ANTROPOLOGI AGAMA

All societies have spiritual beliefs and practices that

anthropologists refer to as RELIGION. Yet because of great
diversity of these “beliefs/ practices”, defining religion is
surprisingly difficult. Most definitions focus on the supernatural ,
but Westerners make a clear distinction between natural and
supernatural.
The problem is that some religions explicitly DENY that
supernatural beings exist, and others do not distinguish them
from Westerners call the natural. Even in US, the difference may
be problematic. Is God’s presence in the world supernatural to
the devout, OR is it simply part of the natural order of the
world?
ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION
RELIGION : two aspects  theocentric and anthropocentric
Theocentric  theology aspects : god, dogma, syariat, etc
Anthropocentric  human aspects: culture, religion arts, polemic, religion debate,
etc
- Anthropology of religion  focused on concepts of religion culture, learned and
shared ideas, feelings, behaviors, and products of those behaviors characteristic of
any particular society
Because different societies perceive reality in different ways,
there is no agreed upon way to distinguish the natural from the
supernatural. But our problems are even greater than this.
Religions around the world show enormous variation.
Religious Scholar Carmody and Camody:
 “religion ranges almost endlessly- into every geographical
area, into every temporal period, into so many uses of the
human body, mind, imagination, social instinct, artistic genius,
and all the rest that no library could contain all the studies that
the full range of religion, actual and potential, would require”.
THREE ASPECTS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE ON STUDY RELIGION
Comparative or crosscultural description  fieldwork  ethnography
Anthropology adopts a position of holism  culture is a integrated ‘whole’
Anthropology upholds the principle of cultural relativism grasps that each culture
has its own ‘standards’ of understanding and judging  we are being relativistic
In studying religion cross-culturally, anthropologists pay
attention to the social nature and roles of religion as well as to
the nature, content, and meaning to people of religious
doctrines, acts, events, settings, practitioners, and organizations.
We also consider such verbal manifestations of religious beliefs
as prayers, chants, myths, texts, and statements about ethics and
morality.
Religion, by either definition offered here, exists in all human
societies. IT IS A CULTURAL UNIVERSAL. However, we’ll see that
it isn’t always easy to distinguish the supernatural from the
natural and that DIFFERENT SOCIETIES conceptualize divinity,
supernatural entities, and ultimate realities VERY DIFFERENTLY.
WHAT IS RELIGION?? RELIGION IS....
Anthony F. C. Wallace defined religion as “belief and ritual concerned with
supernatural beings, powers, and forces”. The supernatural is the extraordinary realm
outside the observable world. It is nonempirical and inexplicable in ordinary terms.
focuses on bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship. These
congregants or adherents subscribe to and internalize a common system of meaning.
They accept (adhere to or believe in) a set of doctrines involving the relationship
between the individual and divinity, the supernatural, or whatever is taken to be the
ultimate nature of reality (Reese, 1999)
Clifford Geertz defined religion as a "system of symbols which
acts 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”.
Theologian Antoine Vergote also emphasized the "CULTURAL
REALITY" of religion, which he defined as "the entirety of the
linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs that refer
to a supernatural being"; he took the term "supernatural"
simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or
human agency.
Emile Durkheim : stressed religious “effervescence”, the
bubbling up of collective emotional intensity generated
by worship.
Victor Turner: updated Durkheim’s notion, using the term
“communitas”, an intense community spirit, a feeling of
great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness.
ETYMOLOGY
The word religion derives from the Latin “religare”— “to tie, to bind,” but it is not
necessary for all members of a given religion to meet together as a common body.
Subgroups meet regularly at local congregation sites. They may attend occasional
meetings with adherents representing a wider region and they may form an imagined
community with people of similar faith throughout the world.
Characteristic of Religion
1) Religions are composed of sacred stories or narratives that members believed are
important. 2) Religions make extensive use of symbols and symbolism. 3) All propose
the existence of (supernatural) beings, powers, states, places and qualities that cannot
be measured by any agreed upon scientific means. 4) All include rituals and specific
means of addressing the supernatural. 5) All societies include individuals who are
particularly expert in the practice of religion.
WHAT RELIGION DOES IN SOCIETY
Religion have many functions in a society. It may provide:
1. Meaning and order in people’s lives
2. May reduce social anxiety
3. Give people sense of control over their destinies
4. Can promote and reinforce the status quo or, in some
situations can be means of changing existing conditions.
Religion have many functions in a society. It may
provide:
1. Meaning and order in people’s lives
2. May reduce social anxiety
3. Give people sense of control over their destinies
4. Can promote and reinforce the status quo or, in
some situations can be means of changing existing
conditions.
SEARCH FOR ORDER AND MEANING
To explain important aspects of the physical and
social environment and to give meaning.
By defining the place of the individual in society
and thru the establishment of moral codes, religion
provide us with 
REDUCING ANXIETY AND INCREASING CONTROL
Many religious practices are aimed at ensuring success in human activities.
Prayers, sacrifice and magic are done in the hope that that they will aid a particular
person or community.
 Rituals are performed to call on supernatural beings and to control forces that
appear to be unpredictable.
 Example: You are likely to pray for passing an exam if you have not studied
very well, and you may even bring your lucky charm during the examination day
 The practice of “magical death” in many parts of
Melanesia, a sorcerer ritually imitates throwing a magical
stick in the direction of the intended victim with an
expression of passionate hatred on his face, is often very
effective because of its psychological effects.
Anthropologist Walter Cannon, concluded that death
was usually caused by the victims extreme terror which led
to despair, appetite loss, and vulnerability to heart attack.
 Baseball player George Gmelch has noted to use
magic for the least predictable aspects of the game like
hitting, pitching, and talking to his baseball bat.
REINFORCEING AND MODIFYING THE SOCIAL
ORDER
Religion is closely connected with the survival of society
and generally works to preserve the social order. Through
religion, beliefs about good and evil are reinforce by
supernatural means of social control. Sacred stories and
rituals provide a rationale for the present social order and
give social values religious authority.
RELIGIOUS RITUALS ALSO INTENSIFIES SOCIAL SOLIDARITY BY CREATING AN
ATMOSPHERE IN WHICH PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THEIR COMMON IDENTITY IN
EMOTIONALLY GIVING WAYS.
RELIGION IS AN IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTION FOR TRANSMITTING CULTURAL VALUES
AND KNOWLEDGE.
WHEN THE RELIGION BEGIN
No one knows for sure!
There are suggestions of religion in Neanderthal burials and on European
cave walls, where painted stick figures may represent shamans, early religious
specialists.
Nevertheless, any statement about when, where, why, and how religion arose,
or any description of its original nature, can be only speculative.
Although such speculations are inconclusive, however, many have revealed
important functions and effects of religious behaviour. Several theories will be
examined now.
1. SPIRITUAL BEING
EB Taylor; the founder of religion anthropology
Religion was born, as people tried to understand conditions
and events they could not explain by reference to daily
experience.
Tylor concluded that attempts to explain dreams and
trances led early humans to believe that two entities inhabit
the body, one active during the day and the other—a
double or soul— active during sleep and trance states.
Physical Bodi VS Double or Soul

Although they never meet, they are vital to each

other and keeps balance to the human. When
double permanently leaves the body, the person
dies. Death is departure of the soul.
ANIMISMThe earliest form of religion, was a
belief in spiritual beings
Anima  Latin means ‘soul’
2. POWER AND FORCES
Besides animism—and sometimes coexisting with it in the same
society—is a view of the supernatural as a domain of impersonal
power, or force, which people can control under certain conditions.
Such a conception of the supernatural is particularly prominent in
Melanesia, the area of the South Pacific that includes Papua New
Guinea and adjacent islands.
 Melanesians believed in mana, a sacred impersonal force
existing in the universe. Mana can reside in people, animals, plants,
and objects.
Melanesians attributed success to mana, which
people could acquire or manipulate in different
ways, such as through magic. Objects with mana
could change someone’s luck.
For example, a charm or amulet belonging to a
successful hunter might transmit the hunter’s mana to
the next person who held or wore it. A woman
might put a rock in her garden, see her yields
improve dramatically, and attribute the change to
the force contained in the rock.
So charged with mana were the highest chiefs that contact with
them was dangerous to the commoners. The mana of chiefs flowed
out of their bodies wherever they went. It could infect the ground,
making it dangerous for others to walk in the chief’s footsteps.
Contact between chief and commoners was dangerous because
mana could have an effect like an electric shock.
Because high chiefs had so much mana, their bodies and
possessions were taboo (set apart as sacred and off-limits to
ordinary people).
3. MAGIC AND RELIGION
Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims.
These techniques include spells, formulas, and incantations used with deities or
with impersonal forces.
IMITATIVE MAGIC- magicians use imitative magic to produce a desired effect
by imitating it. If magicians wish to injure or kill someone, they may imitate that
effect on an image of the victim. Sticking pins in “voodoo dolls” is an example.
CONTAGIOUS MAGIC- with contagious magic, whatever is done to an object
is believed to affect a person who once had contact with it. Sometimes
practitioners of contagious magic use body products from prospective
victims—their nails or hair, for example. The spell performed on the body
product is believed to reach the person eventually and work the desired result.
4. UNCERTAINITY, ANXIETY AND SOLACE
Religion and magic don’t just explain things. They serve emotional needs as well as
cognitive (e.g., psychological) ones. For example, supernatural beliefs and practices
can help reduce anxiety. Religion helps people face death and endure life crises.
Magical techniques can dispel doubts that arise when outcomes are beyond human
control.
When people face uncertainty and danger, according to Malinowski, they turn to
MAGIC. Malinowski found that the Trobriand Islanders used magic when sailing, a
hazardous activity. He proposed that because people can’t control matters such as
wind, weather, and the fish supply, they turn to magic.
 Trobriand sailing magic, these behaviors serve to reduce psychological stress,
creating an illusion of magical control when real control is lacking.
5. RITUALS
Several features distinguish rituals from other kinds of behaviour. Rituals are
formal—stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped. People perform them in special
(sacred) places and at set times. Rituals include liturgical orders— sequences
of words and actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in
which they occur.
These features link rituals to plays, but there are important differences. Plays
have audiences rather than participants. Actors merely portray something, but
ritual performers—who make up congregations—are in earnest. Rituals
convey information about the participants and their traditions. Repeated year
after year, generation after generation, rituals translate enduring messages,
values, and sentiments into action.
6. RITES OF PASSAGES
Magic and religion, as Malinowski noted, can reduce anxiety and allay fears.
Ironically, beliefs and rituals also can create anxiety and a sense of insecurity and
danger.
Anxiety may arise because a rite exists. Indeed, participation in a collective ritual
may build up stress, whose common reduction, through the completion of the ritual,
enhances the solidarity of the participants.
Rites of passage, such as the collective circumcision of teenagers, can be very
stressful. The traditional vision quests of Native Americans, particularly the Plains
Indians, illustrate rites of passage (customs associated with the transition from one
place or stage of life to another), which are found throughout the world.
The rites of passage of contemporary societies
include confirmations, baptisms, bar and bat
mitzvahs, and fraternity hazing. Passage rites
involve changes in social status, such as from
boyhood to manhood and from nonmember to
sorority sister. More generally, a rite of passage
may mark any change in place, condition, social
position, or age.
This may also include birth, puberty, marriage and
death etc.
3 PHASES OF RITES OF PASSAGE
SEPARATION- the person of group is ritually detached form the
former status.
LIMINAL PHASE- the person has been detached from the old status
but has not yet attached to a new one, the person is in “limbo”,
neither here nor there. The liminal stage mediates between
separation and the third stage.
REINCORPORATION- in which the passage from one status to
another is symbolically completed. The person takes on the rights
and obligations of his or her new social status.
Passage rites often are collective. Several individuals— boys being
circumcised, fraternity or sorority initiates, men at military boot
camps, football players in summer training camps, women
becoming nuns— pass through the rites together as a group.
Most notable is a social aspect of collective liminality called
communitas, an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social
solidarity, equality, and togetherness. People experiencing
liminality together form a community of equals. The social
distinctions that have existed before or will exist afterward are
forgotten temporarily.
Liminal people experience the same treatment and conditions and
must act alike.
7. TOTEMISM
TOTEM- an object, animal species, or feature of the natural world that is associated
with a particular descent (kinship) group.
Members of each totemic group believed themselves to be descendants of their
totem.
In contemporary nations, too, totems continue to mark groups, such as states and
universities, professional teams, and political parties. Totems are sacred emblems
symbolizing common identity.
 THEORETICAL PARADIGMS

1) THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS (Late 1700s – Early 1900s)

Social Evolutionism
Scientific Racism

2) THE FUNCTION OF RELIGIONS (Early 1900s – 1960s)

Functionalism
Structural Functionalism

3) THE MEANINGS OF RELIGIONS AND THEIR

ARTICULATIONS WITH SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
(1960s to the Present)
Symbolic and Interpretive Interactionism
Interpretive/Symbolic Anthropology
Feminism
Post Structuralism
 CHARLES DARWIN
1809 TO 1882
The Origin of Species,
1859.
"Much light will be shed
on the origin of man (sic)
and his history” (p. 459).
Darwin’s biological
studies of evolution
paralleled an interest in
social evolution that
produced a body of
knowledge that supported
social, economic, and
political policies.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
A theory developed by
Herbert Spencer when he
applied new scientific
discoveries to the study of
society.
This theory placed the
world’s societies on an
evolutionary scale of
primitive to civilized.
 SCIENTIFIC RACISM
Based on faulty science and fabricated
data.
Divided humans into different races
based on “biological” differences.
These racial categories were then
situated on an evolutionary hierarchy.
In actuality, “race” is a social
construction with no biological
foundation.
However, the concept of race
continues to have profound social
ramifications for people throughout
the global community.
 SIR EDWARD B. TYLOR
1832-1917
A social evolutionist.
He asserted that the development of religions
from one stage to the next is universal
throughout the world’s cultures:
 ANIMISM: Belief in souls, and that all
things in the world are endowed with a soul.
 TOTEMISM: Religious practices centered
around animals, plants, or other aspects of
the natural world held to be ancestral or
closely identified with a group and its
individuals.
 POLYTHEISM: Belief in more than one,
or many gods.
 MONOTHEISM: Belief in one god.
 TYLOR’S MINIMALIST
DEFINITION OF RELIGION
“BELIEF IN SPIRITUAL BEINGS” – ANIMISM

 Primitive people were rationalists and scientific

philosophers.
 The notion of spirits was not the outcome of irrational
thought.
 Preliterate religious beliefs and practices were not
“ridiculous” or a “rubbish heap of miscellaneous folly.”
 They were essentially consistent and logical, based on
rational thinking and empirical knowledge.
According to Tylor, “ancient savage philosophers”
were impressed by two groups of biological problems:

1) What is it that makes the difference between a living

body and a dead one and what causes sleep, trance,
disease, and death?

2) What are these human shapes which appear in

dreams and visions?

THEIR EXPLANATION:
A spirit or soul, derived from the experience of human
souls or spirits in “dreams and waking hallucinations”
animates lifeless objects such as sticks or stones,
trees, mountains, rivers, etc.
SIR JAMES FRAZER
1854-1941
A Scottish ethnologist.
The Golden Bough (1890-1915):
compares the myths, magical practices,
and religions of the world’s cultures
throughout history.
Frazer developed the social evolutionary
model of:
MAGIC > RELIGION > SCIENCE
He asserted Australian Aborigines were
the most primitive of all because they
practiced only, what he defined their
spirituality as, magic.
 EARLY 20TH CENTURY
ANTHROPOLOGY

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) and Franz Boas (1858-1942) developed

the method of “participant observation,” and lived among other cultures for
extended periods.
They were both emphatically opposed to social evolution.
Anthropology becomes more grounded in cultural relativism.
Anthropologists stop focusing on the origins of religions to:
 How religions spread through DIFFUSION, the mixing of cultural elements from one
society to another through contact over time.
 What FUNCTIONS religions serve in society.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL USE OF
THEORIES OF FUNCTIONALISM
Social institutions function to support
the structure of society and social
needs.
Society functions to become
something greater than the sum total
of its institutional parts.
Stratification and inequity function to
maintain social cohesion.
CRITIQUE: Functionalism is a
macro approach that focuses on the
status quo, and can not adequately
theorize social conflict or change.
 EMILE DURKHEIM’S (1858-1917)
FUNCTIONALIST THEORY OF RELIGION
RELIGIONS GENERATE SOCIAL COHESION.
 BELIEFS: All religious beliefs presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal,
into two opposed groups: the sacred and the profane. This distinction is the
foundation of religions, not sacred spirits.
 The SACRED encompasses the social community.
 The PROFANE encompasses the personal and private.
 RITUALS: Rules of conduct that prescribe how people should behave in the presence
of sacred things, and that reinforce social behaviors:
 POSITIVE: The individual renews her/his commitment to the community.
 NEGATIVE: Reinforces taboos to maintain communal order.
 PIACULAR: Performed during a crisis to repair and solidify the community.

The TOTEMIC PRINCIPLE: He focused on Australian aborigines in which each

clan has a sacred, totemic animal or plant. Totemism provides systems of order and
classification. The totem or “god” of the clan IS the CLAN itself.
THUS: For Durkheim, GOD and SOCIETY are the same:
 Both are superior to individuals
 Individuals depend on both
 All must submit to the rules
 MALINOWSKI’S
FUNCTIONALIST THEORY OF RELIGION

He set out to prove that “savages” were

rational and not the “living fossils” of a
social evolutionary paradigm.
The Trobrianders hunted and gardened
with empirically-honed skills.
They turned to magic when practical
knowledge had reached its limits.
Religion functions in conjunction with
practicality.
His model focuses on how social
institutions serve the biological and
psychological needs of individuals.
HOWEVER, IN THE FOLLOWING QUOTE WE SEE THAT
MALINOWSKI FELT A SENSE OF SUPERIORITY:
“YET it must be remembered that what appears to us an
extensive, complicated, and yet well ordered institution is
the outcome of so many doings and pursuits, carried on by
savages, who have no laws or aims or charters definitively
laid down. They have no knowledge of the total outline of any of
their social structure. They know their own motives, know the
purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them,
but how, out of these, the whole collective institution shapes, this
is beyond their mental range. Not even the most intelligent native
has any clear idea of…organised social construction, still less of
its sociological function and implications...The integration of all
the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis
of all the various, relevant symptoms, is the task of the
Ethnographer...
-- Bronislaw Malinowski, from his classic ethnography,
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
 RADCLIFFE-BROWN’S (1881-1955)
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
Through comparative methods, he
focused on how society functions at the
macro, structural level.
A society’s “fixed” religious beliefs and
practices (those that remain over time)
maintain social order.
This was a time when anthropology was
attempting to validate itself as a science.
Structural processes can be observed and
documented with greater scientific
validity then the psychologically oriented
processes of Malinowski’s model of
functionalism.
MARY DOUGLAS (1921-2007):
SOCIETIES MAINTAIN ORDER THROUGH
FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS,
FOR EXAMPLE WITH RELIGIOUS
MANDATES THAT SPECIFY WHAT IS “PURE”
AND PERMITTED, AND WHAT “POLLUTES”
AND IS TABOO.

VICTOR TURNER (1920-1983):

THE FUNCTION OF RITUALS IS THE VITAL
ROLE THEY PLAY IN MAINTAINING
SOCIAL SOLIDARITY AND COHESION.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
THE MEAD-BLUMER MODEL
A MICRO PERSPECTIVE: “Truth” and “reality” are determined by the
social context in which they are practiced.
MEANING, LANGUAGE, and THOUGHT. These three core principles lead
to the construction of personhood and society, and are elemental to the
individual’s socialization into, and interactions with a community
MEANING: The central element in human behavior. Humans make meaning
and think about and act towards people, creatures, and things based upon the
meanings that humans have given them.
LANGUAGE: Gives humans the ability to negotiate meaning through a
shared communicative symbolic system. Naming and categorizing assigns
meaning – a basis for human society. By engaging in speech acts with others
humans come to identify meaning, and develop discourse--bodies of knowledge
that guide and dictate social life.
THOUGHT: Modifies each individual's experience with and interpretation of
symbols and their meanings. Thought, based on language, is an internal
dialogue that requires role taking, performance, imagining different points of
view, etc. The individual then externalizes these processes through behavior.
 DENZIN’S MODEL:
INTERPRETIVE INTERACTIONISM
Expands upon Mead-Blumer with a late modern “politics of interpretive
interaction”:
 Describe without “fixing” subjects.
 Do not romanticize, obscure, decontextualize, or over theorize subjects.
Position self, emotion, sexuality, ideology, violence, and relations of power
at the center of social inquiry.
Use late modern theories from:
 CULTURAL STUDIES: A focus on social interaction and meaning
making through communication and the media.
 FEMINIST STUDIES: A focus on social interaction as steeped in
gender, class, and experience.
Develop an “oppositional cultural aesthetic” critical of representations, and
aware of inequitable ideologies embedded in their texts.
 INTERPRETIVE/SYMBOLIC
ANTHROPOLOGY
Focuses on the realm of thought, meaning, and ideas.
Defines culture in terms of systems of signs and symbols, and their
meanings.
Humans are suspended in webs of signification that they create for
themselves.
Religion is a cultural system of meanings that explains:
 “Reality” for its adherents
 The meanings of that “reality”
 How people should think, behave, and interact within that “reality.”

CRITIQUES:
 Descriptive and does not lend itself to theoretical formulations.
 Applies to the local and not “bigger pictures” of culture.
 CLIFFORD GEERTZ
(1926-2006)
Geertz focused on interpreting the
symbols that give meaning to
peoples’ lives.
He asserted that anthropologists
must deeply analyze and thickly
describe cultures and their symbols
through the interpretive model in
order to make difference
understandable.
He argued that religions are too
particularistic with regard to events,
individuals, and groups to be
understood through functionalist
theories.
 GEERTZ ON RELIGION AS A
CULTURAL SYSTEM
Geertz’s definition of culture: "a historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms
by means of which men (sic) communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge
about and attitudes toward life.”
Geertz’s theory of religion as a cultural system:
 A symbolic system, religion is a social construct that--through social interaction--
creates reality, and provides people with a blueprint for how to live.
 Generates powerful and lasting moods and motivations in people. The moods are in
and of themselves, and the motivations are directed towards goals.
 Infuses these moods and motivations with the sense that they are uniquely real.
 Provides an overall ordering for existence that gives life meaning, and provides
explanations for why problems and tragedies occur.
 Infuses the overall explanations and ordering for existence with the sense that it is
factual.
 Together, these dynamics seem so powerful to believers that religion becomes the
only sensible explanation for reality. Belief is fortified through ritual, and then taken
into the world to transform it to conform with religion.
 FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY
ANDROCENTRISM: The focus on the men of a community, and
the reliance on men’s opinions and explanations of the roles,
functions, and statuses of women in their community.
In the late 1960s, feminist anthropologists began focusing on
women’s experiences, and women’s roles, statuses, and contributions
to culture and their communities.
Feminist scholarship developed the concept and study of gender as
a culturally constructed analytical category.
Currently feminist anthropologists focus on comparative studies
amongst women.
Feminist approaches to religion and society:
 Critiques of gendered relations of power
 Investigations of pre-Abrahamic Goddess cultures and witchcraft
 How women articulate their agencies with religious structural practices and
processes
 STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Claude Levi-Strauss (he’s currently 100 years old) drew upon structural linguistics to
establish structural anthropology and asserted that people are hard wired to think about the
world in terms of binary opposites—raw and cooked, high and low, inside and outside,
person and animal, life and death, etc.
Binary structures are universal, every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites,
but their contents and meaning differ from culture to culture.
Individual objects and symbols are not important, it is the RELATIONSHIPS between them
that generate meaning.
Religion serves to mediate these oppositions, thereby resolving basic tensions or
contradictions found in cultures.
Culture and society shape people – a macro approach that gives primacy to structural
processes over the individual.
CRITIQUES:
Structural anthropology is synchronic, concentrating on specific cultural junctures not
contextualized with their histories.
It assumes binary thinking is hard wired, or essential to humans, but does not provide a
scientific framework to prove it.
Marxists: Structural anthropology fails to address economies and class struggles.
Feminists: Levi-Strauss focuses on the exchange of women in an uncritical way to support
his theory.
 POST-STRUCTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Post-structuralism emerged as a critique of structuralism, and the array of post-
structural theories are numerous and eclectic.
The post-structural moment occurred when it was recognized that people
participate in the creation of knowledge and power, and are not mere pawns of
cultural and social structural practices and processes.
Post-structuralism asserts that the study of underlying structures is itself a product
of culture, and therefore subject to biases and misinterpretations.
To understand culture, it is necessary to study the systems of knowledge which
produce culture.

THREE BASIC PRINCIPLES:

Meaning is always shifting.
Individuals’ perceptions of meaning is always shifting.
Power attempts to fix meaning, but this is impossible.