Religion – Kottak

WHAT IS RELIGION?

T he anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace defined religion as “belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces” (1966, p. 5).

The supernatural is the extraordinary realm outside (but believed to impinge on) the observable world. It is nonempirical and inexplicable in ordinary terms. It must be accepted “on faith.” Supernatural beings— gods and goddesses, ghosts, and souls— are not of the material world. Nor are supernatural forces, some of which may be wielded by beings. Other sacred forces are impersonal; they simply exist. In many societies, however, people believe they can benefit from, become imbued with, or manipulate supernatural forces. Another definition of religion (Reese 1999) focuses on bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship. These congregants or adherents subscribe to and internalize a common system of meaning. They accept (adhere to or believe in) a set of doctrines involving the relationship between the individual and divinity, the supernatural, or whatever is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality. Anthropologists have stressed the collective, shared, and enacted nature of religion, the emotions it generates, and the meanings it embodies. Emile Durkheim (1912/ 2001), an early scholar of religion, stressed religious effervescence, the bubbling up of collective emotional intensity generated by worship.

Victor Turner (1969) updated Durkheim’s notion, using the term communitas, an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness. The word religion derives from the Latin religare, “to tie, to bind,” but it is not necessary for all the members of a given religion to meet together as a common body. Subgroups meet regularly at local congregation sites. They may attend occasional meetings with adherents representing a wider region. And they may form an imagined community with people of similar faith throughout the world. Like ethnicity and language, religion also is associated with social divisions within and OVERVIEW Religion is a cultural universal— manifest in a body of people with similar beliefs who gather together regularly for worship. Cross-cultural studies have revealed many expressions, meanings, and functions of religion. Religion provides comfort and security in times of uncertainty and crisis. Rituals are formal, invariant, earnest acts that require people to join actively in a social collectivity. Rites of passage may mark any change in social status, age, place, or social condition. Collective rituals often are cemented by communitas, a feeling of intense fellowship and solidarity. Religion achieves social control through moral and ethical beliefs, along with real and imagined rewards and punishments. Religion also can promote change. Religious movements aimed at the revitalization of society have helped people cope with changing conditions.

The Essay on Religion As A Social Force

The Amerindians of the region had their own religious practices and ceremonies before the intervention of any Europeans. For the most part they were polytheistic-worshiping many gods. Much of their rites involved sacrifices, often times humans, as well as dancing singing and smoking. All of that was interrupted with the arrival of the Europeans who insisted that the Amerindians were heathens thus ...

Contemporary religious trends include both rising secularism and a resurgence of religious fundamentalism. Some of today’s new religions are inspired by science and technology; others, by spiritualism. Rituals can be secular as well as religious. between societies and nations, such as those countries into which Islam has diffused, as described in the news brief. Religion both unites and divides. Participation in common rites may affirm, and thus maintain, the social solidarity of one religion’s adherents. However, as we know from daily headlines, religious difference also may be associated with bitter enmity. In studying religion cross-culturally, anthropologists pay attention to the social nature and roles of religion as well as to the nature, content, and meaning to people of religious doctrines, acts, events, settings, practitioners, and organizations.

We also consider such verbal manifestations of religious beliefs as prayers, chants,

The Term Paper on Prayer In School Religion Religious People

Religion in Our Society: Everyday Ritual of Life In our time of progress and technological evolution, it is hard to imagine more powerful force, except nuclear weapon, maybe, to destroy the universe. However, humans invented machines and guns, became strong and defensive against each other, but not against their beliefs and morals. It is very easy to destroy a building if you have a rocket ...

myths, texts, and statements about ethics and morality. Religion, by either definition offered here, exists in all human societies. It is a cultural universal. However, we’ll see that it isn’t always easy to distinguish the supernatural from the natural and that different societies conceptualize divinity, supernatural entities, and ultimate realities very differently.

ORIGINS, FUNCTIONS, AND EXPRESSIONS OF RELIGION

When did religion begin? No one knows for sure. There are suggestions of religion in Neandertal burials and on European cave walls, where painted stick figures may represent shamans, early religious specialists. Nevertheless, any statement about when, where, why, and how religion arose, or any description of its original nature, can only be speculative. However, although such speculations are inconclusive, many have revealed

important functions and effects of religious behavior. Several theories will be examined now.

Animism

The founder of the anthropology of religion was the Englishman Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871/ 1958).

Religion was born, Tylor thought, as people tried to understand conditions and events they could not explain by reference to daily experience. Tylor believed that our ancestors— and contemporary nonindustrial peoples— were particularly intrigued with death, dreaming, and trance. In dreams and trances, people see images they may remember when they wake up or come out of the trance state. Tylor concluded that attempts to explain dreams and trances led early humans to believe

that two entities inhabit the body: one active during the day and the other— a double or soul— active during sleep and trance states. Although they never meet, they are vital to each other.

NEWS BRIEF Islam Expanding Globally, Adapting Locally NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS BRIEF by Brian Handwerk October 24, 2003 One well-known anthropological definition of religion stresses beliefs and behavior concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces. Another definition focuses on congregants— a body of people who gather together regularly for worship, and who accept a set of doctrines involving the relationship between the individual and divinity. Some religions, and the beliefs, affirmations, and forms of worship they promote, have spread widely. This news brief describes how Islam, the world’s fastest-growing religion, has adapted locally to various nations and cultures. In this process, although certain fundamentals

The Essay on Muslim People Post 9/11

Americans have labeled Muslims in the United States as a threat to our country due to the fact that they share their religion with the extremists responsible for worldwide terrorism. Due to the recent conflicts between the US and Muslim, the Muslims that live in America continue to face isolation and danger because of their faith. Muslim people have gotten worse treatment after 9/11 in the United ...

endure, there is also room for considerable diversity. Local people always assign their own meanings to the messages and social forms, including religion, they receive from outside. Such meanings reflect their cultural backgrounds and experiences. This news brief describes how Islam has adapted successfully to many cultural differences, including linguistic practices, building styles, and the presence of other religions, such as Hinduism, already established in that area.

“Islam is a world religion,” said Ali Asani, a Harvard professor of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture. “If you think about doctrine and theology, when these sets of religious ideas and concepts are transferred to different parts of the world— and Muslims live in many cultures and speak many different languages— the expressions of those doctrines and theology will necessarily be influenced by local culture.” Sometimes such regional distinctions are obvious to even casual observers. Mosques, for example, all share common features— they face Mecca and have a mihrab, or niche, that indicates

that direction. Yet they also boast unique architectural elements and decor that suggest whether their location is Iran, Africa, or China. The houses of worship provide

what Asani calls “a visual reminder of cultural diversity.” Other easily grasped regional distinctions have their origins at the level of language. While Arabic is Islam’s liturgical language, used for prayer, most Muslims’ understanding of their faith occurs in their local language. “Languages are really windows into culture,” Asani explains. “So

very often what you find is that theological Islamic concepts get translated into local idioms.” . . . Some Islamic fundamentalists might frown upon the diversity caused by local characteristics, but such are the predominant forms of Islam. “Rather than discussing Islam, we might more accurately talk about ‘Islams’ in different cultural contexts,” Asani said. “We have Muslim literature from China, for example, where Islamic concepts are understood within a Confucian framework.”

In the region of Bengal, now part of the nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, a popular literary tradition created a context for the arrival of Islam. The concept of the avatar is important to the Hindu tradition, in which these deities become incarnate and descend to Earth to guide the righteous and fight evil. “What you find in 16th century Bengal is the development of what you might call ‘folk literature’ where the Islamic idea of the prophet becomes understood within the framework of the avatar,” Asani said. “So you have bridges being built between religious traditions as concepts

The Essay on Future Of Islam People Muslims Religion

The Future of Islam When first approached with the question "what the future of Islam is?" my mind raced around many places and had lots of different thoughts. I had no clue what the future of this religion would be I thought there are people for the American Gov. who are being payed a lot of money to figure this out and I don't think they even know. So I decided to do research to figure out what ...

resonate against each other.” This example is quite different from conditions in pre-Islam

Arabia, at the time of Mohammed, ne in every five people worldO wide is a Muslim, some 1.3 billion believers. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and it has

spread across the globe. Muslims everywhere agree on the Shahadah, the profession of

faith: “There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.” But Islam is far from homogenous— the faith reflects the increasingly diverse areas in

which it is practiced.

where the poet held a special place in society. “If you consider the Koran, the word means ‘recitation’ in Arabic, and it’s primarily an oral scripture, intended to be recited aloud and heard; to be performed,” Asani said. “Viewed from a literary perspective, its form and structure relate very well to the poetic traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia. It’s an example where the format of revelation was determined by the culture. In pre-Islamic Arabia the poet was often considered to be inspired in his poetic compositions by jinn from another world. So when the Prophet Muhammed began receiving revelations which were eventually compiled into the Koran, he was accused of being a poet, to which he responded ‘I’m not a poet but a prophet.’” . . . Islam came to Indonesia with merchants who were not theologians but simply practicing Muslims who people looked to as an example. There were also Sufi teachers who were quite willing to create devotional exercises that fit the way people in Sumatra or Java already practiced their faith. The two largest Muslim groups in Indonesia today, and perhaps in the world, are Muhammadyya and Nahdlatul Ulama. Each of them has over 30 million members, and each began as local reform movement rooted in the promotion of a more modern education within the framework of Islam . . . Alarge number of Muslims, of course, don’t live in Islamic nations at all but as minorities in other countries.

The Essay on Religion and Belief within Life of Pi

Throughout the novel Life of Pi the reader is faced with many recurring symbols and motifs to enhance the themes of religion and belief within the novel. It is most evident when analysing the main character Pi. He is faced with many challenges and has a great challenging uphill journey placed in front of him, but through his beliefs he is able to push through using many techniques along the way. ...

The emergence of some minority Muslim communities has been an interesting and important development of the last 25 to 30 years. Some relatively small communities

can have a large impact. The European Muslim populations, for example, have a high component of refugee intellectuals. They’ve had an effect on their adopted countries, and also on the rest of the Islamic world . . . In South Africa the Muslim community is less than three percent of the population— but it’s highly visible and highly educated. In the days of apartheid they had the advantage of being an intermediary, a community that was neither black nor white. By the 1980s the younger Muslim leadership became very opposed to apartheid on Islamic grounds and on basic human rights grounds.

Muslims became quite active in the African National Congress (ANC).

Though they were only a small minority when apartheid was destroyed, a number of Muslims became quite visible in the new South African regime— and throughout the larger Muslim world. Encompassing both Islamic states and minority communities, Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and an increasingly common topic of global conversation. Yet much of the discourse paints the faith with a single brush. As more people become familiar

with Islam around the world it may be well for them to first ask, as Professor Asani suggests: “Whose Islam? Which Islam?” SOURCE: Brian Handwerk, “Islam

Expanding Globally, Adapting Locally,”National Geographic News, October 24, 2003. http:// news. nationalgeographic. com/ news/ 2003/ 10/ 1022_ 031022_ islamdiversity. html.

When the double permanently leaves the body, the person dies. Death is departure of the soul. From the Latin for soul, anima, Tylor named this belief animism. The soul was one sort of spiritual entity; people remembered various images from their dreams and trances— other spirits. For Tylor, animism, the earliest form of religion, was a

belief in spiritual beings. Tylor proposed that religion evolved through stages, beginning with animism. Polytheism (the belief in multiple gods) and then monotheism (the

belief in a single, all-powerful deity) developed later. Because religion originated to explain things people didn’t understand, Tylor thought it would decline as science offered better explanations. To an extent, he was right. We now have scientific explanations for many things that religion once elucidated. Nevertheless, because religion persists, it must do something more thanexplain the mysterious. It must, and does, have other functions and meanings

The Essay on Importance of Magic and Rituals as Inspiration in Art

Importance of Magic and Rituals as Inspiration in Art "Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical. " (Roger Bacon) Prehistoric art can be several things, from little stone figurines to paintings on the walls of caves. The term “prehistoric” actually tells us that the culture that produced the artwork didn't have a written language. Prehistoric artwork can be found ...

Mana and Taboo Besides animism— and sometimes coexisting with it in the same society— is a view of the supernatural as a domain of raw impersonal power, or force, that people can control under certain conditions. (You’d be right to think of Star Wars.) Such a conception of the supernatural is particularly prominent in Melanesia, the area of the South Pacific that includes Papua New Guinea and adjacent islands. Melanesians believed in mana, a sacred impersonal force existing in the universe. Mana can reside in people, animals, plants, and objects. Melanesian mana was similar to our notion of efficacy or luck. Melanesians attributed success to mana, which people could acquire or manipulate in different ways, such as through magic. Objects with mana could change someone’s luck. For example, a charm or amulet belonging to a successful hunter might transmit the hunter’s mana to the next person who held or wore it. A woman might put a rock in her garden, see her yields improve dramatically, and attribute the change to the force contained in the rock.

Beliefs in manalike forces are widespread, although the specifics of the religious doctrines vary. Consider the contrast between mana in Melanesia and Polynesia (the islands included in a triangular area marked by Hawaii to the north, Easter Island to the east, and New Zealand to the southwest).

In Melanesia, one could acquire mana by chance, or by working hard to get it. In Polynesia, however, mana wasn’t potentially available to everyone but was attached to political offices. Chiefs and nobles had more mana than ordinary people did. So charged with mana were the highest chiefs

that contact with them was dangerous to the commoners.

The mana of chiefs flowed out of their bodies wherever they went. It could infect the ground, making it dangerous for others to walk in the chief’s footsteps. It could permeate the containers and utensils chiefs used in eating. Contact between chief and commoners was dangerous because mana could have an effect like an electric shock. Because high chiefs had so much mana, their bodies and possessions were taboo (set apart as sacred and off-limits to ordinary people).

Contact between a high chief and commoners was forbidden. Because ordinary people couldn’t bear as much sacred current as royalty could, when commoners were accidentally exposed, purification rites were necessary. One role of religion is to explain (see Horton 1993).

A belief in souls explains what happens in sleep, trance, and death. Melanesian mana explains differential success that people can’t understand in ordinary, natural terms. People fail at hunting, war, or gardening not because they are lazy, stupid, or inept but because success comes— or doesn’t come— from the supernaturalworld.

Mana is a supernatural force or power, which people may manipulate for their own ends. Mana can reside in people, animals, plants, and objects— even bubble gum. Illustrating baseball magic (see p. 474), Houston Astros pitcher Scott Elarton covers the helmet of teammate Craig Biggio with wads of lucky gum during a game against Detroit on July 14, 2000. Do you own anything that contains mana?

The beliefs in spiritual beings (e. g., animism) and supernatural forces (e. g., mana) fit within the definition of religion given at the beginning of this chapter. Most religions include both spirits and impersonal forces. Likewise, the supernatural beliefs of contemporary North Americans include beings (gods, saints, souls, demons) and forces (charms, talismans, crystals, and sacred objects).

Magic and Religion

Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims. These techniques include spells, formulas, and incantations used with deities or with impersonal forces. Magicians use imitative magic to produce a desired effect by imitating it. If magicians wish to injure or kill someone, they may imitate that effect on an

image of the victim. Sticking pins in “voodoo dolls” is an example. With contagious magic, whatever is done to an object is believed to affect a person who once had contact with it. Sometimes practitioners of contagious magic use body products from prospective victims— their nails or hair, for example. The spell performed on the body product is believed to reach the person eventually and work the desired result. We find magic in cultures with diverse religious beliefs. It can be associated with animism, mana, polytheism, or monotheism. Magic is neither simpler nor more primitive than animism or the belief in mana.

• Trobriand Islanders prepare a traditional trading canoe for use in the Kula, which is a regional exchange system. The woman’s basket contains trade goods, while the men prepare the long canoe to set sail. Magic is often associated with uncertainty, such as sailing in unpredictable waters. For information on Ecuadorian curers, see the Internet Exercises at your OLC For information on spiritual beliefs among Native Australians, see the Internet Exercises at your OLC Biocultural Case Study The “Bringing It All Together” essay that follows the chapter “Cultural Exchange and Survival” describes ritual behavior in an unlikely setting— a fastfood restaurant. Anxiety, Control, Solace Religion and magic don’t just explain things and help people accomplish goals. They also enter the realm of human feelings. In other words, they serve emotional needs as well as cognitive (e. g., explanatory) ones. For example, supernatural beliefs and practices can help reduce anxiety.

Magical techniques can dispel doubts that arise when outcomes are beyond human control. Similarly, religion helps people face death and endure life crises. Although all societies have techniques to deal with everyday matters, there are certain aspects of people’s lives over which they lack control. When people face uncertainty and danger, according to Malinowski, they turn to magic. [H] owever much knowledge and science help man in allowing him to obtain what he wants, they are unable completely to control chance, to eliminate accidents, to foresee the unexpected turn of natural events, or to make human handiwork reliable and adequate to all practical requirements. (Malinowski 1931/ 1978, p. 39) Malinowski found that the Trobriand Islanders used magic when sailing, a hazardous activity. He proposed that because people can’t control matters

such as wind, weather, and the fish supply, they turn to magic. People may call on magic when they come to a gap in their knowledge or powers of practical control yet have to continue in a pursuit (Malinowski 1931/ 1978).

Malinowski noted that it was only when confronted by situations they could not control that Trobrianders, out of psychological stress, turned from technology to magic. Despite our improving technical skills, we can’t still control every outcome, and magic persists in contemporary societies.

Magic is particularly evident in baseball, where George Gmelch (1978, 2001) describes a series of rituals, taboos, and sacred objects. Like Trobriand sailing magic, these behaviors serve to reduce psychological stress, creating an illusion of magical control when real control is lacking. Even the best pitchers have off days and bad luck. Examples

of pitchers’ magic include tugging one’s cap between pitches, touching the resin bag after each bad pitch, and talking to the ball. Gmelch’s conclusions confirm Malinowski’s that magic is most prevalent in situations of chance and uncertainty. All sorts of magical behavior surrounded pitching and batting, where uncertainty is rampant, but few rituals involved fielding, where players have much more control. (Batting averages of .350 or higher are very rare after a full season, but a fielding percentage below .900 is a disgrace.) According to Malinowski, magic is used to establish control, but religion “is born out of . . . the real tragedies of human life” (1931/ 1978, p. 45).

Religion offers emotional comfort, particularly when people face a crisis. Malinowski saw

tribal religions as concerned mainly with organizing, commemorating, and helping people get through such life events as birth, puberty, marriage,

and death. (For more on Malinowski, see

Appendix 1.)

Rituals

Several features distinguish rituals from other kinds of behavior (Rappaport 1974).

Rituals are formal— stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped. People perform them in special (sacred) places and at set times. Rituals include liturgical orders— sequences of words and actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in which they occur.

These features link rituals to plays, but there are important differences. Plays have audiencesrather than participants. Actors merely portray something, but ritual performers— who make up congregations— are in earnest. Rituals convey information about the participants and their traditions. Repeated year after year, generation after generation, rituals translate enduring messages, values, and sentiments into action. Rituals are social acts. Inevitably, some participants are more committed than others are to thebeliefs that lie behind the rites. However, just by taking part in a joint public act, the performers signal that they accept a common social and moral order, one that transcends their status as individuals.

Rites of Passage

Magic and religion, as Malinowski noted, can reduce anxiety and allay fears. Ironically, beliefs and rituals also can create anxiety and a sense of insecurity and danger (Radcliffe-Brown 1962/ 1965).

Anxiety may arise because a rite exists.

Indeed, participation in a collective ritual may build up stress, whose common reduction, through the completion of the ritual, enhances the solidarity of the participants. Rites of passage, for example, the collective circumcision of teenagers, can be very stressful. The traditional vision quests of Native Americans, particularly the Plains Indians, illustrate rites of passage (customs associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another), which are found throughout the world. Among the Plains Indians, to move from boyhood to manhood, a youth temporarily separated from his community. After a period of isolation in the wilderness, often featuring fasting and drug consumption, the young man would see a vision, which would become his guardian spirit. He would then return to his community as an adult. The rites of passage of contemporary cultures include confirmations, baptisms, bar and bat mitzvahs, and fraternity hazing. Passage rites involve changes in social status, such as from boyhood to manhood and from nonmember to sorority sister. There are also rites and rituals in our business and corporate lives. Examples include promotion and retirement parties. More generally, a rite of passage may mark any change in place, condition, social position, or age. All rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another.

In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. The liminal phase is the most interesting. It is the period between states, the limbo during which people have left one place or state but haven’t yet entered or joined the next (Turner 1995).

Liminality always has certain characteristics. Liminal people occupy ambiguous social positions. They exist apart from ordinary distinctions and expectations, living in a time out of time. They are cut off from normal social contacts. A variety of contrasts may demarcate liminality from regular social life. For example, among the Ndembu of Zambia, a chief underwent a rite of passage before taking office. During the liminal period, his past and future positions in society were ignored, even reversed. He was subjected to a variety of insults, orders, and humiliations. Passage rites are often collective. Several individuals— boys being circumcised, fraternity or sorority initiates, men at military boot camps,football players in summer training camps, women becoming nuns— pass through the rites together as a group.

UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES

I n a variety of contexts, liminal features signal the sacredness or distinctiveness of

groups, persons, settings, and events. Liminal symbols mark entities and circumstances

as extraordinary— outside and beyond ordinary social space and routine social events.

In the case of cults, group identity typically is expected to transcend individuality. Cult

members often wear uniform clothing. They may try to reduce distinctions based on age

and gender by using a common hairstyle (shaved head, short hair, or long hair).

The Heaven’s Gate cult, whose mass suicide garnered headlines in 1997, even used

castration to increase androgyny (similarity between males and females).

In such cults,

the individual, so important in American culture, is submerged in the collective. This is one reason Americans are so fearful and suspicious of “cults.” (Note, however, that

all the distinction-reducing features of cults described here [uniform clothing, short hair,

elimination of sexuality] also are true of the military and of such mainstream religious institutions as monasteries and convents.)

• Passage rites are often collective. A group— such as these initiates in Togo or these Navy trainees in San Diego— passes through the rites as a unit. Such liminal people experience the same treatment and conditions and must act alike. They share communitas, an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity

or togetherness. contrasts or oppositions between liminality and normal social life. Most notable is a social aspect of collective liminality called communitas (Turner

1969), an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness. People experiencing liminality together form a community of equals. The social distinctions that have existed before or will exist afterward are temporarily forgotten. Liminal people experience the same treatment and conditions and must act alike. Liminality may be marked ritually and symbolically by reversals of ordinary behavior. For example, sexual taboos may be intensified, or, conversely, sexual excess may be encouraged. Liminality is a basic part of every passage rite. Furthermore, in certain societies, including our own, liminal symbols may be used to set off one (religious) group from another, and from society as a whole. Such “permanent liminal groups”

(e. g., sects, brotherhoods, and cults) are found most characteristically in complex societies—nation-states. Liminal features such as humility, poverty, equality, obedience, sexual abstinence, and silence may be required for all sect or cult members. Those who join such a group agree to abide by its rules. As if they were undergoing a passage rite— but in this case a never-ending one— they may rid themselves of their previous possessions and cut themselves off from former social links, including those with family members.

Totemism

Rituals serve the social function of creating temporary or permanent solidarity among people—forming a social community. We see this also in practices known as totemism. Totemism has been important in the religions of Native Australians. Totems can be animals, plants, or geographic features. In each tribe, groups of people have particular

totems. Members of each totemic group believe themselves to be descendants of their totem. Traditionally they customarily neither killed nor ate a totemic animal, but this taboo was lifted once a year, when people assembled for ceremoniesdedicated to the totem. These annual rites were believed to be necessary for the totem’s survival and reproduction.

Totemism uses nature as a model for society. The totems are usually animals and plants, which are part of nature. People relate to nature through their totemic association with natural species. Because each group has a different totem, social differences mirror natural contrasts. Diversity in the natural order becomes a model for diversity inthe social order. However, although totemic plants and animals occupy different niches in nature, on another level they are united because they all are part of nature. The unity of the human social order is enhanced by symbolic association with and imitation of the natural order (Durkheim 1912/ 2001; Lévi-Strauss 1963; Radcliffe-Brown 1962/ 1965).

One role of religious rites and beliefs is to affirm, and thus maintain, the solidarity of a religion’s adherents. Totems are sacred emblems symbolizing common identity. This is true not just among Native Australians, but also among Native American groups of the North Pacific coast of North America, whose totem poles are well known. Their

totemic carvings, which commemorate, and tell visual stories about, ancestors, animals, and spirits, also are associated with ceremonies. In totemic rites, people gather together to honor their totem. In so doing, they use ritual to maintain the social oneness that the totem symbolizes. In contemporary nations, too, totems continue to mark groups, such as states and universities (e. g., Badgers, Buckeyes, and Wolverines), professional

teams (Lions, Tigers, and Bears), and political parties (donkeys and elephants).

Although the modern context is more secular, one can still witness, in intense college football rivalries, some of the effervescence Durkheim noted in Australian totemic religion. RELIGION AND CULTURAL ECOLOGY Another domain in which religion plays a prominent role is cultural ecology. Behavior motivated by beliefs in supernatural beings, powers, and forces may help people survive in their material environment. In this section, we will see how beliefs and rituals may function as part of a group’s cultural adaptation to its environment. Sacred Cattle in India The people of India revere zebu cattle, which are protected by the Hindu doctrine of ahimsa, a principle of nonviolence that forbids the killing of animals generally. Western economic development experts occasionally (and erroneously) cite the Hindu cattle taboo to illustrate the idea that religious beliefs can stand in the way of rational economic decisions. Hindus might seem to be irrationally ignoring a valuable food (beef) • India’s zebu cattle are protected by the because of their cultural or religious traditions. doctrine of ahimsa, a

The economic developers also comment that Indiprinciple of nonviolence ans don’t know how to raise proper cattle. They that forbids the killing of point to the scraggly zebus that wander about animals generally. This town and country. Western techniques of animal Hindu doctrine puts the husbandry grow bigger cattle that produce more full power of organized beef and milk. Western planners lament that Hindu religion behind the comdus

are set in their ways. Bound by culture and mand not to destroy a tradition, they refuse to develop rationally. valuable resource even However, these assumptions are both ethnoin

times of extreme centric and wrong. Sacred cattle actually play an need. What kinds of

important adaptive role in an Indian ecosystem animal avoidance that has evolved over thousands of years (Harris taboos do you 1974, 1978).

Peasants’ use of cattle to pull plows observe? Is their origin and carts is part of the technology of Indian agrireligious or secular? culture. Indian peasants have no need for large, hungry cattle of the sort that economic developers, beef marketers, and North American cattle ranchers prefer. Scrawny animals pull plows and carts well enough but don’t eat their owners out of house and home. How could peasants with limited land and marginal diets feed supersteers without taking food away from themselves? Indians use cattle manure to fertilize their fields. Not all the manure is collected, because peasants don’t spend much time watching their cattle, which wander and graze at will during certain seasons. In the rainy season, some of the manure that cattle deposit on the hillsides washes down to the

fields. In this way, cattle also fertilize the fields indirectly. Furthermore, in a country where fossil fuels are scarce, dry cattle dung, which burns slowly and evenly, is a basic cooking fuel. Far from being useless, as the development experts contend, sacred cattle are essential to Indian cultural adaptation. Biologically adapted to poor pasture land and a marginal environment, the scraggly zebu provides fertilizer and

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM Ewe Traditional and Biomedical Healing Practices in Ghana’s Volta Region BACKGROUND INFORMATION STUDENT: (Lauren) Charlie Graham SUPERVISING PROFESSOR: Kara Hoover SCHOOL: Georgia State University YEAR IN SCHOOL/MAJOR: Fourth year/ Anthropology (Medical) FUTURE PLANS: Internship/ Graduate School PROJECT TITLE: Ewe Traditional and Biomedical Healing Practices in Ghana’s Volta Region In summer 2004 Charlie Graham initiated a preliminary study of traditional and biomedical

healing among the Ewe of Ghana’s Volta region. She plans to continue this work as a graduate student in medical anthropology. Unlike our own society, where medicine is a separate and distinct field, it is common in nonindustrial societies

for medicine to be intertwined with religion. The Ewe, like the Makua discussed in the chapter “Political Systems” and many other cultures, believe that sorcery can cause mental and physical unrest, which traditional healers can treat. n summer 2004 I began fieldwork in I Ghana which I plan on continuing in graduate school. Ghana’s Volta Region is home to the Ewe, a historically migrant tribe who also reside in Togo and Benin. My research compares and contrasts traditional herbal healing with biomedical treatment methods among the Ewe. The cultural synthesis of traditional

and British/ Western imposed customs makes for a particularly interesting

perspective. Ghana gained independence from British rule in 1957, making it the first self-governing country in Africa. Since then, it has remained a democratic nation, enjoying peaceful relations with neighboring countries and among its several tribes. Divided into 10 regions,

Ghana’s tribal leaders share political

power with elected officials. Ghanaians

practice traditional religions, although

Islam and Christianity dominate the

North and South respectively, due in

large part to missionary influence.

For nine weeks I lived in Ho, the

Volta Region’s capital, volunteering

part time at the Ho District Hospital. I

observed various units, including Psychiatric,

Maternity, Diabetic, Family

Planning, Children’s, Male and Female

wards. I shadowed the doctor on her

rounds and learned alongside thirdyear

nursing students in the midst of

their residencies. I also worked with

and learned from local medicine men.

I traveled to different areas of Volta

Region to visit high priests, observing

and surveying their medicinal diversity.

I conducted extensive formal and informal

interviews of patients, healers, and

third parties; observed diagnostic and

treatment procedures; and even served

as the patient, receiving assorted treatments

from both doctors and traditional

healers.

Although Ghana’s biomedical system

bears a fundamental likeness to

Britain’s, I routinely encountered disparities

in medical practices. From

doctor-patient relations to disease etiologies

to administrative protocol, the

differences stood out as opportunities

fuel, is indispensable in farming, and is affordable

for peasants. The Hindu doctrine of ahimsa puts the full power of organized religion behind the command not to destroy a valuable resource even in times of extreme need. SOCIAL CONTROL Religion has meaning for people. It helps men and women cope with adversity and tragedy. It offers hope that things will get better. Lives can be transformed through spiritual healing or rebirth. Sinners can repent and be saved— or they can go on sinning and be damned. If the faithful truly internalize a system of religious rewards and punishments, their religion becomes a powerful

means of controlling their beliefs, their behavior, and what they teach their children. Many people engage in religious activity

because it seems to work. Prayers get answered.

Faith healers heal. Sometimes it doesn’t take

much to convince the faithful that religious

actions are efficacious. Many American Indian

people in southwestern Oklahoma use faith healers

at high monetary costs, not just because it

makes them feel better about the uncertain but

because it works (Lassiter 1998).

Each year

legions of Brazilians visit a church, Nosso Senhor

do Bomfim, in the city of Salvador, Bahia. They

vow to repay “Our Lord” (Nosso Senhor) if healing

happens. Showing that the vows work, and

are repaid, are the thousands of ex votos, plastic

impressions of every conceivable body part, that

adorn the church, along with photos of people

who have been cured.

Religion can work by getting inside people

and mobilizing their emotions— their joy, their

wrath, their righteousness. We’ve seen how Emile

478 PART 3 Cultural Diversity

Susan G. Smiley, Ph.D.(CB).

Book I: Anthropology, 11th ed. C. Kottak.Hightstown, NJ USA: McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing, 2006. p 54.

Kottak: Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity, 11th Edition

III. Cultural Diversity 21. Religion © The McGraw• Hill Companies, 2005

55

for cultural exchange and theoretical

application. One unique aspect of my

research was the incorporation of traditional

etiological beliefs, like juju,

into biomedical practice. Juju refers to

interpersonally imposed evil forces

that create physical and mental unrest

(sorcery).

Although the majority of

Southern Ghanaians practice Christianity,

they incorporate traditional

beliefs such as this.

In the hospital, language barriers

caused miscommunication. Because

many Ghanaian doctors leave the

country to work in private or betterpaying

hospitals, many government

hospitals employ Spanish-speaking

doctors from Cuba who speak basic

English and little Ewe. Moreover,

although English is Ghana’s official

language, most patients speak only • Charlie Graham with village children in Ghana.

Ewe. Thus as a Spanish speaker, I

often served as a translator. Nurses

interviewed patients in Ewe, roughly high priest or sorcerer. I encountered communicating with their spirits on my

conveyed the information to me in practitioners in each year of study behalf. All communication was in Ewe,

English, and in Spanish, I reported to during my time in Ghana. Treatment for which I had a translator.

the doctor. Due to this linguistic disparranges

from preventative to curative, It was an honor to learn first-hand

ity, the healthcare system is inefficient, and revolves around belief in patients’ from healers on both ends of the medand

patient recovery is often stunted. physical or spiritual unrest. Relief ical spectrum, and my fieldwork

My background in medical anthrocomes

from spiritual penitence via the thrived with rich and intricate data colpology

and the research I conducted healer. I sat in on sessions with firstlection.

I had the unique opportunity to

prior to arrival enabled me to recogtime

and regular clients with comengage

in and scrutinize two different

nise the traditional healing practices I plaints of behavioral to epidermal medical realms, struggling to find and

encountered. Medicine men train for abnormalities. Some sorcerers permaintain

their complementary balance

three years and rank from herbalist to formed ceremonies specifically for me, in a developing country.

Durkheim (1912/ 2001), a prominent French social theorist and scholar of religion, described the collective “effervescence” that can develop in religious contexts. Intense emotion bubbles up. People feel a deep sense of shared joy, meaning, experience, communion, belonging, and commitment

to their religion. The power of religion affects action. When religions

meet, they can coexist peacefully, or their differences can be a basis for enmity and disharmony,

even battle. Religious fervor has inspired Christians on crusades against the infidel and has led Muslims to wage holy wars against nonIslamic

peoples. Throughout history, political leaders have used religion to promote and justify their views and policies. By late September 1996, the Taliban movement had firmly imposed an extreme form of social control

in the name of religion on Afghanistan (Figure 21.1) and its people. Led by Muslim clerics, the Taliban attempted to create their version of an

Islamic society modeled on the teachings of the

Koran (Burns 1997).

Various repressive measures

were instituted. The Taliban barred women from

work and girls from school. Females past puberty

were prohibited from talking to unrelated men.

Women needed an approved reason, such as

shopping for food, to leave their homes. Men,

who were required to grow bushy beards, also

faced an array of bans— against playing cards, listening

to music, keeping pigeons, and flying kites. To enforce their decrees, the Taliban sent armed enforcers throughout the country. Those agents took charge of “beard checks” and other forms of scrutiny on behalf of a religious police force known as the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and the Elimination of Vice(Burns 1997).

By late fall 2001 the Taliban had been overthrown, with a new interim government established in Kabul, the Afghani capital, on December 22. The collapse of the Taliban followed American bombing of Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and Washington’s

Pentagon. As the Taliban yielded Kabul to victorious Northern Alliance forces, local men flocked to barbershops to have their beards trimmed or shaved. They were using a key Talibansymbol to celebrate the end of repression in religion’s name. How may leaders mobilize communities and, in so doing, gain support for their own policies? One way is by persuasion; another is by instilling hatred or fear. As we saw in the chapter “Political Systems,” fears about and accusations of witchcraft and sorcery can be powerful means of social control by creating a climate of danger and insecuritythat affects everyone. Witchcraft accusations often are directed at socially marginal or anomalous individuals. Among the Betsileo of Madagascar, for example,who prefer patrilocal post marital residence, men living in the wife’s or the mother’s village violate a cultural norm. Linked to their anomalous social position, just a bit of unusual behavior (e. g., staying up late at night) on their part is sufficient for them to be called witches and avoided as a result. In tribes and peasant communities, people who stand out economically, especially if they seem to be benefiting at the expense of others, often face accusations of witchcraft, leading to social ostracism or punishment. In this case witchcraft accusation becomes a leveling mechanism, a custom or social action that operates to reduce differences in wealth and thus to bring standouts in line with community norms— another form of social control.

To ensure proper behavior, religions offer rewards, such as the fellowship of the religious community, and punishments, such as the threat of being cast out or excommunicated. Many religions promise rewards for the good life and punishment for the bad. Your physical, mental, moral, and spiritual health, now and forever, may depend on your beliefs and behavior. For example, if you don’t pay enough attention to the ancestors, they may snatch your kids from you. Religions, especially the formal organized ones typically found in state societies, often prescribe a code of ethics and morality to guide behavior. The Judaic Ten Commandants lay down a set of prohibitions

against killing, stealing, adultery, and other misdeeds. Crimes are breaches of secular

laws, just as sins are breaches of religious strictures. Some rules (e. g., the Ten Commandants) proscribe or prohibit behavior; others prescribe behavior. The Golden Rule, for instance, is a religiousguide to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Moral codes are ways of maintainingorder and stability. Codes of morality and ethics are repeated constantly in religious sermons,catechisms, and the like. They become internalized psychologically. They guide behavior and produce regret, guilt, shame, and the need for forgiveness, expiation, and absolution when they are not followed. Religions also maintain social control by stressingthe temporary and fleeting nature of this life. They promise rewards (and/ or punishment) in an afterlife (Christianity) or reincarnation (Hinduism and Buddhism).

Such beliefs serve to reinforce the status quo. People accept what they have now, knowing they can expect something better in the afterlife or the next life if they follow religious guidelines. Under slavery in the American South, the masters taught portions of the Bible, such as the story of Job, that stressed compliance. The slaves, however, seized on the story of Moses, the promised land, and deliverance.

• Syed Mohammed has his beard shaved off in a Kabul barber shop on November 14,2001. Mohammedsaid he felt “free” without his beard. Afghanslike Mohammed were using akey Talibansymbol to celebrate the end of repression in religion’s name.

KINDS OF RELIGION

Religion is a cultural universal. But religions are parts of particular cultures, and cultural differencesshow up systematically in religious beliefs and practices. For example, thereligions of stratified, state societies differ from those of cultures with less marked social contrasts and power differentials. Considering several cultures, Wallace(1966)identified four types of religion: shamanic, communal,Olympian, and monotheistic (Table 21.2).Unlike priests, the shamans of a shamanic religion aren’t fulltime religious officials but parttimereligious figures who mediate between people and supernatural beings and forces. All cultures have medico-magico-religious specialists.

Shaman is the general term encompassing curers (“witch doctors”), mediums, spiritualists, astrologers, palm readers, and other diviners. Wallace found shamanic religions to be most characteristic of foraging societies, particularly those found in the northern latitudes, such as the Inuit and the native peoples of Siberia For more on shamans, see the Virtual Exploration{{TABLE 21.2 Anthony F. C. Wallace’s Typology of Religions

Type of Religion

(Wallace) Type of Practitioner Conception of Supernatural Type of Society

Monotheistic Olympian Communal Shamanic Priests, ministers, etc. Priesthood Part-time specialists; occasional communitysponsored events, including rites of passage Shaman = part-time Supreme being Hierarchical pantheon with powerful deities Several deities with some control over nature Zoomorphic practitioner States Chiefdoms and archaic states Food-producing tribes

Foraging bands (plants and animals) For a quiz on types of religion, Although they are only part-time specialists, shamans often set themselves off symbolically

from ordinary people by assuming a different or ambiguous sex or gender role. (In nation-states, priests, nuns, and vestal virgins do something

similar by taking vows of celibacy and chastity.)

Transvestism is one way of being sexually ambiguous. Among the Chukchee of Siberia (Bogoras1904), where coastal populations fished and could join a fourth gender,copying men and taking wives.Among the Crow of the NorthAmerican Plains,certain ritual duties were reserved for berdaches,men who rejected the male role of bison hunter,

raider, and warrior and joined a third gender. The

fact that certain key rituals could be conducted

only by berdaches indicates their regular and normal

place in Crow social life (Lowie 1935).

Communal religions have, in addition to

shamans, community rituals such as harvest ceremonies

and rites of passage. Although communal

religions lack full-time religious specialists, they

believe in several deities (polytheism) who control

aspects of nature. Although some huntergatherers,

including Australian totemites, have communal religions, these religions are more typical

of farming societies. Olympian religions, which arose with

state organization and marked social stratification,

add full-time religious specialists— professional priesthoods. Like the state itself, the priesthood is hierarchically and bureauFIGURE

21.2 Location of Chukchee in Siberia.

• We’wha, a Zuni berdache, in 1885. In some Native

American societies, certain ritual duties were reserved for

berdaches, men who rejected the male role and joined a

third gender.

cratically organized. The term Olympian comes

from Mount Olympus, home of the classical

Greek gods. Olympian religions are polytheistic.

They include powerful anthropomorphic gods

with specialized functions, for example, gods of

love, war, the sea, and death. Olympian pantheons

(collections of supernatural beings) were prominent

in the religions of many nonindustrial

nation-states, including the Aztecs of Mexico, several African and Asian kingdoms, and classical reece and Rome. Wallace’s fourth type— monotheism— also has priesthoods and notions of divine power, but it views the supernatural differently. In monotheism, all supernatural phenomena are manifestations of, or are under the control of, a single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being.

RELIGION IN STATES

Robert Bellah (1978) coined the term “worldrejecting religion” to describe most forms of Christianity, including Protestantism. The first world-rejecting religions arose in ancient

These religions are so named because of their tendency to reject the natural (mundane, ordinary, material, secular) world and to focus instead on a higher (sacred, transcendent) realm of reality. The divine is a domain of exalted morality to which humans can only aspire. Salvation through fusion with the supernatural is the main goal of such religions. Christian Values Notions of salvation and the afterlife dominate Christian ideologies. However, most varieties of Protestantism lack the hierarchical structure of earlier monotheistic religions, including Roman Catholicism. With a diminished role for the priest (minister), salvation is directly available to individuals.

Regardless of their social status, Protestants have unmediated access to the supernatural. The individualistic focus of Protestantism offers a close fit with capitalism and with American culture. In his influential book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904/ 1958), the social theorist Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to the values preached by early Protestant leaders. Weber saw European Protestants (and eventually their American descendants) as more successful financially than Catholics. He attributed this difference to the values stressed by their religions. Weber saw Catholics as more concerned with immediate happiness and security. Protestants were more ascetic, entrepreneurial, and future-oriented, he thought. Capitalism, said Weber, required that the traditional attitudes of Catholic peasants be replaced by values fitting an industrial economy based on capital accumulation. Protestantism placed a premium on hard work, an ascetic life, and profit seeking. Early Protestants saw success on earth as a sign of divine favor and probable salvation. According to some Protestant credos, individual scould gain favor with God through good works. Other sects stressed predestination, the idea thatonly a few mortals have been selected for eternal life and that people cannot change their fates. However, material success, achieved through hard work, could be a strong clue that someone is predestined to be saved.

Weber also argued that rational business organization

required the removal of industrial production

from the home, its setting in peasant societies.

Protestantism made such a separation possible by

emphasizing individualism: individuals, not families

or households, would be saved or not. Interestingly,

given the connection that is usually made

with morality and religion in contemporary American

discourse about family values, the family was a

secondary matter for Weber’s early Protestants.

God and the individual reigned supreme.

Today, of course, in North America as throughout

the world, people of many religions and with

diverse worldviews are successful capitalists. Furthermore,

the old Protestant emphasis on honesty

and hard work often has little to do with today’s

economic maneuvering. Still, there is no denying

that the individualistic focus of Protestantism was

compatible with the severance of ties to land and

kin that industrialism demanded. These values

remain prominent in the religious background of

many of the people of the United States.

WORLD RELIGIONS

Information about the world’s major religions is

provided in Table 21.3. Based on people’s claimed

religions, Christianity is the world’s largest, with

some 2 billion members. Islam, with 1.2 billion to

1.3 billion practitioners, is next, followed by Hinduism,

Buddhism, and Chinese traditional religion,

also known as Chinese folk religion and

Confucianism. More than a billion people claim no

official religion. Worldwide, Islam is growing faster

than Christianity, about 2.9 percent annually versus

2.3 percent for Christianity, whose growth rate is

the same as the rate of world population increase

(Ontario Consultants 2001; Adherents. com 2002).

Within Christianity, there is variation in the

growth rate. There were an estimated 680 million

“born-again” Christians (e. g., Pentecostals and

Evangelicals) in the world in 2001, with an annual

worldwide growth rate of 7 percent, versus just

2.3 percent for Christianity overall. The global

growth rate of Roman Catholics is estimated at

only 1.3 percent, compared with a Protestant

growth rate of 3.3 percent per year (Winter 2001).

Much of this explosive growth, especially in Africa, is of a type of Protestantism that would be Map 15 shows the distribution of the world’s major religions,

also summarized in . Christianity Islam No official religion Hinduism Buddhism Atheists Chinese folk religion New Asian religion Tribal religions Other Judaism Sikhism Shamanists Spiritism Confucianism Baha’i faith Jainism Shinto Zoroastrianism 30 CE 622 CE No date 1500 BCE 523 BCE No date 270 BCE Various Prehistory Various No consensus 1500 CE Prehistory 520 BCE 1863 CE 570 BCE 500 CE No consensus Bible Qur’an and Hadith None Veda Tripitaka None None Various Oral tradition Various Torah, Talmud Guru Granth Sahib Oral tradition Lun Yu Mostly Holy Book Siddhanta, Pakrit Kojiki, Nohon

SOURCE: http:// religioustolerance. org/ worldrel. htm.

scarcely recognizable to most Americans, given its

incorporation of many animistic elements. The website Adherents. com (2002) classifies 11 world religions according to their degree of internal unity and diversity. Listed first in Table

21.4 are the most cohesive/ unified groups. Listed last are the religions with the most internal diversity.

The list is based mainly on the degree of doctrinal similarity among the various subgroups. To a lesser extent it reflects diversity in practice, ritual, and organization. (The list includes the majority manifestations of each religion, as well as subgroups

that the larger branches may label “heterodox.”)

How would you decide whether a value judgment is implied by this list? Is it better for a

religion to be highly unified, cohesive, monolithic, and lacking in internal diversity, or to be fragmented,

schismatic, multifaceted, and abounding in variations on the same theme? Over time such

diversity can give birth to new religions; for example,

Christianity arose from Judaism, Buddhism from Hinduism, Baha’i from Islam, and Sikhism

from Hinduism. Within Christianity, Protestantism developed out of Roman Catholicism.

TABLE 21.4 Classical World Religions

Ranked by Internal Religious Similarity

Most unified

Baha’i

Zoroastrianism

Sikhism

Islam

Jainism

Judaism

Taoism

Shinto

Christianity

Buddhism

Hinduism

Most diverse

SOURCE: Adherents. com 2001.

to purportedly traditional standards, beliefs, rules, and customs. Christian and Islamic fundamentalists

recognize, decry, and attempt to redress change, yet they also contribute to change. In a worldwide process, new religions challenge established

churches. In the United States, conservative Christian TV hosts have become influential broadcasters

and opinion shapers. In Latin America, evangelical Protestantism is winning millions of

converts from Roman Catholicism. Religion helps maintain social order, but it also can be an instrument not just of change, but also of revolution. As a response to conquest or foreign

domination, for example, religious leaders often undertake to alter or revitalize a society. In an “Islamic Revolution,” Iranian ayatollahs marshaled religious fervor to create national solidarity and radical change. We call such movements nativistic movements (Linton 1943) or revitalization movements (Wallace 1956).

Revitalization Movements Revitalization movements are social movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize

a society. Christianity originated as a revitalization

movement. Jesus was one of several prophets who preached new religious doctrines while the Middle East was under Roman rule. It was a time of social unrest, when a foreign power ruled the land. Jesus inspired a new, enduring, and major religion. His contemporaries were not so successful. The Handsome Lake religion arose around 1800 among the Iroquois of New York State (Wallace

1970).

Handsome Lake, the founder of this revitalization movement, was a leader of one of the Iroquois tribes. The Iroquois had suffered because of their support of the British against the American colonials (and for other reasons).

After the colonial victory and a wave of immigration to their homeland, the Iroquois were dispersed on small reservations. Unable to pursue traditional horticulture and hunting in their homeland, they became heavy drinkers and quarreled among themselves. Handsome Lake was a heavy drinker who started having visions from heavenly messengers. The spirits warned him that unless the Iroquois changed their ways, they would be destroyed. His visions offered a plan for coping with the new order. Witchcraft, quarreling, and drinking would end. The Iroquois would copy European farming techniques, which, unlike traditional Iroquois horticulture, stressed male rather than female labor. Handsome Lake preached that the Iroquois should also abandon their communal longhouses and matrilineal descent groups for more permanent

marriages and individual family households.

The teachings of Handsome Lake produced a new

church and religion, one that still has members in

New York and Ontario. This revitalization movement

helped the Iroquois adapt to and survive in

a modified environment. They eventually gained

a reputation among their non-Indian neighbors as

sober family farmers.

Syncretisms

Especially in today’s world, religious expressions

emerge from the interplay of local, regional,

national, and international cultural forces. Syncretisms

are cultural mixes, including religious

blends, that emerge from acculturation— the exchange

of cultural features when cultures come

into continuous firsthand contact. One example

of religious syncretism is the mixture of African,

Native American, and Roman Catholic saints and

deities in Caribbean vodun, or “voodoo,” cults.

This blend also is present in Cuban santeria and in

candomblé, an “Afro-Brazilian” cult. Another syncretism

is the blend of Melanesian and Christian

beliefs in cargo cults.

Like the Handsome Lake religion just discussed,

cargo cults are revitalization movements.

Such movements may emerge when natives have

regular contact with industrial societies but lack

their wealth, technology, and living standards.

Some such movements attempt to explain European

domination and wealth and to achieve similar

success magically by mimicking European

behavior and manipulating symbols of the desired

life style. The syncretic cargo cults of Melanesia

and Papua New Guinea weave Christian doctrine

with aboriginal beliefs (Figure 21.3).

They take

their name from their focus on cargo: European

goods of the sort natives have seen unloaded from

the cargo holds of ships and airplanes.

In one early cult, members believed that the

spirits of the dead would arrive in a ship. These

ghosts would bring manufactured goods for the

natives and would kill all the whites. More recent

cults replaced ships with airplanes (Worsley

1959/ 1985).

Many cults have used elements of

European culture as sacred objects. The rationale

is that Europeans use these objects, have wealth,

and therefore must know the “secret of cargo.” By

mimicking how Europeans use or treat objects,

natives hope also to come upon the secret knowledge

needed to gain cargo.

For example, having seen Europeans’ reverent

treatment of flags and flagpoles, the members of

one cult began to worship flagpoles. They believed

the flagpoles were sacred towers that could transmit

messages between the living and the dead.

Other natives built airstrips to entice planes bearing

canned goods, portable radios, clothing, wristwatches,

and motorcycles. Near the airstrips they

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• A cargo cult in Vanuatu. Boys and men march with spears, imitating British colonial soldiers. Does anything in your own society remind you of a cargo cult? made effigies of towers, airplanes, and radios. They talked into the cans in a magical attempt to establish radio contact with the gods. Some cargo cult prophets proclaimed that success

would come through a reversal of European domination and native subjugation. The day was near, they preached, when natives, aided by God, Jesus, or native ancestors, would turn the tables.

Native skins would turn white, and those of

Europeans would turn brown; Europeans would

die or be killed.

As syncretisms, cargo cults blend aboriginal

and Christian beliefs. Melanesian myths told of

ancestors shedding their skins and changing into

powerful beings and of dead people returning to

life. Christian missionaries, who had been in

Melanesia since the late 19th century, also spoke

of resurrection. The cults’ preoccupation with

cargo is related to traditional Melanesian big-man

systems. In the chapter “Political Systems,” we

saw that a Melanesian big man had to be generous.

People worked for the big man, helping him

amass wealth, but eventually he had to give a

feast and give away all that wealth.

Because of their experience with big-man systems,

Melanesians believed that all wealthy people

eventually had to give their wealth away. For

decades, they had attended Christian missions

and worked on plantations. All the while they

expected Europeans to return the fruits of their

labor as their own big men did. When the Europeans

refused to distribute the wealth or even to

let natives know the secret of its production and

distribution, cargo cults developed.

Like arrogant big men, Europeans would be

leveled, by death if necessary. However, natives

lacked the physical means of doing what their

traditions said they should do. Thwarted by wellarmed

colonial forces, natives resorted to magical

486 PART 3 Cultural Diversity

Susan G. Smiley, Ph.D.(CB).

Book I: Anthropology, 11th ed. C. Kottak.Hightstown, NJ USA: McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing, 2006. p 62.

Kottak: Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity, 11th Edition

III. Cultural Diversity 21. Religion © The McGraw• Hill Companies, 2005

63

leveling. They called on supernatural beings to intercede, to kill or otherwise deflate the European

big men and redistribute their wealth. Cargo cults are religious responses to the expansion of the world capitalist economy. However,

this religious mobilization had political and economic results. Cult participation gave Melanesians

a basis for common interests and activities and thus helped pave the way for political parties and economic interest organizations. Previously separated by geography, language, and customs, Melanesians started forming larger groups as members of the same cults and followers of the same prophets. The cargo cults paved the way for political action through which the indigenous peoples eventually regained their autonomy. Antimodernism and Fundamentalism Antimodernism describes the rejection of the modern

in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, and better way of life. This viewpoint grew out of disillusionment with Europe’s Industrial Revolution

and subsequent developments in science, technology,

and consumption patterns. Antimodernists typically consider technology’s use today to be misguided, or think technology should have a lower priority than religious and cultural values. The modern and the antimodern are key ingredients

in Benjamin R. Barber’s (1992, 1995) contention

that tribalism and globalism are the two key— and opposed— principles of our age. Tribalism,

which Barber sums up with the term “Jihad” (borrowed loosely from Islam, where it means quest or struggle), is an antimodern force pitting culture against culture, tribe against tribe, and religion against religion. For Jihad’s enemy, Barber

coins the term “McWorld,” which subsumes the modern forces that promote global integration

and uniformity, including the diffusion of music, computers, and fast food— MTV, Macintosh,

and McDonald’s. Barber argues that Jihad and McWorld operate today with equal force in opposite directions. Jihad is driven by parochial hatreds; McWorld, by universalizing markets. Jihad resists McWorld, which spans nations, cultures, and ideologies. Groups like Al Qaeda exist in perpetual rebellion against McWorld and its perceived values and consumption patterns. To its warriors and adherents, Jihad offers an identity and a sense of community. But that social solidarity

is grounded in exclusion, separation, opposition,

and anger. Solidarity is achieved through war against outsiders. In places like Afghanistan under Taliban rule, solidarity might entail submission to an arbitrary hierarchy, fanaticism in beliefs, and the absorption or destruction of the individual self for the goals of the group. Religious fundamentalism, a form of contemporary

antimodernism, can be compared to the revitalization

movements discussed previously. Fundamentalism

describes antimodernist movements

in various religions. Ironically, religious fundamentalism

is itself a modern phenomenon, based on a

strong feeling among its adherents of alienation

from the surrounding (modern) culture. Fundamentalists

assert an identity separate from the

larger religious group from which they arose. Their

separation reflects their belief that the founding

principles on which the larger religion is based

have been corrupted, neglected, compromised, forgotten,

or replaced with other principles. Fundamentalists

advocate strict fidelity to the “true”

religious principles of the larger religion.

Fundamentalists also seek to rescue religion

from absorption into modern, Western culture,

which they see as already having corrupted the

mainstream version of their religion— and others.

Fundamentalists establish a “wall of virtue”

against alien religions, as well as against the modernized,

compromised version of their own religion.

In Christianity, fundamentalists are “born

again,” as opposed to “mainline,” “liberal,” or

“modernist” Protestants. In Islam they are jama’at

(in Arabic, enclaves based on close fellowship)

engaged in jihad (struggle) against a Western culture

hostile to Islam and the God-given (shariah)

way of life. In Judaism they are Haredi, “Torahtrue”

Jews. All such groups see a sharp divide

between themselves and other religions, and

between a “sacred” view of life and the “secular”

world and “nominal religion” (see http:// en.

wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Fundamentalism).

Fundamentalists strive to protect a distinctive

doctrine and way of life and of salvation. A strong

sense of community is created, focused on a

clearly defined religious way of life. The prospect

of joining such a community may appeal to people

who find little that is distinctive or vital in

their previous religious identity. Fundamentalists

get their converts, mainly from their larger religion,

by convincing them of its inauthenticity.

Fundamentalism also refers to the belief that

religious texts are infallible and historically accurate,

even when modern scholarship disputes this

claim. Fundamentalists see sacred scripture as the

authentic word of God. They believe that God (or

Allah) articulated His will precisely to prophets

and that a perfect record of that revelation has

been passed down to our day. Because scripture

is God’s word, no one can change it or disagree

with it. People must accept and obey the word of

God. Muslims, for example, believe the Koran

was dictated by Allah, through the Archangel

Jabril, to Muhammad, and that the current text of

the Koran is identical to Muhammad’s Koran.

Fundamentalists also strive and claim to practice

their religion as the first adherents did.

Many fundamentalists are politically aware citizens

of nation-states. Often they believe that government

processes and policies must recognize

the way of life set forth in scripture. In their eyes, the state should be subservient to God. The governments

of many Muslim countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, are Islamic, and include people with fundamentalist beliefs, as is also true of many countries where Christians predominate. A New Age Fundamentalists are correct in detecting a rise in secularism in contemporary North America. Between 1990 and 2001, the number of Americans giving no religious preference grew from 7 to 13 percent. The comparable Canadian figure was a rise from 12 to 17 percent between 1991 and 2001 (Table 21.5).

Atheists and “secular humanists” are not just bugaboos for religious conservatives. They really do exist, and they, too, are organized. Like members of religious groups, they use varied

media, including print and the Internet, to communicate among themselves. Just as Buddhists

can peruse Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, secular humanists can find their views validated in Free Inquiry, a quarterly identifying itself as “the international secular humanist magazine.” Secular humanists speak out against organized religion and its “dogmatic pronouncements” and “supernatural or spiritual agendas” and the “obscurantist views” of religious leaders who presume “to inform us of God’s views” by

appealing to sacred texts (Steinfels 1997).

Even as our society appears to be growing

more secular, some middle-class people have also turned to spiritualism, in search of the meaning

of life. Spiritual orientations serve as the basis of new social movements. Some white people have appropriated the symbols, settings, and purported

religious practices of Native Americans, and, in Australia, of Native Australians, for New Age religions. Many natives have strongly protested the use of their sacred property and places by such groups. TABLE 21.5 Religious Composition (in Percentages) of the Populations of the United States, 1990 and 2001, and Canada, 1991 and 2001 United States 1990 2001 Canada 1991 2001 Protestant Catholic Jewish Other None given 60% 26 2 5 7 52% 24 1 10 13 36% 46 1 4 12 29% 44 1 9 17 Statistical Abstract of the United States 2003, p. 67, Table 79, and Census of SOURCE: Canada, 2001, http:// www. StatCan. ca/ English/ Pgdb/ demo30d. htm.

New religious movements have varied origins.

Some have been influenced by Christianity,

others by Eastern (Asian) religions, still others by

mysticism and spiritualism. Religion also evolves

in tandem with science and technology. For

example, the Raelian Movement, a religious

group centered in Switzerland and Montreal, promotes

cloning as a way of achieving “eternal

life.” Raelians believe that extraterrestrials called

“Elohim” artificially created all life on earth. The

group has established a company called Valiant

Venture Ltd., which offers infertile and homosexual

couples the opportunity to have a child

cloned from one of the spouses (Ontario Consultants

on Religious Tolerance 1996).

In the United States, the official recognition of a

religion entitles it to a modicum of respect, and

certain benefits, such as exemption from taxation

on its income and property (as long as it does not

engage in political activity).

Not all would-be religions

receive official recognition. For example, Scientology

is recognized as a church in the United

States but not in Germany. In 1997, United States

government officials spoke out against Germany’s

persecution of Scientologists as a form of “human

rights abuse.” Germans protested vehemently,

calling Scientology a dangerous nonreligious political

movement, with between 30,000 and 70,000

German members.

SECULAR RITUALS

In concluding this discussion of religion, we may

recognize some problems with the definition of

religion given at the beginning of this chapter.

The first problem: If we define religion with reference

to supernatural beings, powers, and forces,

how do we classify ritual-like behavior that

occurs in secular contexts? Some anthropologists

believe there are both sacred and secular rituals.

Secular rituals include formal, invariant, stereotyped,

earnest, repetitive behavior and rites of

passage that take place in nonreligious settings.

A second problem: If the distinction between

the supernatural and the natural is not consistently

made in a society, how can we tell what is

religion and what isn’t? The Betsileo of Madagascar,

for example, view witches and dead ancestors

as real people who play roles in ordinary life.

However, their occult powers are not empirically

demonstrable.

A third problem: The behavior considered

appropriate for religious occasions varies tremendously

from culture to culture. One society may

consider drunken frenzy the surest sign of faith,

whereas another may inculcate quiet reverence.

Who is to say which is “more religious”?

Many Americans believe that recreation and

religion are separate domains. From my field work

in Brazil and Madagascar and my reading about other societies, I believe that this separation is both ethnocentric and false. Madagascar’s tombcentered

ceremonies are times when the living and the dead are joyously reunited, when people get drunk, gorge themselves, and enjoy sexual license. Perhaps the gray, sober, ascetic, and moralistic aspects of many religious events in the

United States, in taking the “fun” out of religion,

force us to find our religion in fun. Many Americans

seek in such apparently secular contexts as

amusement parks, rock concerts, and sporting

events what other people find in religious rites,

beliefs, and ceremonies (see Appendix 3).

1. Religion, a cultural universal, consists of belief and behavior concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces. Religion also encompasses the feelings, meanings, and congregations associated with such beliefs and behavior. Anthropological studies have revealed many aspects and functions of religion. 2. Tylor considered animism— the belief in spirits or souls— to be religion’s earliest and most basic form. He focused on religion’s explanatory role, arguing that religion would eventually disappear as science provided better explanations. Besides animism, yet another view of the supernatural also occurs in nonindustrial societies. This sees the supernatural as a domain of raw, impersonal power or force (called mana in Polynesia and Melanesia).

People can manipulate and control mana under certain conditions. 3. When ordinary technical and rational means of doing things fail, people may turn to magic. Often they use magic when they lack control over outcomes.

Religion offers comfort and psychological security at times of crisis. However, rites also can create anxiety. Rituals are formal, invariant, stylized,

earnest acts in which people subordinate their particular beliefs to a social collectivity. Rites of passage have three stages: separation, liminality,

and incorporation. Such rites can mark any change in social status, age, place, or social condition.

Collective rites often are cemented by communitas,

a feeling of intense solidarity. 4. Besides their psychological and social functions, religious beliefs and practices play a role in the adaptation of human populations to their environments.

The Hindu doctrine of ahimsa, which prohibits harm to living things, makes cattle

sacred and beef a tabooed food. The taboo’s force

stops peasants from killing their draft cattle even

in times of extreme need.

5. Religion establishes and maintains social control

through a series of moral and ethical beliefs, and

real and imagined rewards and punishments,

internalized in individuals. Religion also achieves

social control by mobilizing its members for collective

action.

6. Wallace defines four types of religion: shamanic,

communal, Olympian, and monotheistic. Each

has its characteristic ceremonies and practitioners.

Religion helps maintain social order, but it

also can promote change. Revitalization movements

blend old and new beliefs and have helped

people adapt to changing conditions.

7. Protestant values have been important in the

United States, as they were in the rise and spread

of capitalism in Europe. The world’s major religions

vary in their growth rates, with Islam

expanding more rapidly than Christianity. There

is growing religious diversity in the United

States and Canada. Fundamentalists are antimodernists

who claim an identity separate from

the larger religious group from which they arose;

they advocate strict fidelity to the “true” religious

principles on which the larger religion was

founded. Religious trends in contemporary

North America include rising secularism and

new religions, some inspired by science and

technology, some by spiritism. There are secular

as well as religious rituals.

SUMMARY

animism Belief in souls or doubles. antimodernism The rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, and better way of life. cargo cults Postcolonial, acculturative religious movements, common in Melanesia, that attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior. communal religions In Wallace’s typology, these religions have, in addition to shamanic cults, communal

cults in which people organize community rituals such as harvest ceremonies and rites of passage.

communitas Intense community spirit, a feeling of

great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness; characteristic of people experiencing liminality

together.

fundamentalism Describes antimodernist movements

in various religions. Fundamentalists assert

an identity separate from the larger religious

group from which they arose; they advocate strict

fidelity to the “true” religious principles on which

the larger religion was founded.

KEY TERMS

See the flash cards