Anthropology chpt. 10 + 11

Durkheim

Religion unites people, separates sacred from profane, rituals create group energy, called collective effervescence.

Malinowski

Religion reduces anxiety and gives control when life is risky, rituals “work” by calming fear.

Marx

Religion can justify inequality and keep people focused on the afterlife instead of change now.

Freud

Religion restrains dangerous desires, sets rules through symbols and taboos.

Harris

Some religious rules have practical roots, like protecting useful resources.

Geertz

Religion is a system of symbols that shapes moods and motivates behavior.

Cosmology

Big story of origins and order, explains how the world and people came to be.

Belief in the supernatural

Can be a god, many gods, spirits, or impersonal forces.

Rules of behavior

Moral codes, purity rules, ideas like karma.

Rituals

Repeated actions with meaning and purpose, led by specialists.

Animatism

 A religious system organized around a belief in an impersonal supernatural force.

Animism

a religious system organized around a belief that plants, animals, inanimate objects, or

natural phenomena have a spiritual or supernatural element.

Anthropomorphic

an object or being that has human characteristics.

Cargo cult

a term sometimes used to describe rituals that seek to attract material prosperity. The

term is generally not preferred by anthropologists.

Collective effervescence:

the passion or energy that arises when groups of people share the same

thoughts and emotions.

Cultural appropriation: 

the act of copying an idea from another culture and in the process distort-

ing its meaning.

Filial piety:

a tradition requiring that the young provide care for the elderly and in some cases an-

cestral spirits.

Magic

practices intended to bring supernatural forces under one’s personal control.

Millenarians

people who believe that major transformations of the world are imminent.

Monotheistic

religious systems that recognize a single supreme God.

Polytheistic

religious systems that recognize several gods.

Priests

full time religious practitioners

Profane

objects or ideas are ordinary and can be treated with disregard or contempt.

Prophet

 a person who claims to have direct communication with the supernatural realm and who

can communicate divine messages to others.

Reincarnation

the idea that a living being can begin another life in a new body after death.

Religion

the extension of human society and culture to include the supernatural.

Revitalization rituals: 

 attempts to resolve serious problems, such as war, famine or poverty through

a spiritual or supernatural intervention.

Rite of intensification

actions designed to bring a community together, often following a period

of crisis.

Rite of passage

a ceremony designed to transition individuals between life stages.

Sacred

objects or ideas are set apart from the ordinary and treated with great respect or care.

Shaman

a part time religious practitioner who carries out religious rituals when needed, but also

participates in the normal work of the community.

Sorcerer

an individual who seeks to use magic for his or her own purposes.

Supernatural

describes entities or forces not governed by natural laws.

Zoomorphic

an object or being that has animal characteristics.

Androgyny

cultural definitions of gender that recognize some gender differentiation, but also accept

“gender bending” and role-crossing according to individual capacities and preferences.

Binary model of gender

cultural definitions of gender that include only two identities--male and female

Biological Sex

refers to male and female identity based on internal and external sex organs and chromosomes. While male and female are the most common biologic sexes, a percentage of the human

population is intersex with ambiguous or mixed biological sex characteristics.

Biological determinism

a theory that biological differences between males and females lead to fundamentally different capacities, preferences, and gendered behaviors. This scientifically unsupported view suggests that gender roles are rooted in biology, not culture.

Cisgender

a term used to describe those use identify with the sex and gender they were assigned to at birth.

Dyads

Two people in a socially approved pairing. One example is a married couple.

Gender

the set of culturally and historically invented beliefs and expectations about gender that one learns and performs. Gender is an “identity” one can choose in some societies, but there is pressure in all societies to conform to expected gender roles and identities. 

Gender ideology

a complex set of beliefs about gender and gendered capacities, propensities, preferences, identities, and socially expected behaviors and interactions that apply to males, females, and other gender categories. This can differ among cultures and is acquired through enculturation. Also known as cultural model of gender. 

Heteronormativity

A term coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the often unnoticed system of rights and privileges that accompany normative sexual choices and family formation.

Legitimizing ideologies

a set of complex belief systems, often developed by those in power, to rationalize, explain, and perpetuate systems of inequality.

Matrifocal

groups of related females (e.g mother0 her sisters-their offsprings) from the core of the family and constitute the family’s most central and enduring social and emotional ties.

Matrilineal

Societies where descent or kinship group membership is transmitted through women from mothers to their children (male and female), and then through daughters, to their children, and so forth. 

Matrilocal

a woman-centered kinship group where living arrangements after marriage often center around households containing related women.

Patriarchy

describes a society with a male-dominated political and authority structure and ideology that privileges males over females in domestic and public spheres

Patrifocal

groups of related males (e.g, a father and his brothers) and their male offspring form the core of the family and constitute the family’s most central and enduring social and emotional ties.

Patrilineal

Societies where descent or kinship group membership is transmitted through men, from men to their children (male and female) and then through sons, to their children, and so forth.

Patrilocal

a male centered kinship group where living arrangements after marriage often center around households containing related men

third gender

a gender identity that exists in non-binary gender systems offering one or more gender roles separate from male or female.

Transgender

a category for people who transition from one sex to another, either male-to-female or female-to-male