Anthropology of Religion Winter Term 2008-2009 4 credits (8 ECT) Lecturer: Vlad Naumescu Schedule: Tuesday 09:00 - 10:40, 11:00 - 12:40; Office hours: Tuesdays 2-4pm and by appointment E-mail: naumescuv@ceu.hu CEU Ext.: 2315
Course description Questions of religion have been central to anthropology since its beginnings and they remained so because of the ambivalence anthropologists had towards religious beliefs and experiences. Religion is seen even today through the skeptical gaze of secular anthropology and recent critiques brought up the continuing difficulty anthropologists have in grasping Christianity, their 'repressed other'. The anthropology of religion emerged as a vibrant field of theoretical inquiry into the religious phenomena which every new paradigm tries to confront. Even the most recent developments in the cognitive studies of religion have the ambition to explain (and thus exhaust) religion. We will discover during this course to what extent such attempts were successful in grasping this universal dimension of human experience. The course is structured around major themes in the anthropology of religion: magic, belief, symbols, tradition, ritual, morality, healing, spirit possession, conversion, secularization. They constitute focal points of intensive theoretical debate and at the same time analytical categories in the study of religion. The broader theoretical issues will be examined using a wide range of ethnographic examples from various parts of the world. In doing so we will discover the varieties of religious phenomena coexisting within the religious field and understand how key concepts have been applied to specific cultural settings. Apart from classical ethnographic studies focused on local cults in small-scale societies, we will focus on world religions and their historical dynamics emerging from the tension between religious orthodoxies and charismatic authority. Thus following these examples we will also move from local phenomena to global movements. Religion constitutes a major field for studying interactions between individual and society hence the second part of the course will focus on the ways in which society permeates individual consciousness, and how individuals can change social reality by means of religion. We will return then to major topics related to religion and reason, value systems that motivate human behavior, the creation of moral selves and the universal categories that lay at the root of human experience. In the quest for understanding religion anthropologists came to address fundamental questions about human nature and cultural difference, relevant beyond the field of social anthropology. Learning outcomes By the end of the course students will have an advanced knowledge of key concepts and theoretical debates that have shaped the anthropology of religion. They will be able to analyze religious phenomena by drawing on existing perspectives and constructing their own arguments. By engaging with the variety of ethnographic studies they will realize the breadth and scope of the anthropological engagement with religion. In particular they will learn to critically assess existing approaches, discovering their benefits and limitations. Thus students will further develop their critical thinking, they will learn to construct solid theoretical argumentations and will get a good sense of how anthropology works from particular to general, from ethnography to theory. Course requirements The course is based on weekly sessions, one-hour lecture and two-hour seminar. Students are required to attend every class and actively participate in the seminar discussion. Seminars will be based on student presentations circulated in advance and commented by the others, the discussion of assigned readings and films screened in class. Evaluation is based on class presentations (40%), class participation (10%) and a final essay developed within the frames of the course (50%).
Antes, P., A. W. Geertz, et al. 2004. New approaches to the study of religion. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter. Banton, M. 1985 [c1966].Anthropological approaches to the study of religion. A.S.A. monographs; v. 3. London: Tavistock Publications. Bowie, F. 2006. Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Glazier, S.D.1999. Anthropology of religion: a handbook. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lambek M. (ed.) 2002. A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Oxford & Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lessa, W. A., E. Z. Vogt, et al. 2002. Reader in comparative religion : an anthropological approach. New York ; London, Harper and Row. Morris, B. 1987. Anthropological studies of religion: an introductory text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The first class is focused on the problem of defining religion: definitions are too strong or too weak and some argue that no definition grasps the religious phenomena in its entirety. What do we talk about when we talk about 'religion'? How can we recognize its presence in the world today? How can we approach it? How was ‘religion’ constructed as an object of anthropological inquiry? What is anthropological agnosticism and what can we do with it? Class readings Asad, T.1982. The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category. In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. pp. 27-54. Geertz, C. 1966. Religion as a cultural system. In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books (Reprinted in Lambek 2002: 61-82). Peacock, J. 2001. Belief Beheld - Inside and Outside, Insider and Outsider in the Anthropology of Religion, in Ecology and the sacred: engaging the anthropology of Roy A. Rappaport. In Rappaport, Messer, Lambek eds. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. p. 207-226. Further readings Durkheim. E. 1994. Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena. In: Durkheim on Religion. ed. Pickering. Atlanta: Scholars Press. pp: 74-99 (also The Elementary forms of religious life, pp.102-166). Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1965. Theories of primitive religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Firth, R. 1959. Problem and Assumption in an Anthropological Study of Religion. JRAI, Vol. 89 (2) pp. 129-148. Malinowski, B. 1979. The Role of Magic and Religion. In Lessa & Vogt: Pp 102-111. Robbins, J. 2007. Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture. Current Anthropology , 48(1): pp. 5-38. Spiro, M. 1996. Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation. In Banton 1996: 137- 175. Tylor, E. B. 2002. Religion in Primitive Culture. In Lambek 2002 Pp. 21-33. Week 2: From local cults to world religions – anthropology's small steps into the world In the early days of the discipline anthropologists preferred small-scale societies and primitive religions to world religions. Approaches focusing on world religions and their internal dynamics developed late in anthropology and some are yet to emerge. Anthropologists have come to study them by means of such dichotomies as great and little, popular vs. elite, literate vs. oral traditions. How are such models functioning in world religions? Can they grasp the interplay between practice and theology, the local and the global? How can we approach local interpretations of world religions? Class readings Evans-Pritchard, E. 1956. Nuer religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read Chapter 11. The Problem of Symbols. pp. 123-143 and 13. Some Reflections on Nuer Religion. Pp. 311-322. Badone, E. 1990. Religious orthodoxy and popular faith in European society. Princeton, N.J.aOxford, Princeton University Press. Read Introduction: Pp. 3-23 Stewart, C., R. Shaw,A. 1994. Syncretism/anti-syncretism: the politics of religious synthesis. London; New York: Routledge. Read Introduction: pp. 1-26. Further readings Cannell, F. 2006. Anthropology of Christianity. Durham: Duke University Press. (read Introduction) Starrett, G. 1999. The Anthropology of Islam. In: Anthropology of Religion. Glazier ed., Westport: Praeger. pp. 279-303. Lewis, T. 1999. Buddhist Communities: Historical Precedents and Ethnographic Paradigms. In Anthropology of Religion, Glazier ed. Westport: Praeger. pp. 319-368. Christian jr., W. A. 1989. Person and God in a Spanish Valley. Princeton: PUP. Stewart, C. 1991. Demons and the Devil : moral imagination in modern Greek culture. Princeton, N.J: PUP. Weber, M.1965. The sociology of religion. London: Methuen. One way in which anthropologists approached religion was by studying what religion represents and its representational practices. Symbols, myths and cosmologies are cultural constructs which organize reality by creating worlds and webs of meaning. How can we interpret symbols? What is the connection between personal and cultural symbols? How does the structural analysis of myths work? What is the role of cosmology? How are cosmologies updated in relation to social change? Class readings Ortner, S. 1973. “On Key Symbols.” American Anthropologist (NS) 75(5) Pp. 1338-1346. Obeyesekere, G. 1981 Medusa's hair: an essay on personal symbols and religious experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press or in Lambek pp. 383-397. Willis, R.G. The Head and the Loins: Levi-Strauss and beyond. MAN (New Series), Vol. 2, No. 4. (Dec., 1967), pp. 519-534. or Leesa & Vogt, Pp. 197-206. Douglas , M. 1996 [1966]. The abominations of Leviticus. In Purity and danger : an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London ; New York, Routledge. Further readings Barth, F. 1987. Cosmologies in the making: a generative approach to cultural variation in Inner New Guinea. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Leach, E. R. 1958. Magical Hair. In JRAI 88(2): 147-164. Levi-Strauss, C. 1963. Structural study of myth. In Structural anthropology 1, Basic Books: Pp. 206-231. Sperber, D. 1975. Rethinking symbolism. Cambridge studies in social anthropology. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Turner, V. 1966. Colour Classification in Ndembu Ritual. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. M. Banton. London, Tavistock . Pp. 47-84. Film: Kataragama: A God for All Seasons Charlie Nairn & Gananath Obeyesekere, UK, 54 min. Week 4: Theoretical approaches to ritual and ritual action Ritual is one of the categories extensively exploited by anthropologists in the history of the discipline. We will discuss ritual by looking at some of the significant contributions to ritual studies. How does ritual relate to social structure? Which are the functions ritual has in religion & society? How does ritual produce and legitimate social order? How does the ritual process transform individuals? Class readings Bloch, M. 1989. Symbols, song, dance, and features of articulation: is religion an extreme form of traditional authority? In Ritual History and Power: Selected papers in Antropology. LSE monographs: London, 58. Pp: 19- 45. Rappaport, R. 1999. Enactments of Meaning. In Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. pp. 107-138. Also in Lambek Pp. 447-467. Turner, V. 1996. Liminality and Communitas. In: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti- Structure. Pp. 94- 130. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Whitehouse, H 1996. Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor and Memory in Melanesian Initiation Cults. JRAI, 1996. 2(4): p. 703- 715. Further readings Barth, F. 1975. Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. 1975, Oslo: New Haven: Yale University Press. Part II: The Initiation Rites. Bell , C.M. 1992. Ritual theory, ritual practice. New York; Oxford: OUP. Moore, S. F. and B. G. Myerhoff. 1977. Secular ritual: Forms and Meanings. In Moore & Myerhoff. Secular ritual. Pp. 3-24 Assen: Van Gorcum. Turner, V. W. 1995. The ritual process : structure and anti-structure. New York, Aldine de Gruyter. Film: Guardians of the Flutes: the Secrets of male Initiation. Paul Reddish & Gilbert Herdt, UK, 1998, 55 min. Week 5: Religion, secularism and modernity This class examines the enduring presence of religious beliefs in the modern world. Although modernity was arguably accompanied by secularization and the privatization of religion, the world seems to have become even more enchanted. While sociologists were preoccupied with secularization processes, anthropologists have looked at social responses to modernity cast in a religious idiom – such as witchcraft and possession cults. How did the emergence of the secular affect modern societies? Can religions survive secularism? How is religion responding to modernity? Class reading Asad, T. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford UP. Read Chapter 6: Secularism, Nation-State, Religion pp. 181-205. Bellah, R. 2002. Civil Religion in America. In Lambek, pp. 512-522. Taylor, C. 2006. Religious mobilizations. Public Culture Vol. 18(2), pp. 281-300. Further readings Casanova, J. 2006. Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad. In Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, Scott & Hirschkind eds. Stanford UP. 2006; pp. 12-31. Taylor, C. 2002 Varieties of Religion Today - William James Revisited. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. SA Dossier on secularism. In Social Anthropology, Volume 9, Issue 03, October 2001, pp 323-344. Week 6. Global movements, transnational religions Following ethnographic cases from various parts of the world we observe how religion is transforming in relation to changing social realities. New forms of religious practice emerge independent of localities and become meaningful to any person around the world. Observing such variety of religious forms can we still talk about specific religious traditions? How can the new global religions reproduce themselves so successfully? How is the local-global relation transformed by the presence of transnational religious networks? Which is the new religious dynamic in religiously pluralist contexts? Class reading Comaroff, J. and J. L. Comaroff. 1993. Modernity and its malcontents : ritual and power in postcolonial Africa. Chicago , University of Chicago Press. Read the Introduction. Csordas, T. 2007. Introduction. Modalities of transnational transcendence. In Anthropological Theory, Vol. 7(3): 259-272. also Global religion and the re- enchantment of the world: the case of Catholic Charismatic Revival. pp: 295-314. Hefner, R. 1998. Multiple modernities: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in a Globalizing Age. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 83-104.
Further reading Clough, P. and J. P. Mitchell. 2001. Powers of good and evil : social transformation and popular belief. New York ; Oxford, Berghahn Books. Hann, C. et all. 2006. The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe. Berlin: Lit Verlag. Robbins, J. 2004.The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. Annu. Rev. Anthropol ., 33:117–43. Wanner, C. 2007. Communities of the ConvertedUkrainians and Global Evangelism. Ithaca : Cornell University Press Film: Les Maitres fous, Jean Rouch, Ghana 1955 (30 min). Week 7: Understanding Belief Although belief is a central issue for religion anthropologists tended not to engage with it since belief is commonly referred to as an internal state hard to grasp with our methods. However in recent times the issue has been reappraised in relation to religious conversion. How can we explain the experience of conversion? What is the role of language in belief? How can we grasp internal states such as religious beliefs? Is belief a useful analytical category? Class reading Harding, S. 1987. Convicted by the Holy Spirit: the rhetoric of fundamental Baptist conversion. American Ethnologist Vol. 14 (1), pp. 167-181. Mitchell, J.P., A Moment with Christ: The Importance of Feeling in the Analysis of Belief. JRAI, 1997. 3(1): p. 79-94. Ruel, M. 2002 [1982]. Christians as Believers. In Davis ed., Religious Organization and Religious Experience, pp. 9-32. Also in Lambek, pp. 99-113. Further readings Harding, S.F. 2000. The book of Jerry Falwell: fundamentalist language and politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Csordas, T.J. 2001. Language, charisma, and creativity: ritual life in the Catholic charismatic renewal. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kirsch, T. 2004. Restaging the Will to Believe: Religious Pluralism, Anti-Syncretism, and the Problem of Belief. American Anthropologist, 2004. 106(4): p. 699-709. Needham, R. 1972. Belief, Language and Experience. Oxford: Blackwell. Film screening: Jonestown. The Life and Death of People’s Temple. Dir. by: Stanley Nelson, U.S., 2006, 86 min. Week 8: Morality, ethics and the creation of the self Religion provides value systems and ethical traditions producing an internalized moral sense in their subjects. How are people (re)creating themselves as better persons in the religious experience? To what extent is their sense of self determined by particular practices and models found in society? What is the role of morally ambiguous characters in society? Class readings Hirschkind, C. 2001. The Ethics of Listening: Cassette Sermon Audition in Contemporary Cairo. American Ethnologist 28(2), pp. 623-649. Wanner, C. 2003. Advocating New Moralities: Conversion to Evangelicalism in Ukraine. Religion, State & Society 31(3): 273-287. Robbins, J. 2007. Between Reproduction and Freedom: Morality, Value and Radical Cultural Change. In Ethnos, 72(3). 293-314. Further readings Csordas, T.J. 1997. The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Laidlaw, J. 2002. For an anthropology of ethics and freedom. JRAI (NS) 8, pp. 311-332. Robbins, J. 2004. Becoming sinners : Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Berkeley, CA. ; London, University of California Press. Weber, M. 2002. The Protestant ethic and the "spirit" of capitalism and other writings. New York , Penguin Books. Film: Friends in High Places, Dir. by Lindsey Merrison, Burma/Myanmar, 2001, 88 min. Week 9: Religion and personal experience: visionaries, spirit possession and the intimacy of God. First-hand religious experience has always appeared as a controversial, unorthodox source of innovation in any religious tradition. Visions and dreams appear as privileged means of religious innovation in some religions while in others they are marginalized. Spirit possession caused intense debates beyond the borders of anthropology and anthropologists were challenged to explain such religious experiences. How is religious healing working? How can we understand spirit possession? What are the means to approach such experiences? Class readings Boddy, J. 1988. Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: the cultural therapeutics of possession and trance. American Ethnologist 15(1): 4-27. (Also in Lambek 2002: Pp. 398-418) . Noll, R. 1985. Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The role of Visions in Shamanism. Current Anthropology, 1985. 26(4): p. 443-461. Stephen, M. 1997. Cargo cults, Cultural Creativity and Autonomous Imagination. Ethos, 25(3): p. 333-358. Further readings Boddy, J. 1994. Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality. Annual Review of Anthropology23: 407-434. Csordas, T. J. 2004. Asymptote of the Ineffable: Embodiment, Alterity, and the Theory of Religion. Current Anthropology , Vol. 45 (2): pp. 163-185. Herdt, G.H. and M. Stephen. 1989. The Religious imagination in New Guinea. 1989, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Part I Theoretical Orientations: 1-65. Lewis, I.M. 1986. Religion in context: cults and charisma. Cambridge: CUP. Film: Kusum. Dir. by Jouko Aaltonen, Finland 2001, 70 min. The question of belief brings together religion and rationality beyond the classical oppositions disputed within social sciences. After an exploration of the varieties of religious phenomena, we return to fundamental theoretical questions related to the subject of our investigation. Could religious beliefs, just like rational thinking, stem from universal characteristics of human mind? Is modern science so radically opposed to the religious experience? Can we talk about a particular mode of knowledge related to religious experience? Class readings Horton, R. 1997. African traditional thought and Western science. In Patterns of thought in Africa and the West: essays on magic, religion and science , R. Horton, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: Pp.197-258. Tambiah, S. J. 1990. Multiple Orderings of Reality: the debate initiated by Levy-Bruhl. In Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality. The Lewis Henry Morgan Weeks ; 1984. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1990. pp. 84-110. Further readings Levy-Bruhl, L. 1985 How natives think. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. (Chapter 2: The Law of Participation pp. 69-104). Frazer, J. 1979. Sympathetic Magic. In: Lessa & Vogt, pp. 337-352. Evans-Pritchard, E. S. 1976. Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. Oxford, Clarendon Press. (Chapter 4:The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events) Lewis, G. 1994. Magic, Religion and the Rationality of Belief. Companion encyclopedia of anthropology:humanity, culture and social life. T. Ingold. London ; New York, Routledge : 563-590. Film: Witchcraft among the Azande, André Singer, 1981, 52 min. Week 11: Religion in mind: cognitive approaches to religion A new wave of research set in the broader framework of 'cognition and culture' studies rethinks religion in terms of universal cognitive features of the human mind. Which are the origins and functions of religion? How are religious representations transmitted? What is the role of emotions in religious experience? Is religion only a by-product of human cognition? Boyer, P. 2001. What is the Origin? In Boyer. P. Religion explained : the evolutionary origins of religious thought. pp. 1-57. New York, Basic Books. Whitehouse, H., 2004. The Theory of the Modes of Religiosity. In Modes of religiosity: a Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission ; Whitehouse, H. pp. 63-86, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Further readings Andresen, J. ed. 2001. Religion in mind: cognitive perspectives on religious belief, ritual, and experience. 2001, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Guthrie, S.1980. Cognitive Theory of Religion. Current Anthropology 21(2): p. 181-203. Boyer, P. 1994. The naturalness of religious ideas: a cognitive theory of religion. Berkeley, CA; London: University of California Press. Whitehouse, H. 2000 Arguments and icons: divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitehouse, H. and R.N. McCauley, 2005. Mind and religion: psychological and cognitive foundations of religiosity. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Week 12: Learning religion After an incursion into the mind we return to social processes related to religious learning. How do we learn to experience God in a particular way? How are religious concepts, practices, values or attitudes acquired and transmitted? When do we start defining a human experience as religious and which are the actors and contexts involved in this process? Toren, C. 2006. The Effectiveness of Ritual. In: Cannell, F. ed. The Anthropology of Christianity. London: Duke University Press, pp. 185-210. Luhrman, T.M. 2006How do you learn to know that it is God who speaks? In Learning Religion, Berliner & Sarro 2007, pp. 83-102, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Further readings Astuti, R. 2007. Ancestors and the Afterlife. In Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science. Whitehouse & Laidlaw eds, Chapel Hill: Carolina Academic Press. Berliner, D. & Sarro, R. 2007. Learning religion: Anthropological Approaches. New York, Oxford: Berghan Books. Film screening : Jesus Camp. Dir.Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing, US. 2006, 84 min. |