1. The Anthropology of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion
The Study of Religion

2. anthropology
ánthrōpos (Greek) = human
lógos (Greek) = word
= the “word about humans”, the study of humans, the organized and systemized body of knowledge about humans

3. The “Study of Human Cultures”
As interesting in their own right
Ethnography = a description of a specific culture
For purposes of comparison
Ethnology = the comparative study of different cultures

4. Herodotus Born in Halicarnassus, then a part of the Persian Empire
Traveled to Egypt, Babylon, Athens, and other locales
Wrote “The History”
Herodotus (?) c c. 425 B.C.

5. Opening Lines of The History
I, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why they fought one another.

7. Herodotus by Jean-Guillaume Moitte, 1806. Louvre palace, Paris
Herodotus’ Work
Accounts not always accurate
Appears to have had “an agenda”
“Father of History”
“Father of Ethnology”
Herodotus by Jean-Guillaume Moitte, Louvre palace, Paris

8. And the desire to understand the “other”
The Age of Discovery
And the desire to understand the “other”

9. Whose agenda was to dominate rather than understand
“first contact”
Missionaries
Soldiers
Politicians and bureaucrats
Whose agenda was to dominate rather than understand

10. The Confusion of Tongues
Genesis 11
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. … 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth…
The Confusion of Tongues
(by Gustave Doré 1865)

11. “Degenerationist” Ideas
An attempt to understand newly discovered peoples in light of the Bible and other European sources of knowledge
Non –Europeans had “fallen” or degenerated from an earlier, more perfect state

12. Lewis Henry Morgan
Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization
(1877)
Lewis Henry Morgan

13. posits that human societies evolve in a “unilineal” fashion
Morgan’s Model
Civilization
Barbarism
Savagery
posits that human societies evolve in a “unilineal” fashion

14. The Beginnings of Ethnology
The comparative study of societies
But based upon inadequate and/or biased data
Posited that one’s own culture was the standard which others should try to attain

15. Edward Burnett Tylor
Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Edward Burnett Tylor

16. human religions similarly evolve in a “unilineal” fashion
Tylor’s Model
monotheism
polytheism
animism
human religions similarly evolve in a “unilineal” fashion

17. Franz Boas Physicist and geographer by training
Encountered the Inuit in Baffinland
Became interested in establishing a “science of humankind”
Franz Boas

18. The Study of Cultures
Should proceed on an “objective” (= scientific) basis
Avoid ethnocentrism
Use the methodology of cultural relativism
“salvage” anthropology
Franz Boas c. 1915

19. four field approach cultural anthropology linguistic anthropology
archaeology
biological anthropology
plus: applied anthropology