ANTH 4751 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Edward Burnett Tylor, Ethnocentrism, Michel Foucault
Document Summary
Analytical approach (specific/general) towards what you are studying. Religion serves a purpose in society; a social function. Relativity; what it means to those people; ideas drive everything. Prior to the rise of social science and positivism, religious analysis tended to be either: nonexistent, supernaturalistic, generalized and often ethnocentric. Focus on: origin and progressive development of religious ideas from prehistory. Idea that societies advance from primitive to more complex. Animism: all living things and non living things have souls . Over time, people deify these souls into polytheism. Simplifying and streamlining religion until it blends into monotheism. Believed early human beings dreamed and had the idea they had a detachable spirit; also explained death (why corpse is not moving) Idea that religions will be discarded eventually for more advanced. Focus on: human psychological tendencies manifest in/lead to religion. Projection: religion is the father figure in the sky; project a perfect father figure as god if our fathers were bad.
