE IN INDIA Ahimsa: Hindu doctrine of nonviolence forbids killing animals Western planners lament that Hindus are bound by culture and tradition and refuse to develop rationally Assumptions are both ethnocentric and wrong Cattle play an important adaptive role in Indian ecosystem

21-16 SOCIAL CONTROL The power of religion affects actions Leaders have used religion to promote and justify their views and policies Persuasion Witchcraft accusations Often directed at socially marginal or anomalous individuals

21-17 SOCIAL CONTROL Witch hunts play an important role in limiting social deviancy Leveling mechanism: custom that brings standouts back in line with community norms Many religions have formal codes of ethics to prohibit or promote certain behaviors Religions also maintain social control by stressing the fleeting nature of life

21-18 KINDS OF RELIGION Religion is a cultural universal, but cultural differences show up systematically in religious beliefs and practices All societies have religious figures Shamans: part-time magic-religious practitioner Totemic ceremonies of Native Australians temporarily brought together foragers Productive economies can support full-time religious specialists

21-19 KINDS OF RELIGION Wallace: describes religions of such stratified societies as “ecclesiastical” (pertaining to an established church and its hierarchy of officials) In monotheism, all supernatural phenomena believed to be manifestations of, or under control of, a single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being

21-20 PROTESTANT VALUES AND CAPITALISM Max Weber linked spread of capitalism to values central to the Protestant faith: Ascetic Entrepreneurial Future oriented Capitalism required that traditional attitudes of Catholic peasants be replaced by values befitting an industrial economy

21-21 WORLD RELIGIONS World’s largest religions: Christianity Islam Hinduism Chinese Confucianism Buddhism More than one billion people claim no official religion

21-22 Table 21.1: Religions of the World, by Estimated Number of Adherents, 2005

21-23 Figure 21.1: Major World Religions by Percentage of World Population, 2005

21-24 Table 21.2: Classical World Religions Ranked by Internal Religious Similarity

21-25 RELIGION AND CHANGE Religion helps maintain social order Religious leaders also may seek to alter or revitalize their society

21-26 REVITALIZATION MOVEMENTS Revitalization movements: social movements that occur in times of change Colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by Handsome Lake

21-27 SYNCRETISMS Syncretisms: Cultural, especially religious, mixes, emerging from acculturation Voodoo, santería, and candomblé Cargo cults: postcolonial, acculturative religious movements in Melanesia Religious responses to expansion of the world capitalist economy

21-28 Figure 21.2: Location of Melanesia

21-29 ANTIMODERNISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM Antimodernism: rejecting modern in favor of what is perceived as earlier, purer, and better way of life Fundamentalism: advocating strict fidelity to a religion’s presumed founding principles Asserts an identity separate from that of the larger religious group Seeks to rescue religion from absorption into the modern

21-30 A NEW AGE Number of Americans giving no religious preference grew from 7% to 16% between 1990 and 2007 Canadians rose from 12% to 17% Sociological research suggests that levels of U.S. religiosity have not changed much in the past century

21-31 A NEW AGE In U.S., official recognition of a religion entitles it to a modicum of respect Exemption from taxation Not all religions receive official recognition

21-32 SECULAR RITUALS Formal, invariant, stereotyped, earnest, repetitive behavior and rites of passage that take place in nonreligious settings How do we classify ritual-like behavior that occurs in secular contexts? How can we tell what is religion and what not? Who is to say which is “more religious”?

21-33 Table 21.3: Religious Composition of the Populations of the United States, 1990 and 2001, and Canada, 1991 and 2007