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【2013年春季】文化人类学课程（第七讲）(2013-06-15 11:13:12) 转载▼

标签： 2013年春季复旦人类学课程大纲文化人类学

分类： 文化人类学课程大纲与论文

宗教实践:文化与超自然信仰
要点:
人类学/社会学的宗教观; 宗教信仰在文化实践中的特征、功能与意义；
人类学者对于仪式研究所做的跨学科贡献
全球化与宗教信仰实践（案例：新时代运动）

文化语境中人类对于超自然力量的认识与想象
对于“宗教”的人类学和社会学定义
Defining RELIGION
l Sociologist Peter Berger’s definition of religion as a “cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provides a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality that is sacred, all-encompassing, and supernatural,”
l Anthropologist Wallace’s definition (1966):“a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature.”
What is religion?
l Organized beliefs in the supernatural that guide humans in their attempts to make sense of the world and deal with problems they as important but defy solution through application of known technology or techniques of organization.  
l To overcome these limitations, people appeal to, or seek to influence and even manipulate supernatural beings and powers.
l Part of all cultures (cultural universal)
从欧洲中心论视角看“宗教”定义时产生的所谓“疑惑”：
“Problem” with the anthropological/ sociological definition of religion (from a Euro-centric perspective)
l There is no mention of God.
l Sociologists / anthropologists are not concerned with whether religion is true or false but with the social organization of religion.
l Religion/superstition dichotomy 宗教/迷信二元论
l “Religious economy” – religions can be best understood as organizations in competition with one another for followers.
Identifying features of religion 宗教的表现特征
l Various beliefs and rituals – prayers, songs, dances, offerings, and sacrifices people use to interpret, appeal to, and manipulate supernatural beings and powers (gods and goddesses, ancestral and other spirits or impersonal powers) to their advantage.
l Certain individuals are especially skilled at dealing with supernatural beings and powers and assist other members of society in their ritual activities.
l A body of myths rationalize or “explains” the system in a manner consistent with people’s experience in the world in which they live.
宗教实践是人类学研究的重点所在
人类学者在田野体验时通常会特别关注以下要素：
l Supernatural Beings and Powers
   -Gods & Goddesses
   -Ancestral Spirits
   -Animism (Tylor)
l Religious Specialists
   -Priests & Priestesses
   -Shaman
l Rituals and Ceremonies
    -Rites of Passage
    -Rites of Intensification
    -Magic & Witchcraft
Gods & Goddesses
l The patriarchal nature of Western society is expressed in its theology, in which a masculine God gives life to the first man. The first woman is created from the first man.
l How men and women relate to one another in everyday life. Societies that subordinate women to men define the god godhead in exclusive masculine terms.
l Goddess are apt to be most prominent in societies where women make a major contribution to economy and enjoy relative equality with men.
Ancestral Spirits
l Consistent with the wide-spread notion that human beings are made up of two parts, a body and a some kind of vital spirit (the idea that the spirit being free from the body by death and have an existence seems logical).
l Ancestral spirits resemble living human beings in their appetites, feelings, emotions, and behavior.
l Belief in Ancestral spirits is found in societies with unilineal descent systems.
l The vital importance of deceased ancestors in the patrilineal society of pre-revolutionary China.
Ancestor Worship and Food Exchange
l For the gift of life, one is forever indebted to his/her parents, owing them obedience, deference, and a comfortable old age & provide for their in the spiritual world after death. Offering food, money and incense on the anniversaries of their births and deaths.   
民族志经典案例回顾：
Ancestor Worship and Food Exchange in Hong Kong (research by Harvard anthropologist Watson in the 1970s)
l Descendants of Man lineage （文氏宗族）are gathered at tomb of their ancestor.  Roast pigs are presented at the tomb.  The local school master is reading a annual report to the ancestor (in classical Chinese) detailing the accounts of the founder’s estate.
l Major lineages in the HK New Territories share pork among the male descendants of key ancestors. Elders of the Man lineage carefully weigh and divide shares of meat “paid for” by the ancestor himself (who was “alive” socially through the mechanism of his ancestral estate).

Animism 万物有灵论
Sir E. B. Tylor’s original contribution to the anthropological study of religion. Animism was seen as the most primitive and is defined as a belief in souls that derives from the first attempt to explain dreams and like phenomena. A belief in spirit beings thought to animate nature.
EX: Trees, plants, rocks, and mountains have a life of their own.

人类学者研究宗教仪式时与众不同之处
Orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy(James Watson)
l Orthodoxy (correct belief)
Ex. Hindus, Orthodox Jews, and Taliban
l Orthopraxy (correct practice)
Confucianism in practice (EX. Man lineage members participating in ancestor worship)

宗教仪式的操作者
Priests & Priestesses
l Societies with the resources to support full-time occupational specialists give the role of guiding religious practices and influencing the supernatural to the priests or priestess.
Shaman
l Parttime religious specialist whose special power to contact and manipulate supernatural beings are forces in an altered state of consciousness comes to him or her thorough some personal experience.
l Religious entrepreneur acting on behalf of some human client.
Religious Specialists
l Shamans are essentially religious entrepreneurs acting on behalf of some human client, often to bring about a cure or foretell some future event. Shamans tell supernaturals what to do.  
l May collect a fee.
l Deities are the “clients” of the Priests and Priestesses who tell people what to do.
l Accept donations.

Functions and Expressions of Religion
宗教的功能与表现特征：仪式的重要性
l Rituals are:
   - formal, performed in sacred contexts.
   - convey information about the culture of the participants and, hence, the participants themselves.
- inherently social, and participation in them necessarily implies social commitment. (DURKHEIM)
NOTE: this is where you see the anthropological contribution to the study of religion!  
Functions of ritual: the Durkheimian perspective
l Collective consciousness
l Group solidarity
l Collective identity
l Sense of community
l Relationship
l Collective representation

田野观察与体验的焦点所在
Rituals and Ceremonies
l Rites of Passage 生命礼仪/过渡仪式
    Rituals that mark important stages in the lives of individuals, such as birth, marriage, and death.
l Rites of Intensification
    Religious rituals enacted during a group’s real of potential crisis.
Rites of Passage:
religious rituals which mark and facilitate a person's movement from one (social) state of being to another.
1) Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the group and begins moving from one place to another.
2) Transition (Liminality) – the period between states, during which the participant(s) has left one place but has not yet entered the next.
3) Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society with a new status having completed the rite.
Transition / Liminality is part of every rite of passage involving the temporary suspension and even reversal of everyday social distinctions.
Ex: Wedding as rite of passage in pre-revolutionary China

“Ritual cannibalism” in Christianity
l It’s SYMBOLIC rather than actual, although some Christians believe that the communion water actually becomes the body of the Christ (the Eucharist meal).

Functions and Expressions of Religion
Magic  
l Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims.
l Magic may be imitative or contagious (accomplished through contact).
Witchcraft
l 1. Explanation of events based on the belief that certain individuals possess an innate psychic power capable of causing harm, including sickness and death.
l EX: the practice of fengshui; the strategy employed by the Boxers （义和团）

Functions of Magic and Witchcraft
l Although many westerners seek to objectify and de-mytholgize their world & try to suppress the existence of magic mysteries in their own consciousness, they continue to be fascinated by them.
l Ex. Abraham Lincoln’s wife & Nancy Reagan

Functions and Expressions of Religion
l Anxiety, Control, Solace
1、Magic/witchcraft is an instrument of control, but religion serves to provide stability when no control or understanding is possible.
2、Malinowski saw tribal religions as being focused on life crises.
Functions of Religion
l Psychological & Social
l Reduce anxiety by explaining the unknown and making it understandable
l Provide comfort with the belief supernatural aid is available in times of crisis
l Sanction human conduct by providing notions of right and wrong and transfer the burden of decision making from individuals to supernatural powers.
l Maintain social solidarity.

l Religion and Cultural Ecology
l Western economic development experts erroneously cite the Indian cattle taboo to illustrate the idea that religious beliefs stand in the way of rational economic decisions.
l Hindus seem to be ignoring a valuable food (beef)?
l Don’t Indians even know how to raise proper cattle?  
Sacred Cow
l Gau Mata (cow) as the central symbol of Hindu veneration
l Indians revere zebu cattle protected by the Hindu doctrine of ahimsa (principle of nonviolence which forbids the killing of animals)
l Divine Mother
l Hindus use cattle for transportation, traction, and manure.
l Bigger cattle eat more, making them more expensive to keep.
Lesson: the material and spiritual are inseparable!
Note: we may explain the Kosher rules in the same line of analysis
Mosaic Food Restrictions
l Summary:
l Orthodox Jewish rules prohibit eating meat and dairy products at the same meal; proscribe eating meat which has not been drained of blood, or made kosher
l Ban on pork eating
l Food laws were important in Jesus’ time.  Each Jewish sects interpreted God’s gastronomic intentions in its own way.  Food rules stand for the whole of their law.
l KOSHER DIETARY RESTRICTIONS
Kosher              Treyf
      (“clean/fit”)         (“unclean/torn”)
l Separation of Milk and Meat:
l “Thou shalt not seeth a kid in its mother’s milk.”  
l Exodus 23:19; 34:26;  Deuteronomy 14:21.
l Kashrut/Kashruth (“Fit, Appropriate,
l    suitable”)
l Kasher/Kosher (“Clean, Fit”)
More Consumers Ask: Is It Kosher (Hunter 1997)
l Kosher foods, formerly sought by devout Jews, are now purchased by Seventh Day Adventists, Muslims, Buddhists, vegetarians, individuals with milk allergies, and health-conscious people… Currently, more than 75% if certified kosher foods are purchased by non-Jews, who favor them because of a perception that such foods are of good quality due to high standards and strict supervision  (p. 10)
l Kosher dining at Mont Holyoke College （图）
l Kosher kitchen at Smith College （图）
Halal: The pig as haram
Ramadan 斋 月  

Religion as a control mechanism
l The power of religion affects action
1、Religion can be used to mobilize large segments of society through systems of real and perceived rewards and punishments.
2、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.
3、Many religions have a formal code of ethics that prohibit certain behavior while promoting other kinds of behavior.
Ex: Religion and Social Control in Afghanistan
l Social conditions in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
l The Taliban are invoking a very strict interpretation of the Koran as the basis for social behavior:  Women are required to wear veils, remain indoors, and are not allowed to be with males who are not blood relatives. Men are required to grow bushy beards and are barred from playing cards, flying kites, and keeping pigeons.

Religion and the development of capitalism
l Weber argued that the pervasiveness of Protestant beliefs in values contributed to the spread and success of industrialization in England, while Catholicism inhibited industrialization in France.
l Revitalization Movements
Religious movements that act as mediums for social change are called revitalization movements.
l Examples: Mormanism, Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, the Branch Davidians (David Koresh)
Revitalization movement in the US
案例讨论：New Age Religions 新时代宗教

l Globalization & New Age Movement
Explaining the popularity of NAM
NAM Philosophy
Christian Responses to NAM
Sociological perspectives on NAM
Hare Krishna（图）
New Age Movement and Popular Culture（图）
参考：《当代人类学十论》中“文化全球化”与多元信仰的日常化实践

经典社会学宗教理论流派回顾
Marx: Religion and INEQUALITY  
l Marx argued that religion is “the opium of the people.” In this sense, he posited that happiness is deferred to the afterlife and therefore people become accustomed to a sort of “resigned acceptance” of conditions in the here and now. Attention is diverted from inequalities and injustices of everyday life in favor of rewards after death.
l Religion contains a strong ideological element – the religious beliefs can provide justification for those in power.
Durkheim: Religion and Functionalism
l Durkheim argued that religion had the function of coalescing society by ensuring that people regularly to affirm common and values.
l Distinction between the sacred (actions, images, and symbols associated with religion that are held to be divine) and profane the profane (which represents the routine aspects of everyday life)
l Ex. Totems as sacred objects.
Weber: The World Religions and Social Change
l Weber contended that religiously inspired social movements produced drammatic social transformation.
l Focus on the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism.


本信息来自：复旦人类学新浪博客