ANTH 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Pope Boniface Iv, Cultural Ecology, Purgatory
Document Summary
Religion: belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces. Supernatural: extraordinary realm outside the observable world. Bodies of people who gather regularly for worship. Religion is a cultural universal, bit religions are apart of a particular culture. Olympian: state religions with professional priesthoods (stratifications) Monotheism: worship of a single supreme being. People with too much mana are sacred and off limits. Maybe this is why there are differential successes. Magic: supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims imitative : voodoo dolls. Magic and religion serve emotional and cognitive (explanatory) needs. Malinowski: magic is used to establish control but religion is born out of the real tragedies of human life. Formal, repetitive, stereotyped behavior based on a previously designed template. Social acts, converting info about participants and their cultures. Actions marking transitions between stages of life. Liminality: participant has left one place but not yet entered the next (limbo phase)
