Anthropology of Religion
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Course Introduction
Anthropology of Religion explores the diverse religious beliefs, practices, and institutions found across cultures and historical periods. This course examines how religion shapes and is shaped by social, political, and economic forces, utilizing ethnographic case studies and theoretical frameworks from both anthropology and religious studies. Students will analyze topics such as myth, ritual, symbolism, shamanism, magic, and religious change, while considering the role of religion in constructing identity, social cohesion, and conflict. Through critical engagement with global perspectives, learners gain a nuanced understanding of the ways in which religious systems influence and reflect broader cultural patterns.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology 11th Edition by
Serena Nanda
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Chapter 1: Anthropology and Human Diversity
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Q1) Anthropologists only study contemporary,living peoples.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) In Anthropology,the concept of race:
A)Has been found to be inadequate for scientifically meaningful classification of humans.
B)Has great scientific utility but no political implication.
C)Is agreed on by both biological and cultural anthropologists to be very useful in analyzing human behavior.
D)Is outmoded as there are no patterned biological differences in the human species.
E)Is no different from racism.
Answer: A
Q3) Why does the current Code of Ethics raise concerns for those anthropologists working under conditions of violence?
Answer: In these cases,an anthropologist often must work in a less visible and more coded manner.Fieldnotes,for example,may need to be very protected and encrypted in order to protect not only the informants,but also the anthropologist.
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Chapter 2: Doing Cultural Anthropology
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Q1) Anthropologists have become more sensitive to issues of voice and of power and have begun to reflect more critically on their role as observer in another culture primarily as a result of:
A)Reflectionist ethnology.
B)Franz Boas.
C)Feminist anthropology.
D)Collaborative ethnography.
E)Postmodernism.
Answer: E
Q2) What are the primary reasons that anthropological research has had such a bias against women during its history?
Answer: Women's lives have been less public than men's;men's lives have usually had more political importance and been seen as more important overall;and most anthropologists have been men and thus had little access to women's lives.
Q3) What is an "IRB"?
Answer: It is the Institutional Review Board,which is a committee organized by a university or other research institution to approve,monitor,and review all research involving human subjects.
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Chapter 3: The Idea of Culture
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Q1) The Ju'hoansi people of Nambia are an example of how the spread of AIDS is influenced by:
A)Environmental conditions.
B)Government prevention programs.
C)Economic conditions.
D)An increase in sex work.
E)Religious extremism.
Answer: C
Q2) From the perspective of ecological functionalism,the Hindu taboo on eating beef is:
A)Irrational.
B)Symbolic of other types of relationships in society.
C)Adaptive to the long-run conditions of drought and crop shortages in India.
D)Based on a conscious understanding of ecological anthropology by Indians.
E)Maladaptive in India,considering the large numbers of people who do not have enough to eat.
Answer: C
Q3) __________ is the movement of cultural traits from one society to another.
Answer: Diffusion.
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Chapter 4: Communication
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Questions
Q1) Researchers who study interpersonal space generally refer to three different ranges of space.They are:
A)Friendly distance,antagonistic space,neutral space.
B)Intimate distance,personal distance,and social distance.
C)Built space,social distance,and personal distance.
D)City space,peri-urban space,and rural space.
E)Fixed space,negotiated distance,and individual space.
Q2) What success did Dr.Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have in teaching sign language to the bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi?
Q3) A fundamental principle of language is that:
A)The more phonemes a language has,the more different ideas can be expressed in it.
B)The more material goods a culture has,the more talkative its members will be.
C)Oppressed groups rarely contribute words to the language of their oppressors.
D)Language always reflects the history of those who use it.
E)The more primitive a culture,the more likely its members are to be dependent on senses such as smell and hearing rather than language.
Q4) Define sociolinguistics and give an example of it.
Q5) What is AAVE,and how is it related to social stratification?
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Chapter 5: Making a Living
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Q1) Today,only a very small percentage of the world's people live by foraging.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Describe the Maasai practice of "drought reserve."
Q3) Why did the American beef industry experience a boom after World War II?
Q4) A critical form of cultural knowledge typically passed from fathers to elder sons in Maasai society is:
A)Hunting techniques in a marginal environment.
B)Environmental knowledge and how livestock is moved.
C)Market trade and economic partners.
D)Traditional healing techniques.
E)Means of contacting the supernatural and asking for abundance.
Q5) What is the environmental impact of horticulture versus agriculture as subsistence strategies? Examine each subsistence system and then provide examples of environmental impact for each.
Q6) Name the three basic criteria of each subsistence strategy.
Q7) How is pastoralism different from ranching?
Q8) What are the primary steps in swidden cultivation?
Q10) How is agriculture different from horticulture? Page 7
Q9) What are the five basic subsistence strategies that anthropologists recognize?
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Chapter 6: Economics
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Q1) Kluckhohn showed when the Navajo traded with outsiders:
A)They were extremely careful to be honest and fair.
B)They engaged in silent trade,placing the goods they wanted to trade in the open and accepting whatever their trading partners gave.
C)They were particularly interested in jewelry and less interested in money.
D)It was considered morally acceptable to deceive.
E)They generally got taken.
Q2) Economics is defined as:
A)The study of financial fluctuations within a particular society.
B)The study of the ways in which the choices people make combine to determine how their society uses resources for production and distribution.
C)The study of the interaction between culture,politics,and finances.
D)The study of how the financial market influences a society's financial and cultural elements.
E)The study of activities that affect distribution,exchange,and consumption.
Q3) All individuals living in a capitalist society must participate in this economic system.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 7: Kinship
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Q1) The term transmigrant has been coined to refer to immigrants who cut ties with their home countries.
A)True
B)False
Q2) When a daughter marries in Minangkabau society,where does she go to live?
A)Into her family's "big" house.
B)Into her husband's family's "big" house.
C)Into a new big house that she and her husband build.
D)Into her father's mother's house.
E)The newly married couple goes to live with her cross cousins.
Q3) The Eskimo system singles out the biologically closest group of relations and treats more distant kin more or less equally.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How is kinship a socio-cultural construct and not a biological one? Discuss the ways that biology and culture interact and overlap in kinship systems.
Q5) In North India,the kinship system uses bifurcation.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 8: Marriage, family, and Domestic Groups
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Q1) In most cases,in pre-modern societies,the elderly are respected:
A)When they have wealth,power,and descendents.
B)To a far greater extent than in most modern societies.
C)But only after they have grandchildren.
D)If they are male.If they are female,not so much.
E)Because they control access to land and water.
Q2) How is dowry different from bridewealth?
Q3) The "cultural defense" is not considered a mitigating circumstance in U.S.courts. A)True
B)False
Q4) Marriage is the way most societies arrange for the products and services of men and women to be exchanged and for the care of children.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Among the Na of China,romantic love is considered more important and long lasting than family love.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What is a blended family?
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Chapter 9: Gender
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Q1) Despite the many difficulties they face,dagongmai continue to work in factories because:
A)They rarely have any other choices.
B)Their parents or husbands demand that they do so.
C)The life of a dagongmai is often better than it would be if the person had remained in their village.
D)They usually have large debts that they must pay off.
E)They believe that such work is their best way of finding a mate.
Q2) An important source of status for women in Nukumanu was:
A)Drinking kareve.
B)Controlling swamp taro lands.
C)Weaving.
D)Fishing.
E)Wage labor.
Q3) Among foragers such the Ju'/hoansi the idea of maleness is associated with prestige in a different way.Describe how ridicule and shaming are used to diminish prestige in this society.
Q4) How is the hijab a symbol of the complexity of gender relations cross-culturally?
Q5) Describe gender relations in foraging societies.
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Chapter 10: Political Organization
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Q1) Name the three social levels of a state society.
Q2) A conflict theory of the origin of the state emphasizes:
A)The emergence of centralization of power as a response to the emergence of an elite class that protects its power and privileges.
B)The rise of the state because of the need to organize manpower for irrigation projects.
C)The invention of the idea of the state in ancient Egypt and its diffusion to other parts of the world.
D)The increase of sophisticated military weaponry that developed after the Industrial Revolution.
E)The ways in which modern states are torn apart by conflict.
Q3) Which of the following best describes ethnic conflicts?
A)They are based on age-old hatreds and grievances.
B)They almost always come down to personality clashes between individuals.
C)They are shaped by politics,economics,and history.
D)Because of their nature,they can rarely be successfully mediated.
E)They are almost always based on shared misunderstanding.
Q4) What is the Asantehene?
Q5) What is the nation-state?
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Chapter 11: Stratification
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Q1) What is meant by "downward mobility"?
Q2) In a capitalist society,wealth is always a source of prestige.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Compare and contrast a functionalist and conflict approaches to the understanding of stratification.
Q4) It was estimated in 2010 that approximately how many foreign-born residents were living in countries around the world?
A)78 million.
B)134 million.
C)214 million.
D)527 million.
E)716 million.
Q5) The opportunities that people have to fulfill their potential in society is known as:
A)Social stratification.
B)Social mobility.
C)Life chances.
D)Arbitrariness.
E)Life exchanges.
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Chapter 12: Religion
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Q1) Which of the following correctly describes the Classical Mayan priesthood?
A)They spent their time in prayer and meditation.
B)Their key role was as healers of the sick.
C)They took vows of poverty and chastity.
D)They were not considered to be particularly important by the aristocracy.
E)They used drugs and pain rituals to reach ecstatic states.
Q2) Describe the three stages of a rite of passage.
Q3) The rituals of the Native American Church are based on the revival of a peyote religion that was common throughout North America in the 17 and 18 centuries.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Under what conditions do we expect to find the emergence of syncretic religions?
Q5) Compare and contrast witchcraft and sorcery.
Q6) Members of Melanesian cargo cults believe that the material wealth of whites was the result of their secret magical knowledge.
A)True
B)False
Q7) What is a millenarian movement?
Q8) Name three symbols significant to the Rastafarian movement.
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Chapter 13: Creative Expression: Anthropology and the Arts
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Q1) Among the Toraja,what is the tongkonan?
Q2) Museums are very specific areas of graphic representation.Consider various types of museums that you have visited and how this relationship to art is different from that in smaller indigenous societies.
Q3) As the example of the Toraja of Indonesia demonstrates,in many indigenous cultures,art has now become:
A)A luxury.
B)A leveler of class differences.
C)A commodity.
D)Separated from cultural identity.
E)Widespread among the people within the society.
Q4) Frida Kahlo is an artist best known for the political content of her work.
A)True
B)False
Q5) European artists were rarely concerned with representing non-Europeans in their art. A)True
B)False
Q6) How do anthropologists define art?
Q7) Orientalism is often described as a European intellectual movement.What is it?
Page 16
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Chapter 14: Power, conquest, and a World System
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Q1) Which of the following experienced the most radical change following European colonization?
A)The Belgian Congo.
B)Yemen.
C)India.
D)The Dutch East Indies.
E)The Americas.
Q2) One thing that separates the Western expansion from empire building by previous peoples is:
A)The use of slavery.
B)The brutal exploitation of native populations.
C)The formation of colonies controlled by distant powers.
D)The widespread use of pillage.
E)The scale of the enterprise.
Q3) What were two functions of taxation in European colonies?
Q4) Describe the ways that education and taxation were used in colonization in the 19th century.How did these institutions work for the benefit of colonial governments?
Q5) What are the primary advantages of a joint stock company?
Q6) What is corvee labor?
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Chapter 15: Culture, change, and the Modern World
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Q1) John Grey,a critic of Thomas Friedman's notion that the world is flat,argues that:
A)Friedman downplays the role of race in understanding wealth and poverty.
B)Friedman does not fully realize the potential of the internet to transform relationships among people.
C)Friedman overstates the degree to which trade and communication promote peace and stability.
D)Friedman does not understand the degree to which current conflicts express ancient ethnic hatreds.
E)Friedman does not understand the degree to which the current world is the result of imperialism and colonialism.
Q2) What are the key problems faced by the world today? What roles can anthropologists play in their solutions?
Q3) Based on her study of the favela of Olinda,Mary Kenny argues that ending child labor will help to end poverty.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Describe the ambiguous position of the Norwegian government toward the Saami herders.
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