ANTH 537 - Anthropology of Religion

ANTH 537 - Anthropology of Religion, Systems of Thought & Moral Imagination
Fall 1999, Thursday 10:10-12:30, TBA

This is a course on the social anthropology of religion, cultural analysis of myth and symbolism and recent approaches to religious practices in complex societies. It focuses primarily on systems of thought and dilemmas of combining belief and social action and examines model studies of religious belief and institutions that bear on work, business, education, health, leisure, sex, politics, communication and government in complex societies.

The course has three goals. The first is to familiarize students with classic problems and contributions of the anthropology of religion, its roots in issues of mind and society and views of religion as a kind of social "mind." The second is to introduce its methodological redevelopment as symbolic anthropology for analyzing of systems of thought and ritual action. The third is to examine extensions of research findings from studies in small-scale and third world societies to change and complex societies.

The first half of the course concentrates on anthropological studies of religion in small-scale third world societies and introduces the main outlines and methodological applications developed in studies of religion. The second half concentrates on analysis of belief, representation, symbolism settings of social action addressed in recent studies from complex societies, particularly Islamic settings.

Readings (required):

Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism. Chicago, 1962.
Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion. Oxford, 1956.
Peter Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo. Manchester 1964.
Joel Kuipers, Power in Performance. Philadelphia, 1990.

John Bowen, Muslims Through Discourse, Princeton, 1993.
Patrick Gaffney, The Prophet's Pulpit. Berkeley, 1994.

Plus some articles, on reserve and in the anthropology department.

(recommended)

E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion. Oxford, 1965

Requirements:

Come to class prepared to discuss assigned readings. They are crucial for papers you will write. Grades will be based on three pieces of written work: one assembling descriptive material on problem or topic that you will develop into a course project (due end of September), a second relating issues raised in course readings and class discussions to your specific topic (due at the end of October in lieu of a mid-term exam), the third an analysis of your topic or issue (due by Thanksgiving for presentation in class and in a final revised form by December 16th). In this fashion, the final paper should be developed throughout the course as a project to be presented at the last class meetings and then in a final, written form. The purpose of this exercise is to help you help you develop and problematize a topic about religious belief and practice in action. These papers may address religious movements, missionizing, religious communities, revivalism, religious settings of work, organization or revolution, issues of religion and culture/society, organized and "alternative" religion in the postmodern world, religious communication, interreligious dialogues, etc.

For this course, you are urged to create a WWW homepage where you assemble descriptive material, preliminary analyses and the final paper; this makes it available to others in the class for comment, suggestions and other feedback along the way. By this means, members of the class help each other and extend discussion beyond class meetings. Make links to resources on the Internet. Enthusiasts turn the Internet an interesting medium for material on religion, religious communication and representations of religion, both analytical and programmatic. A useful starting point is a WWW page for Academic Study of Religion, which is heavily weighted with sites on Buddhism. For Islam, the Muslim Students Association has an extensive listing of organizations and publications. You may also find lively discussions of religious issues and particularly matters of religious identity and practice in the post-modern world in the many on-line newsgroupsdevoted to such issues.

If you plan to use Internet resources for your project, be sure to consult -- and follow -- the MLA Style Sheet for Citing Electronic Sources. For how to use the CUA computing system, see the Users' Guide. And check Mullen Library's Guide to Internet Resources.

Course Outline & Syllabus
(* required reading for discussion in class)

(Sep 2) Introduction
Origins and interests of the anthropology of religion: rationalism, secularism and enchanted worlds; from comparative religion to mind & society; primitivism & social change.

CLASSIC PROBLEMS

(Sep 9) Religion Observed in Social Science

* Geertz, Clifford. "Religion as a cultural system." In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. (orig. 1966)
* Asad, Talal. "Anthropological conceptions of religion: reflections on Geertz." Man (n.s.) 18: 237-259, 1983
* Evens, T.M.S. "On the social anthropology of religion." The Journal of Religion 62: 376-391, 1982.
Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion. chs. 1,2
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism (1958)
Karl Marx, A contribution to the critique of political economy (1970 [1959])
Sigmund Freud, Totem & Taboo (1909)

(Sep 16) The Problem of Mind & Society

* Levi-Strauss. Totemism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
* Homans, George C. "Anxiety and ritual: The theories of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown." American Anthropologist 43: 164-172. 1941.
* Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. "Taboo." The Frazer Lecture, 1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939. (Reprinted in Structure & Function in Primitive Society. New York: Free Press, 1952.
* Leach, Edmund R. "Anthropological aspects of language: Animal categories and verbal abuse." In New Directions in the Study of Language, Eric Lenneberg, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1937.
Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion. ch. 4.

(Sep 23) Symbolism & Ritual Action

* Evans-Pritchard. Nuer Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Beidelman, T.O. "Some Nuer notions of nakedness, nudity, and sexuality." Africa 37: 113-132, 1968.
Beidelman, T.O. "Nuer priests and prophets: charisma, authority and power among the Nuer." In The Translation of Cultures, ed. T.O. Beidelman. London: Tavistock, 1971
Lienhardt, Godfrey. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1961.

(Sep 30) Structuralism, Self-evidence & Phenomenologies of Belief

* Levi-Strauss, Claude. "The structural study of myth" and "Four Winnebago Myths." In Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
* Needham, Rodney. "Analysis." In Structure and Sentiment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
* Dubinskas, Frank A. and Sharon Traweek. "Closer to the ground: a reinterpretation of Walbiri iconography." Man (n.s.) 19: 15-30. 1984.
* Evens, T.M.S. "Mind, logic and the efficacy of the Nuer incest prohibition." Man (n.s.) 18:111-133, 1983.
el-Zein, Abdul Hamid M. The Sacred Meadows. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.
Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Kabyle house, or the world reversed." In Algeria 1960. Cambidge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Cunningham, Clark E. "Order in the Atoni House." Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 120: 34-68. 1964.
Tambiah, Stanley. "Animals are good to think and good to prohibit." Ethnology 8. 1960.

FIRST ASSIGNMENT DUE (Outlining your topic)

(Oct 7) Ritual, from Social Transformation to Indigenous Hermeneutics

* Turner, Victor. "Liminality and communitas." In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966.
Beidelman, T.O. "Swazi Royal Ritual." Africa 36: 373-405, 1966.
* Gottlieb, Alma. "Hyenas and heteroglossia." American Ethnologist 16: 487-501, 1989.
Beidelman, T.O. "Pig (Guluwe): an essay on Ngulu sexual symbolism and ceremony." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 20: 359-392, 1964.
Turner, Victor W. "Social dramas and ritual metaphors." In Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Peacock, James L. Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Eickelman, Dale F. "The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction." Comparative Studies in Society and History 20: 485-515, 1978.
Anderson, Jon & Gwen Kennedy Neville. "More Varieties of Religious Experience: Time and Faith for Southern Catholics." In Religion in the Contemporary South, O. Kendall Whyte, Jr & Daryl White, eds. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

(Oct 14) Ritual & Social Authority

* Kuipers, Joel C. Power in Performance: The Creation of Textual Authority in Weyewa Ritual Speech. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
Ortner, Sherry. Sherpas Through Their Rituals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Middleton, John. Lugbara Religion: Ritual & Authority among an East African People. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1987.
Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. The Lord's Table: Eucharist and Passover in early Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

SOCIAL CHANGE & RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

(Oct 21) Religious Syncretism & Its Ambivalences

*Lawrence, Peter. Road Belong Cargo. Manchester, 1964.

(Oc t 28) Local/transnational Relations

* Anderson, Jon W. "Popular mythologies and subtle theologies: The phenomenology of Muslim identity in Afghanistan." In Discourse and the Social Life of Meaning, Phyllis P. Chock and June Wyman, eds. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986.
* Anderson, Jon W. "How Afghans define themselves in relation to Islam." In Revolution and Rebellion in Afghanistan, M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert Canfield, eds. Berkeley: Institute for International Studies, 1984.
*Bowen, John. Muslims Through Discourse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Geertz, Clifford. Islam Observed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
el-Zein. Abdul Hamid M. "Beyond ideology and theology: the search for the anthropology of Islam." Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 227-254. 1977.
Heffner, Robert. "The political economy of Islamic conversion in modern East Java." In Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning, William R. Roff, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. pp. 53-78.
Bowen, John. "On scriptural essentialism and ritual variation: Muslim sacrifice in Sumatra and Morocco." American Ethnologist 19: 665-671, 1992.
Anderson, Jon W. & William Friend, eds. The Culture of Bible Belt Catholics. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT DUE (Issues in course readings relevant to your topic)

(Nov 4-11) Organizational Values, Authority & Change

* Gaffney, Patrick. The Prophet's Pulpit (1994)
Eickelman, Dale F. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985
Fischer, Michael M.J. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980
Messick, Brinkley. The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993
Eickelman, Dale & James Piscatori. Political Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995
Peacock, James L. Purifying the Faith: The Muhammadijah Movement in Indonesia. Menlo Park: Benjamin Cummings Pub. Co., 1978.

(Nov 18) American Anthropological Association Meeting (NO CLASS)

(Nov 25) Thanksgiving Vacation

(Dec 2-9) Student Presentations

At this point, you should have preliminary analytical treatments of your topics ready to present in class for discussion and feedback

Final Paper due: DEC 16

The final paper should be treated as a course-long project that you develop in tandem with course readings, which you use to refine/rethink a topic that interests you. These topics can be as broad or as narrow as fundamentalism in a particular religious tradition, the complex, and continuing, relations between religion and economics (for instance, the "confucian values" of Asian capitalisms, or contermporary twists in Protestant work ethic) or purposive social movements; it can be comparative or a case study. It may focus, as much of the anthropology of religion has, on ritual (e.g., liturgy, diagnosis and healing) and myth (e.g., as part of or as a way of conveying theology) or on contemporary issues of transnational cultures (e.g., of religious beliefs, organizations) and their various localizations, "civic" religion and claims about the "end of ideology" in post-modern societies or on indigenous representations of those processes.

Some recent studies that may prove useful or serve as models for analysis of problems of particular interest to students.

Barth, Fredrik. Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Study of a cycle of ritual inductions into secret knowledge.
Beidelman, T.O. Colonial Evangelism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. The best anthropological study of missionizing, focuses on the missionaries.
Bellah, Robert. Tokugawa Religion. New York: Free Press, 1957. Weberian treatment of Japanese religion.
Bloch, Maurice. From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Study of how a ritual changes context/function/content over time.
Bowen, John. Muslims Through Discourse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Ethnographic study of "islamization" in Indonesia, transformations of Muslim scholarship, education; compare with Tambiah, Ortner.
Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. A challenging interpretation of holism.
Eickelman, Dale F. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Examines the social organization and delivery of knowledge: styles of learning, teaching and transmission in changing colonial Morocco.
Eickelman, Dale F. & Jon W. Anderson, eds. New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Studies of the impacts of new and small media on religious organization and communication.
Fischer, Michael M.J. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. The social organization and hermeneutic style of Shia seminaries.
Geertz, Clifford. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1980. A study of religious "style" in a traditional state.
Greenhouse, Carol J. Praying for Justice: Faith, Order and Community in an American Town. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Baptist decision-making.
Holy, Ladislav. Religion & Custom in a Muslim Society: The Berti of Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. An inventory approach to linking local and translocal religious customs: compare to Bowen.
Kapferer, Bruce. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
McDonogh, Gary W. Black & Catholic In Savannah, Georgia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Religious community and identity.
Messick, Brinkley. The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Changing styles of religious interpretation, their relation to intellectual techniques and social organization.
Neville, Gwen Kennedy. Kinship & Pilgrimmage: Rituals of Reunion in American Protestant Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. A close study of the vernacular liturgical life of Protestant southerners, particularly as tended by women.
Ohnuki-Tierney. Emiko. Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. A study of interpretations of illness and curing.
Ortner, Sherry B. High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. The political economy and interpretive practice of monasticism.
Peacock, James L. Purifying the Faith: The Muhammadijah Movement in Indonesia. Menlo Park: Benjamin Cummings Pub. Co. 1978. Identity and intentionality in a self-help movement, focuses on education.
Peacock, James L. Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. One of the first studies of "secular" ritual, explores ritual as interpretive/presentational exegesis; compare with Kuipers.
Peacock, James & Ruel Tyson. Pilgrims of Paradox. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. A study of religious interpretation of community, conflict and order among calvinists.
Tambiah, S. J. Buddhism & Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Intricate study of the local integration of a "great" or institutional religious tradition

Rev: 5-14-99