ANTH 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Émile Durkheim, Edward Burnett Tylor, Opiate
Religion- Interacting With The Non-Human World:
● Introduction to Religion
○ Religion is a big topic that anthropologists study
○ Religion can be a very difficult topic to study and it can also be very controversial
○ Historically, the study of religion has been focused on those parts that were
deemed exotic or strange. The anthropologist often distanced themselves from
the religion, and saw that religion through the lense of Christianity. The views
were often very biased and judgemental because they were seen through this
lense. This did not allow people to understand religion fully and why people do
what they do
○ Religion is an important part of a society and it is part of a cultural ontology
(which also includes gender, race and ethnicity). It includes the beings or entities
that are believed to exist, their qualities, their values, their assumed roles, their
value to society, the relationship that humans have with them and the
expectations that surround them
○ When anthropologists study religion, they try to look at it from a holistic
perspective. They try to look at religion from a cross-cultural perspective and
look at the range of religions that exist. They try to relate religion to other
cultural contexts. It’s important that an anthropologist tries to understand a
religion in the way that the people who practice that religion do. It’s important
that they don’t judge that religion or look at the religion through the lense of
their own religion or deem a religion to be true or false
○ It’s important to understand the concepts and ideas of religion as a whole
○ Not all religions have specific concepts that we may associate with religions such
as god, heaven, hell, sin and souls, or the religion might have a very different
concept of these terms than we do
● Definitions of Religion:
○ “Belief in spiritual beings” - E. B. Tylor
○ “A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say,
things set aside and forbidden- beliefs and practices which unite into one single
moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them” - Emile
Durkheim
○ “A system of symbols which act to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting
moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of
existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the
moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” -Clifford Geertz
○ The idea of a religious community means a community of people who have a
shared understanding and a shared belief system and practices that are sacred
39
ANTH 1000 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
39 documents
Document Summary
Religion is a big topic that anthropologists study. Religion can be a very difficult topic to study and it can also be very controversial. Historically, the study of religion has been focused on those parts that were deemed exotic or strange. The anthropologist often distanced themselves from the religion, and saw that religion through the lense of christianity. The views were often very biased and judgemental because they were seen through this lense. This did not allow people to understand religion fully and why people do what they do. Religion is an important part of a society and it is part of a cultural ontology (which also includes gender, race and ethnicity). It includes the beings or entities that are believed to exist, their qualities, their values, their assumed roles, their value to society, the relationship that humans have with them and the expectations that surround them.
