Anthropology 1025F/G Lecture : The Social Construction of Reality.docx

• School: Western University
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: Anthropology 1025F/G
• Professor: Randa Farah

Document Summary

Tylor: we turn to the supernatural to explain what we cannot understand or control, example: death, dreaming, sickness, and misfortune, from believing in a soul to believing in a place where the soul travelled to. Malinowski: we summon supernatural gods or spirits to help us influence what we cannot control in our lives, in the trobrian islands magicians are believed to influenced the produce in gardens. Durkheim: the key to answer these questions lies in early societies which believed in the supernatural, studied the beliefs of the australian aborigines, especially totemism. A totem is an animal, plant, or some celestial phenomenon that represents a particular group. The totem was worshipped and considered sacred by the group. The sacredness of the totem lay in: the constraints people feel imposed on them by the group, the power people feel when they are together in a group or ritual. Durkheim applies his analysis to large-scale societies.