ANTH 660 - Anthropology of Religion, Systems of Thought & Moral Imagination
Fall 2009, Monday 4:10 - 6:40, TBA

(Dr. Anderson)

The Anthropology of Religion is the comparative study of systems of thought and moral imagination in their social contexts. Drawing on the sociological realism of Emile Durkheim and cultural history of Max Weber, it developed a focus on religion in and coextensive with small communities, distinct from other academic study of religion. It extended beyond this data base as analysis of symbols, systems of meaning and their social correlates largely engaged with issues of social theory (ideology, agency). The aim of this course is to bring that analysis to world religions in complex societies, spanning multiple communities, and under conditions of globalization.

Goals/Outcomes of this course are to familarise students with basic interests in the social and cultural anthropology of religion, to develop facility with its analytical methods, their relation to social theory and how they may be applied to world religions, by close examination and comparisons of exemplary studies

Format: This is a graduate seminar and will focus on reading 6 books, starting with:

• Nuer Religion, by E.E. Evans-Pritchard
• Lugbara Religion, by John Middleton
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber
• The Prophet’s Pulpit, by Patrick Gaffney


Procedure:

We begin with a group of issue-framing articles about anthropological study of 'religion', then proceed to a pair of classic studies of ‘primitive’ religions in small-scale societies (Evans-Pritchard & Middleton), then turn to how their symbolic vehicles are systematized in two views of such systematization – Durkheimian sociological realism and the cultural historical analysis of Max Weber – and then in a recent work that synthesizes these to relate forms of religious expression, ideology, and organization (Gaffney).

We will then apply these approaches to close readings of...

• The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, by Peter Brown
• The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, by Otto Georg von Simpson

… that, like anthropological kinds of analysis, strive to be wholistic, comparative, and to relate cosmology to social structure.

Schedule of Readings:

September: Framing Religion in Anthropology:

1) Richard H. Brown, "Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Levi-Strauss" in his Social Science as Civic Discourse (Chicago, 1989) -  on tying religion to social order & social action
2) Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Cultural System" in his Interpretation of Cultures (Chicago, 1973) - on religion as culture and imagination



 - remainder of this syllabus is on Blackboard for registered students -

In this course, you will be introduced to the core social anthropology of religion, which was rooted in Durkheimian sociology and addressed issues of social theory that today tend to framed as relations of agency, civil society, activism, sometimes syncretism. Predecessor and surrounding contexts are humanist and objectivist approaches not just to religion but to social order, particularly as viewed as ideology. Here, we encounter these methodologically as issues of bridging social-structural and cultural-historical approaches. Our concern will be less with settling theoretical scores than with methodologies developed primarily in social anthropology and parts of cultural anthropology influenced by it.

After examining how these play out in a study of Islamic preaching, you will be invited to consider how they are reflected in a pair of classic studies of western Christianity and, more ambitiously, how those might be improved upon. Alternatively, someone more interested in how to assess contemporary arguments about the ‘relevance’ of organized religion in American life, might develop an analysis of Bethany Moreton’s To Serve God and Wal-Mart (Harvard U Press, 2008).

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 "Asian values" of Asian capitalisms, or contemporary 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 application of holism.
  
• 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: 8-30-09