1. RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW
SOCI 202
SPRING 2010
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker

2. Human beings try to make sense of their experiences in ways that link them meaningfully to the wider world Worldview: An encompassing picture of reality based on a set of shared assumptions about how the world works Religion: A worldview in which people personify cosmic forces abd devise ways to deal with them Personified beings may be: gods, spirits, ghosts, souls, ancestors

3. Why is religion important?
(Why do social anthropologists study religion?)
A way to deal with uncertainty
A way to provide meaning to people’s lives
A way to explain the unexplainable
A way to create social solidarity among a religion’s adherents

4. Religious diversity
Traditional religions (animism): belief in the existence of souls or spirit beings associated with nature
Ancestor cults: belief in that existence of ancestors who can organize social life by punishing those who break moral rules
Polytheistic religions: multiple personified entities in which people believe
 gods: may have some human characteristics

5. Religious diversity (cont’d)
Some religions may believe in less personified cosmic forces
Mana: a cosmic force whose only human-like attribute is the ability to respond to human beings who use the correct symbolic formulas to harness or channel this force
Oracle: an invisible cosmic force capable of understanding human language and willing to respond truthfully using symbolic meanings which, persons with proper cultural knowledge can understand

6. Religious knowledge
Some societies have systemically organized their religious knowledge; others don’t Dogma-orthodoxy: when the truth a religion is supposed to contain may not be questionsed, this is called dogma or orthodoxy (correct belief) Heterodoxy: different adherents of a religious tradition may offer varied or even conflicting interpretations of religious knowledge

7. Components of religious traditions
Myths: Stories whose truth seems self-evident because they integrate personal experiences with a wider set of assumptions about the way society must operate Origin myths: Such myths explain the creation of the world or of particular landscapes Myths tell people where they have come from, and where they’re going, and how they should live.

8. Myths, cont’d.
Malinowski on myths: they are charters for social action (such as origin myths about a kinship group) Claude Levi-Strauss on myths: structures of myth narratives are meaningful. Myths are attempts to deal with significant oppositions for members of a society, such as men versus women, nature versus culture, life versus death

9. Rituals
Rituals are repetitive social practices. A ritual is composed of a sequence of symbolic activities, set off from the social routines of everyday life, recognizable by the society as a ritual, and connected to a set of ideas that are often encoded in myth. The authorization for rituals comes from outside the members of the society: from God, the state, ancestors or traditions

10. Religious rituals
Religious worldviews assume that communication with personified cosmic forces is possible and beneficial – if carried out correctly
Religious rituals are attempts to influence or gain the sympathy of a personified cosmic being
Prayers
Sacrifice
Congregation

11. Rites of passage
Rites of passage mark the transformation of a person from one social status to another
Womanhood
Manhood
Marriage
Birth
Funeral

12. Magic
Magic: ritual practices that do not have technically or scientifically apparent effects but are believed by the practitioners to have an influence on the outcome of practical matters (such as healing)

13. Magic Malinowski’s explanation of magic:
All societies have developed knowledge and techniques to deal with the world.
But such knowledge is limited.
When an outcome is uncertain, people resort to magic.
Using magic reduces anxiety

14. Can you think of examples of magic?
Do you ever use magic?

15. Types of magic
Imitative magic (analogy)
Examples?
Contagious magic

16. What is the relation between magic and religion?

17. 19th-century anthropologists (e. g
19th-century anthropologists (e.g. Edward Burnett Tylor) argued that religion and magic were separate
Magic  barbarian societies
Religion  civilizations
Science  modern Western civilization

18. Contemporary social anthropologists think that magic, religion and science coexist
Can you give examples?

19. Witchcraft
Witchcraft: performance of evil by human beings believed to possess an innate, nonhuman “witchcraft substance” that can be activated without the individual’s awareness

20. Is witchcraft “irrational” and primitive?
British anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard ( ) studied witchcraft and magic among the Azande people in Africa
Evans-Pritchard argued that witchcraft, oracles and magic are rational if we assume that unseen forces exist in the world and that nothing happens to people by accident

21. Is there something similar to witchcraft in Turkey?

22. Religious practitioners
In small-scale egalitarian societies, either
elders may perform or lead rituals, or
shamans may communicate with cosmic beings on behalf of the people
In hierarchical and unequal societies,
priests mediate between the people and the cosmic forces by properly conducting rituals

23. Change in religious systems
Conversion
Syncretism
Revitalization movements

24. Two case studies Baseball magic in the US
Religion and the “supernatural” in the Black Sea region

25. Baseball magic George Gmelch:
Which types of baseball players use magic?
(pitchers, hitters, fielders?)
What kind of magic do they use?
(taboos, fetishes, rituals)

27. Evil eye, genies and faith in Medreseönü
Sylvia Wing Önder: We Have no Microbes Here. Healing Practices in a Turkish Black Sea Village.
Ethnographic study of healing practices in Medreseönü, a village in Ordu, between
All healing systems are related to faith!

28. What is the religious worldview of people in Medreseönü?
Sunni Islam (God, prophet, angels, saints, cin, ecunnu, fairies (periler), souls (ruhlar), hortlaklar, evil eye (nazar)
Mix of Sunni Islam and “supernatural” occurrences
(Note: In Chapter 5, focus on pp only)

29. Nazar Is the evil eye a superstition or something Qoranic?
How do people deal with the evil eye in Medreseönü?
Why do people believe in nazar?
How can anthropologists explain the belief in nazar?