This presentation discusses the role of religion in a variety of
societies. It focuses on the types of religion and the situations in
which religions can change rapidly. It concludes with a discussion of
secular rituals and the way in which a trip to Walt Disney World might
be studied as a secular ritual.
Religion
Introduction

Religion (Wallace)
 belief
and ritual concerned with supernatural
beings, powers, and forces.
So defined, religion is a cultural universal.
 Neanderthal mortuary remains

 earliest
evidence of what probably was
religious activity.
Animism


Animism is seen as the most primitive form of
religion
defined as a belief in souls that derives from the
first attempt to explain dreams and like
phenomena.
Animatism


Animatism is the belief that all animate and
inanimate objects are infused with a common
life force
the assignment to inanimate objects, forces, and
plants of personalities and wills, but not souls.
Mana and Taboo


Mana is defined as belief in an imminent
supernatural domain or life-force, potentially
subject to human manipulation.
Melanesian mana
a sacred impersonal force that is much like the
Western concept of luck.
 ***Examples in your own life?


Polynesian mana and the related concept of
taboo

related to the more hierarchical nature of Polynesian society.
Magic and Religion



Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended
to accomplish specific aims.
Magic may be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or
contagious (accomplished through contact).
***Have you tried this?
Anxiety, Control, Solace


Magic is an instrument of control,
Religion serves to provide stability when no
control or understanding is possible.
Rituals


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Rituals are formal, performed in sacred contexts.
Rituals convey information about the culture of
the participants and, hence, the participants
themselves.
Rituals are inherently social

participation in them necessarily implies social
commitment.
Rites of Passage


Rites of passage which mark and facilitate a person's
movement from one state to another
Rites of passage have three phases:
 Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the
group and begins moving from one place to another.
 Liminality – the period between states, during which
the participant(s) has left one place but has not yet
entered the next.
 Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society
with a new status having completed the rite.
Rites of Passage


Liminality is part of every rite of passage and involves
the temporary suspension and even reversal of everyday
social distinctions.
Communitas refers to collective liminality,
characterized by enhanced feelings of social solidarity
and minimized distinctions.
Totemism


Rituals play an important role in creating and
maintaining group solidarity.
In totemic societies, each descent group has
an animal, plant, or geographical feature from
which they claim descent.
Totems are the apical ancestor of clans.
 The members of a clan did not kill or eat their
totem, except once a year when the members of
the clan gathered for ceremonies dedicated to the
totem.

Totemism


Totemism is a religion in which elements of
nature act as sacred templates for society by
means of symbolic association.
Totemism uses nature as a model for society.
Each descent group has a totem, which occupies
a specific niche in nature.
 Social differences mirror the natural order of the
environment.
 The unity of the human social order is enhanced
by symbolic association with and imitation of the
natural order.

Totemism
Religion and Cultural Ecology:
Sacred Cattle in India


Ahimsa is the Hindu doctrine of nonviolence
that forbids the killing of animals.
Western economic development experts often
use this principle as an example of how religion
can stand in the way of development.
Hindus seem to irrationally ignore a valuable food
source (beef).
 Hindus also raise scraggly and thin cows, unlike the
bigger cattle of Europe and the U.S.

Religion and Cultural Ecology:
Sacred Cattle in India

These views are ethnocentric and wrong as
cattle play an important adaptive role in an
Indian ecosystem that has evolved over
thousands of years
Hindus use cattle for transportation, traction, and
manure.
 Bigger cattle eat more, making them more expensive
to keep.

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Another example: pig taboo in Middle East
Social Control

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The power of religion affects action.
Religion can be used to mobilize large
segments of society through systems of real
and perceived rewards and punishments.
Witch hunts play an important role in limiting
social deviancy in addition to functioning as
leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in
wealth and status between members of
society.
Social Control

Many religions have a formal code of
ethics that prohibit certain behavior
while promoting other kinds of
behavior.
 ***Examples

in your society?
Religions also maintain social control by
stressing the fleeting nature of life.
Kinds of Religion
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
Religious forms vary from culture to culture, but there
are correlations between political organization and
religious type.
Religious Practitioners and Types


Wallace defined religion as consisting of all a society’s cult
institutions (rituals and associated beliefs) and developed four
categories from this.
Shamanic religions
 shamans are part-time religious intermediaries who may
act as curers--these religions are most characteristic of
foragers.
Kinds of Religion (continued)

Communal religions

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Olympian religions
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have shamans, community rituals, multiple nature gods,
and are more characteristic of food producers than
foragers.
first appeared with states, have full-time religious
specialists whose organization may mimic the states, and
have potent anthropomorphic gods who may exist as a
pantheon.
Monotheistic religions

have all the attributes of Olympian religions, except that
the pantheon of gods is subsumed under a single eternal,
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being.
Christian Values


Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to
the values central to the Protestant faith:
independent, entrepreneurial, hard working,
future-oriented, and free thinking.
The emphasis Catholics placed on immediate
happiness and security, and the notion that
salvation was attainable only when a priest
mediated on one’s behalf, did not fit well with
capitalism.
Revitalization Movements


Religious movements that act as mediums for
social change are called revitalization
movements.
The colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by
Handsome Lake is an example of a revitalization
movement.
Syncretisms

A syncretism is a cultural mix, including religious
blends, that emerge when two or more cultural
traditions come into contact.


Examples include voodoo, santeria, and candomlé.
The cargo cults of Melanesia and Papua New Guinea are
syncretisms of Christian doctrine with aboriginal beliefs.

Syncretisms often emerge when traditional, nonWestern societies have regular contact with
industrialized societies.

Syncretisms attempt to explain European domination and
wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking
European behavior and symbols.
A New Age

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Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in
formal organized religions.
New Age religions have appropriated ideas,
themes, symbols, and ways of life from the
religious practices of Native Americans,
Australian Aborigines, and east Asian religions.