Lecture 8

Religion

• Comes form the Latin term religare — “to tie, to bind”

• Sets of shifting sacred beliefs and rituals with dynamic mythological backing that help humans try to understand the universe and their place in it, while in many cases aiding in cultural cohesiveness.

Supernatural

• Events and perceived events that are not readily explained by material means.

• Some anthropologists avoid this term for two reasons:

  • It is seen as ethnocentric — it implies a distinction between sets of events that many cultural groups do not see as being differentiated such as the material and “spiritual” worlds).

  • It is seen as pushing a scientific Western world view on others.

Early Anthropology and Religion

• Religion was believed to evolved in a unilineal fashion from less to more sophisticated forms

• They saw scientific knowledge as the only true knowledge

• Religion was seen as an intellectual stepping-stone towards more sophisticated scientific views.

• It was also believed that by examining religious traditions amongst living “primitive” people the nature of past human religions could be uncovered.

Marx on Religion

• Believed that religion is a human construct — it has no basis in objective reality*.*

• Construct of the ruling class

  • Saw it as a “false consciousness,” a byproduct of their exploitation

• Religion taught people to be deferential to authority, to not question their place in society.

• Marx based his conclusions almost entirely on data from complex state societies.

• Has been faulted for viewing religious beliefs in societies as monolithic and ignoring the fact that all societies feature multiple competing ideological strains.

Functionalist Approaches

• Emphasize the integrative nature of religious practice.

• Malinowski stressed that magic is logical within the context of its practitioner’s informational base and beliefs.

  • It provides a way for people to believe they have some control over an uncertain world

• Researchers have noted that magical beliefs tend to be associated with risky or traumatic endeavors

Mythology and Ideology | Myths and Sacred

• Religious systems features a continually shifting moral baseline.

  • It is informed and represented by mythology — the stories in cultural groups that give identity to their individual participants.

  • In part from myths come the ideologies of a society, the ideas of what it is and should be.

Myth — A sacred story that provides the basis for religious beliefs and practices.

Sacred — The setting of an objects, event, or ideas as being different from the typical everyday world and infusing ti with deeper meaning.

• Myths have a basis in physical reality, but they change and evolve to meet the needs, desires, and hopes of a cultural group as it changes.

• Myths are also where the sacred meets the secular, in their informing of non-religious aspects of a society.

• it has been argues that with the advent of writing the mythological elements of a society become more hardened and cannot evolve as easily to meet the reality of cultural change.

Self Awareness — Basis of Religion?

• Humans are not only alive, but we know we are alive which creates many psychological and emotional issues.

• This perspective has been criticized as being not universal but a relative recent view emerging from the Western tradition and its emphasis on the individual.

  • In many culture there is no such thing as “natural” death — all (human) deaths are believed to be caused by some sort of witchcraft or sorcery.

Proximate Drivers?

• Anxiety and uncertainty (personal comfort).

• The need for community (both in a psychological sense as an adaptive mechanism).

• Reversion to childhood feelings (searching for parental substitutes).

• The need for understanding (to explain events beyong the informational base of a cultural group).

E.B. Tylor and Religion

• Proposed that the first religions arose as a by-products of people attempting to understand events they could not explain through reference to their daily experience.

  • Ancient humans (and living non-industrial peoples) were intrigued with death, dreaming, and trance (possession).

• Religion partially developed out of the attempt to understand these states/events, particularly to account for the images of people and other “beings” that seemed to inhabit these worlds.

  • The concept of the soul came out of these encounters and he saw this as essentially the starting point of religion

  • Called these early religious beliefs animism, from the Latin term anima — soul.

• These ideas were quickly criticized as being too intellectual and ignoring the emotional aspects of religion.

  • It was also though the idea of the soul was too sophisticated to be the starting point for religious behavior.

• Believed that as science developed, religion would fade form human societies

• The term animism has survived, and now usually refers to religious where it is believed that spirits inhabit various material items, from mountains to people to plants and animals, etc.

Animatism

• A term that other early anthropologists proposed that impersonal spirits (or powers —luck, fortune, etc.) preceded the idea of the soul in religious developments

• Animatism has been documented in every society

Mana

• A concept prevalent in many South Pacific Island societies

• Mana is seen as a sacred impersonal force existing throughout the universe

  • Resides in people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects.

• In Melanesia, anyone can obtain mana by working for it or by chance.

• In Polynesia, its distribution is closely tied to political office; chiefs and other high officials (royalty) had more mana than others.

  • Polynesian commoners were often forbidden from touching royalty, using objects touched by them, walking on the ground upon which they had walked, or in some cases even looking at them.

• Mana has served as a powerful tool for explaining events whose material causes were/are not apparent.

  • Similar concepts have been found in many societies (including our own — such as “The Force” in the Star Wars movies).

Cosmologies

• Cultural groups’ cosmologies tend to mimic the socio-political structures of their societies.

  • The relative degrees of stratification and specialization tend to be reproduced in realms beyond the everyday experience

Forager Cosmologies

• Indigenous religions of forager groups tend to be animistic.

• Animist religions are ones where it is believed that spirits/gods inhabit aspects of wild landscapes

  • Whole regions are sometimes seen as being Sacred.

• Animist beliefs are complex and can vary significantly from group to group but there are broad cross-cultural parallels:

  • Largely non-hierarchical cosmologies

  • Spirit world is deeply entwined with ecological processes

  • Feature shamanistic practices

Stratified Religions

• “Temporal” religious structures in economically/politically-stratified societies tend to be similarly stratified

  • Often mirror the general economic/political hierarchies of their overall societies

  • Cosmologies in these societies tend to mimic these structures as well.

    • “Divine” beings are often seen as rulers, not overly different in their behavior than their societies’ rulers — Capricious, largely unaccountable, vastly more powerful than the average person, violent, need to be served and placated, they sit in judgement of individuals, etc.

    • Religious structures are largely decouples from ecological processes

    • Notions of sacred landscapes are largely absent (or greatly reduced)

Magic, Witchcraft, and Practitioners

Magic

• Refers to human actions that attempt to control the “supernatural.”

  • Though associated with tribal groups, such practices exist in the religions found in more complex societies.

• Researchers have often classified practitioners of magic into four categories:

  • Shaman

  • Witches & Sorcerers (Wizards)

  • Mediums

  • Priests

    • Though problematic, these terms are still widely used in the social sciences today.

Shamans

• Term appears to come from Tungus language of Siberia

• Usually refers to a part-time male specialist, often with high status in the community, who is involved in healing.

• Found most often in tribal societies, but they can also exist in more complex cultural groups

• Directly deal with their communities and address their skills to solving specific problems of individuals.

• They are charismatic healers, whose social authority comes form their success — their level of respect is directly connected with their abilities.

Witchcraft

• Anthropologists have traditionally used this term to refer to magical practices that cause harm or have evil intent,

  • This perspective puts anthropologists at odds with many current usages of this term.

• Refers to mental powers — witches “will” harm upon others and their craft relies only lightly on rituals where as sorcery involves the use of potions and other material items and involves more elaborate rituals

  • A whole variety of terms for such practitioners, such as “wizards” and “enchanters” have entered anthropological discourse.

Mediums

• Tend to be part-time practitioners and female

• Go into trances during which they are possessed by spirits

• Both heal and divine the spirit world

• During and after divination they are often described as having tremors, convulsions, seizures, and short-term amnesia

• In popular Western culture, they are often portrayed as being hired to contact deceased loved ones.

• It has been argues that mediums are leftovers from religious practices in earlier simpler cultures

  • Data does not seem to support this: mediums seem to be outgrowths of the complex societies in which they arise.

Priests

• Full-time (most often) male specialists who officiate at public events.

• They have very high status and are often thought to relate to high gods whose actions are beyond the average person’s control.

• Often distinguished from other people through clothing or hairstyle

• Failure of priests to invoke desired outcome from the gods is often blamed on the unworthiness of the people. However, priests are often blamed as well.

(Neo) Pagan Religions

• Prior to the rise of Christianity, European religions were a series of complex, diverse regional belief systems, with equally diverse ritual elements.

• Beyond the Roman and Greek-influenced areas, they were largely based on orally transmitted mythologies.

• Deep antiquity

• Featured numerous deities (often regional)

• Include religious specialists (both full and part-time depending on the situation and society).

• Many elaborate rituals in some cases centered around extensive temple complexes.

  • In many situations, these systems were compatible, in that they had broadly similar mythological underpinnings.

    • Deity counterparts exist in other groups

Wicca

• Nature based religion that sometimes utilizes witchcraft.

Lectures 9 & 10

Traditional Answer For Inequality

• Ethnocentrism — some cultural groups dominate because they are biologically and morally superior (and by extension, culturally superior).

  • There is no scientific evidence to support the former explanation and the latter is indefensible on conceptual grounds

Leslie White

• Believed that culture “evolve” based on the amount of power that is harnessed.

  • Culture + Power = Relative Complexity

  • This has been heavily criticized as being only a description of energy utilization that does not actually explain why cultural complexity arises. Also doesn’t answer why some cultural groups end up harnessing more power than others.

Jared Diamond

• Proposed that human societies have attained their relative complexity and power largely because of local environmental conditions.

  • Regional agricultural potential largely drives this model.

Eurasian Dominance

• Proximate Reasoning:

  • More sophisticated technology, including weaponry.

• Certain societies had “evolutionary advantages” over others, due to their geographic position and related environmental factors.

• Domestication played an important role in Eurasian dominance due to Eurasia’s geographic (east-west) orientation which made the spread of domesticates much easier than in the Americas or Africa.

  • Africa featured few domesticable animals. Australia featured no large land mammals and few native plants that could be domesticated. The only large land mammals in the Americas to be domesticated were the llama and alpaca.

    • Having access to these plants and animals plus their geographic positioning gave Eurasian societies a rich agricultural baseline.

• As a result, Eurasians had advantages in technology, weapons, and in their immune systems over many non-Eurasians.

  • These advantages have led to large-scale population/cultural/language replacements of Indigenous peoples by Eurasian ancestry.

Globalization

• Refers to the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s peoples, regarding the ease and speed of the movements of capital, information, and populations.

  • Largely a technology-driven process.

• These processes have been argued to have been going on since at least the rise of the first Tributary Societies.

  • By the 15th century, the speed of this process has began increasing, in fits and starts, exponentially.

• It is argued that globalization is a continuation of imperialist traditions.

  • Peoples (nations) with greater technological abilities can control and exploit those with lesser technological abilities.

Colonialism

• Refers to some combination of the physical, economic, political, and social control of a sociocultural group by another sociocultural group.

  • Accompanies by forced acculturation and technological diffusion.

  • Practiced primarily by Tributary Societies.

• Colonialist rearrange the societies they control so that they serve the colonial power.

  • Economies are re-designed to reallocate wealth from the colonized to the colonized

    • In some cases, this involved the complete destruction of such peoples (genocide).

European Colonialism

• Differs from earlier colonial enterprises because:

  • It existed on a massive scale, affecting the entire world.

  • It instigated the rapid depopulating and repopulating of entire continents.

  • It culturally and linguistically reconfigured huge swaths of the globe.

  • It is both the instigator and outcome of modern capitalism.

Roman Demise — Speculations

• Prior to the Roman Empire, most areas of Europe were inhabited by comparatively simple agricultural societies.

• With Roman conquest, many of these regions became resource providers and export markets serving Roman power centers.

  • With the demise of the Western Roman Empire, Europe became extremely politically fragmented.

European Reinvention

• Over several hundred years, new competing European power centers emerged.

  • This competition provided the push for technological breakthroughs (often in relation to military activities).

    • It is arguable that this also helped develop military techniques and cultural acceptance of violent conflict and militarism in general.

  • These centers sought to increase their power though trading opportunities and expanding their resources bases.

Types of Capitalism

Merchant

• Based on non-perishable, high-profit luxury items.

  • Less perishable staples such as grains were also important.

    • At times and places slaves were also an important commodity.

• Largely existed to cater to the needs and wants of the elite classes and to help feed city populations.

  • In Europe, by the late Middle Ages, such systems were well established in the Mediterranean (Italian city states, most significantly) and the Low Countries (Netherlands, etc.).

• In this era, modern banking, bookkeeping, and insurance practices begin to emerge.

• Economies were still largely local (almost entirely so for foodstuffs).

  • Relatively few wage laborers were involved

• Aristocratic power was largely unaffected by such activities.

Industrial

• Local subsistence economies began breaking down as they were forced into global trading systems

• Aspects of human life systemically become commodified that never had been so before.

  • Human labor becomes a commodity.

  • Slavery reemerges and becomes focused on commodified agriculture for the first time in history (at least in a large way).

  • Established cities began to grow, and many new ones are founded.

  • Soon factories and mass production of goods would become common.

  • Societies began being redesigned to meet the needs of capital.

World Systems Analysis

• Largely developed in the 1970s by American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.

• Sees social evolution, since at least 1450 A.C.E., as something that can only be understood when viewed in a global context.

  • It attempts to describe and explain the effects of capitalism as it becomes a global system.

• The nodes of power in state societies are urban areas (cities) — they are centers of economic, political, and military power.

• “Core” countries focus on higher skill, capital-intensive production

• The rest of the world, focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production as reservoirs of raw materials.

• In this view, the “World System” is essentially an international (and transnational) division of labor an resources.

  • Countries are generally classifies as being Core, Semi-Periphery, or Periphery.

Mini Systems

• World Systems economically classified most societies in human history (tribes) as “mini-systems".”

• Defined by their reciprocity-based economies

  • Though these societies may have (relatively) extensive trading relationships with outsiders, their economies are largely confined to their home regions.

• European colonialism and the forms of capitalism it engenders systematically dismantle these systems.

  • Such societies are essentially forced into emerging global economic systems.

Late Capitalism

• it has been argued that capitalism has reached its final stages

  • Its ability to grow is being severely curtailed by dwindling resources, lack of new markets, and ecological degradation.

    • “Infinite growth cannot occur on a finite planet.”

• Capitalism is arguably being kept afloat by ever greater public subsidy and rising public and personal dept.

  • Financial manipulations now account for a huge percentage of corporate profits.

    • It has been argued that these are signs of a system turning in on itself as outward expansion slows.

      Inward Turn — Manifestations

      • Further commodification

      • Credit more readily extended and defaulting on debt made more difficult

      • Reduction in investment

      • Wealth extraction from existing aspects of the system.

2008 — A Near Death Experience

• The global economy came within hours of complete meltdown.

  • It was only prevented by the action such as U.S. government pumping trillions of dollars into U.S. and European banks.

  • This “recovery” was sustained by China launching of historically unrepresented building projects (mostly within, but in some cases outside of China).

    • These projects pumped trillions of dollars into the world economy.

• Caused were complex and interrelated.

  • At the cire was a crises in housing, based on subprime mortgaged in the U.S. and Europe

    • Billions of loans were made of people who did not have the ability to pay them back. Those making the loans often misrepresented them — both to those taking out the loans and later parties who bough this debt.

    • Loans were carved up and placed into derivative packages that were sold throughout the world banking systems. Eventually it was realized that banks has massive amounts of debt they could not cover.

      • Inter-bank loan agencies stopped lending to banks. Leaving them responsible for billions of dollars of debt.

Techno-Feudalism

• Coined by Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis to describe current economic trends.

• He sees an increasing small number of mega-corporations dominating an economy based around extractions from the existing system.

  • The trends are for these groups to own/control both intellectual property and the systems that distribute it.

    • Their main investments are in data gathering technologies and analysis distribution systems.

    • This is almost entirely a rentier economy with littler new being creating — it largely redirects assets within the system.

Lecture 11

Musicology and Ethnomusicology

• Musicology was developed in the European world and has become largely based in study of “European art music.”

• Musicology traditionally has studied the technical nature of musical traditions, as well as the history of (largely European) musical forms.

• Includes a branch called “comparative musicology,” which has sometimes gone beyond European traditions, producing important studies of non-Western musical traditions such as those of India, China, and Native America.

• Musicologists have generally not emphasized social roles of music and the feedback between musical and other cultural traditions.

• Comparative Musicology was born out of the interests in regional European musical traditions.

• Such researchers were also spurred by American scholars, who had long been interested in non-European traditions and did not come out of nationalist folk studies.

• This time period also saw the invention of the phonograph (1877), which helped greatly in documenting music in the field.

  • These researchers are best known for their comparative analysis of data on music acquired by diplomats, missionaries, and travelers.

    • Focuses on “five principal issues”

      • Origins of music

      • Musical evolution

      • The distribution of musical styles and paraphernalia

      • Musical style analysis and comparison

      • The classification and measurement of musical phenomena, such as pitch, scales, and instruments.

• Ethnomusicology developed at the end of World-War II and comes from comparative musicology.

• Continued the study of the music falling outside of codified European musical traditions.

• Concentrated more on music within cultural contexts (holistic studies).

• Though it is still most often housed in music departments, Ethnomusicology is not considered a sub-field of Musicology.

• Closely associated with anthropology and like anthropologists in general, ethnomusicologists emphasize fieldwork and cultural relativism.

• Early ethnomusicologists emphasized musical traditions within a single group (following the lead of Boas — Historical Particularism).

  • Later, they began to emphasize cross-cultural trends and especially the diffusionary aspects of modern music.

Ancient Greece

• Greek thinkers consistently saw music as having profound spiritual and social significance.

• Pythagoras, for example, believed that the cosmos were based on ratios of small whole numbers.

  • Musical intervals (such as the octave and the perfect fifth) were representative of these numbers. It was therefore believe that music was an important part of (and a window into) the basic nature and meaning of the cosmos. This idea is present in many cultures both past and present.

• Plato believed the different modes (intervallic arrangements of notes derived from a parent scale) affected human behavior differently, often in profound ways.

  • He thought certain modes promoted (what he saw as) positive social behavior. Others he saw as encouraging dangerous anti-social behavior. Because of this, he stated in The Republic and The Laws (etc.) that governments should outlaw certain modes.

Global Music and Nationalism

• Until the European Renaissance, most scholars commented only on the music of their own cultures. With European colonialism came an interest in the musical traditions of other peoples.

• Later, Enlightenment philosophy, which stressed the acquisition of “universal knowledge” free of dogma, contributed to this interest.

  • Early studies by Europeans of non-European musical traditions include Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s publications of his notations of Chinese and Native American music and jurist-linguist Sir William Jones’ commentaries on Indian Classical music.

• An outgrowth of the Romantic movement was the idea that ethnic groups should each have their own nation-states.

  • Folk traditions were seen as revealing the true nature of an ethnic group.

  • Folklorists began documenting stories, music, and other cultural practices in Europe;s rural areas.

    • Though folklorists often made erroneous assumptions concerning the antiquity and developmental processes of these traditions, much important data was gathered.

      • This helped lead to “revivals” of folk traditions. By the 1960s, they were having large impacts on music and European-based art and culture in general.

Modern Modal Music

• Refers to movements in regions with non-harmonic music to revive and expand (both musically and geographically) these traditions.

• Regional traditions are being blended and musicians from different parts of the world are regularly playing together.

Harmony

• Refers to the simultaneous playing or singing of more than one note.

Non-Harmonic Music

• Refers to musical traditions that lack formal harmony. Today can be found in large sections of Asia, North Africa, parts of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean — known as “The Modal Swath.”

• Feature intricate melodies drawn from complex modes.

• Enharmonic traditions are common.

• Textures created by multiple instruments playing sometimes complex variation off melodies functionally “fill space” occupies by harmony in Western music.

  • Bowed and plucked instruments with sympathetic strings often are important parts of these traditions.

Modes

• A series of notes derived from a parent scale. They have existed in Western music since ancient times and play important roles in many traditions today. They are far less developed than those found in modal music of regions such as India, Turkey and the Arab-speaking world.

Sympathetic and Drone Strings

• Strings that are turned to specific pitches but are not directly played. The vibrations from strings that are played cause these strings to resonate, creating semi-controlled de facto harmonies.

• These types of instruments are common in many non-harmonic music traditions where Drone strings are played, but pitch is not altered.

Ross Daly

• An Irishman born in the U.K. and raised there, Canada, California, and Japan. He considers himself to have no nationality.

• Studied Classical guitar at Stanford and while there, saw performance of Indian modal music, causing him to completely reorient himself as a musician.

  • Upon finishing his degree, he traveled throughout Eurasia, North Africa, and Eastern Europe studying modal music traditions. He has learned to play many instruments, including the Cretan lyra, saz, oud, lavta, rebab, and sitar. Later, he invented new instruments, inspired by ancient ones such as the lyra with sympathetic strings and the tarhu.

  • Traveled to Crete in 1975 and realized that musically it was at a crossroads where non-harmonic and harmonic musical traditions met. He has based himself in Greece ever since. By the late 1970s, he was regularly recording and playing live with musicians from both Greece and around the world, creating what he calls “Modern Modal Music.”

  • Founded “Labyrinth,” a performance space and workshop for the teaching of modal musical traditions in the 1980s in Athens, Greece.

    • Labyrinth attracts teachers and students from around the globe and has helped spread modal musical traditions far beyond their home bases. Former students of Daly have opened Labyrinths in Spain, Italy, Cyprus, and Toronto, Canada.

Early Blues

• Emerges in the southern United States form the integration of Sub-Saharan African (and in some cases, North African and other areas of the Mediterranean) and European folk music traditions.

  • During slavery, enslaved people only occasionally had access to formal musical instruments. Vocal music *such work songs, “field hollers” and spirituals) was common. This music was creating by adapting, structural elements (both melodic and rhythmic) from African traditions that had been preserved.

• In the decades after slavery ended, Black and white folk musical traditions featured many commonalities that would alter be lost (or diminished). Melodies (often based on British and Irish tunes) were shared, and African elements found their way into white folk traditions.

  • Black and white folk music of this period also employed nearly identical instrumentation. Common instruments included:

    • Banjos (partially African derived)

    • Violins (fiddles)

    • Mandolins

    • Harmonicas

    • Steel-string guitars

Minstrel Shows

• Traveling shows, which featured musicians, dancers, comedians, magicians, and novelty acts. They brought entertainments to rural areas in the eras before film, radio, or recorded music.

• Many talented Black performers were featured (including those in a small number of all-Black troupes). These shows helped bring urban music to rural areas and in general introduced audiences and musicians to the musical style of regions other than their own. Music ranged from big-band tunes, opera to pop hits to comedic songs to traditional ballads and beyond.

Birth of the Blues

• Elements that are considered definitional to blues music most likely existed by at least the late 1900s.

• By the World-War I era (and likely earlier), blues songs were surely being played in many areas of the south.

  • At this time in the south, blues was just one of many commonly played folk genres and perhaps was not even considered a distinct musical form.

Blues Structures

• Early blues were often based on three chords — the I-IV-V progression.

  • Dominant 7th chords are common, including the tonic chord (which is unusual in western music).

  • Early blues shifted the number of bars played, as well as when chord changes occurred.

• Melodies were often created from minor pentatonic scales, often played in conjunction with major chords. (Major pentatonic scales and the Mixolydian mode were also routinely employed.)

• Most songs were written in 4/4 time (with other time signatures such as 2/3 and 6/4 commonly dropped in for short periods). Within these time signatures, the music is high varied rhythmically.

Blues Notes

• Generally refers to notes that are lower in pitch than would be expected. In blues (and jazz) music, it generally refers to notes added to scales such as minor pentatonic between the 4th and 5th degree.

  • The result is often called the “Blues Scale.” The addition of these notes means the Blues Scale falls outside of the definition of a scale in Western music. The way these notes are used in these types of music are unprecedented in world music.

Open Tunings

• Refers to tunings where if all strings are played unfretted, a chord is produced.

• Perhaps began as a translation of banjo tunings to the guitar. Others have argued the drone effects of these tunings may hearken back to African music.

Slides

• Many players employ slides, which are usually made of metal, glass, or ceramics. Another term for this style is bottleneck playing, because in the past, many players literally used the sawed-off neck of a bottle as their slide.

• Instead of fretting the notes, the strings are damped with the slide and the player often slides from note to note. This allows for the playing of enharmonic notes.

  • This method of playing may have arisen near simultaneously and independently in the American South and Hawai'i as there is significant evidence that it emerged in Hawai'i first.

Mississippi Delta

• Blues developed in many regions of the south but it is often seen as crystalizing in the Mississippi delta region. This large, rich alluvial plain would ultimately become one of the world’s most productive cotton growing regions (long after slavery ended).

• Until roughly the time of World-War I, this area was largely unpopulated by humans. It featured extensive swamps and large numbers of dangerous wild animals such as pears, pumas, wolves, crocodiles, and venomous snakes. It was also very hot and filled with malaria-bearing mosquitos and regularly flooded.

• In the early 20th century, the Army Core of Engineers built levees and other flood-control features, which opened the area for larger scale human colonization. Eventually, huge cotton plantations were founded. These farms required huge amounts of labor and many Black folk migrated there in search of opportunity.

• Musicians also came, bringing folk styles from throughout the south. These styles began to blend and inspire musical innovations. The region would produce important artists such as Charley Patton, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Robert Johnson.

Textbook

Chapter 3

Dogma/Orthodoxy

• A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true; Authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice.

Myth

• Important components of religious traditions are myths: stories that recount how various aspects of the world came to be the way they are.

• Malinowski emphasized that in order to understand why myths have the content they do and how that content changes over time, one must understand the social beliefs and practices of the people who tell them.

• Lévi-Strauss on the other hand, while not denying Malinowski’s observations, showed that the very structures of mythic narratives are meaningful and worth studying int heir own right.

• Marisol de la Cadena emphasizes that taking mythic narratives seriously may require ethnographers to struggle when attempting to translate them into terms acceptable for Western audiences. If they genuinely aim to respect an alternative ontology that the myth tellers take for granted, ethnographers will need to resist the temptation to reduce these alternative assumptions to “beliefs” whenever they fail to coincide with foundational assumptions of Western Enlightenment ontology.

• Myths that explain the creation of the world, particular features of the landscape, or human beings are often called origin myths.

Ritual

• Anthropologists use this term to identify certain repetitive social practices, many of which have nothing to do with religion.

• A ritual is composed of a sequence of symbolic activities, set off from the social routines of everyday life, recognizable by members of the society as a ritual, and closely connected to a specific set of ideas that are often encoded in myth.

  • What gives rituals their power is that participants assert that the authorization for the ritual comes form outside themselves — from the state, society, God, the ancestors, or “tradition.”

• One particular kind of ritual has drawn considerable attention form anthropologists: the rite of passage, which occurs when one or more members of a society are ritually transformed form one kind of social person into another. Rites of passage often are initiations into adulthood when girls are made women or boys are made men; but they may also mark marriages, the birth of children, or funerals.

  • Rites of passage regularly follow a three-part sequence. The second transitional stage of the ritual was particularly significant for anthropologist Victor Turner, who referred to it as the liminal period. This refers to what Turner noted as when people are on the threshold, they are “betwixt and between",” neither in nor our. In rites of passage, the symbolism associated with the transitional period often expresses that ambiguity: It is described as being in the womb, being invisible, being in the wilderness, or as death.

Revitalization

• A deliberate, organized attempt by some members of a society to create a more satisfying culture.

  • Movements often arise in times of crisis, most often among groups facing oppression and radical transformation, usually at the hands of outsides (e.g. colonizing powers).

Azande Witchcraft

• A belief that comes from the Azande people of Central Africa. It involves the performance of evil by human beings believed to possess an innate, nonhuman, “witchcraft substance” than can be activated without the individual’s awareness.

  • It is circumstantial.

• For the Azande, witchcraft tends to explain misfortune when other possibilities have been discounted. For example, if a good potter carefully prepares his pots and fires them as he always does, but they still break, he will attribute his misfortune to witchcraft, and his neighbors will probably believe him. But if a careless potter is sloppy when firing his pots and they break, he may claim that witchcraft was the cause — but no one who knows him will believe it.

• Evans-Pritchard showed that the entire system of Azande beliefs and practices concerning witchcraft, oracles, and magic was perfectly rational if one assumed accident. For example, when someone falls very ill or dies, the Azande assume that the person has been bewitched. But the Azande are not helpless because they know they can consult oracle who will help them pinpoint the witch responsible. Once the oracle has identifies the witch, they can send a ritual message to the accused witch, who can offer a ritual reply that will stop the witchcraft if indeed he (it is usually a man) has been the cause of it. If the bewitched person dies, however, the next step is to obtain vengeance magic, which can be used to seek out the witch responsible and kill him.

Secularism

• Secularism is broadly defined as the separation of religion and state. Anthropologist John Bowen points out that secularism is used today in three different ways:

  • First, it refers to how modern states define and regular the place of religious bodies and religious discourse in political processes.

  • Second, it refers to a process called secularization, in the course of which social rules distinct form others. For instance, the institution of the state increasingly distinguished from religious institutions and from the family, and each becomes a separate form of organization with its own rules and regulations.

  • Third, secularization can also refer to the decline of religion, either in the sense that social life is less controlled by religious practices or in the sense that individuals love their faith in the existence of religious truth or in the existence of religious beings.

• Sometimes secularism is used to refer to a decline in people’s allegiance to organized religions. In a contemporary state, the commitment to secularism has the potential to place all religion on an equal footing. The state may protect free exercise of religion to a greater or lesser degree, but it endorses the teaching of no religion in particular.

Fundamentalism

• A term initially applied to a movement in some denominations of Protestant Christianity that promoted a return to what they understood to be the “fundamentals” of their faith. Over time, fundamentalism has increasingly been used to refer to movements stressing their followers take to be the “fundamentals” of extremist forms of ideology.

Chapter 10

Neocolonialism

• Refers to the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies.

Cultural Imperialism

• Refers to the extension of the influence of dominance of one nation’s culture over others, now usually through the exportation of cultural commodities such as film, music, etc.

  • In other words, cultural imperialism is a situation in which the ideas and practices of one culture are imposed on other culture, which may be modified or eliminated as a result.

• The notion of cultural imperialism denies agency to non-Western people who make use of Western cultural forms. It also ignores the fact that many non-Western cultural forms have been adopted by members of Western societies (e.g., sushi). Finally, it ignores the fact that cultural forms sometimes bypass the West entirely as they move from one part of the world to another (e.g. movies from India have been popular in Africa for decades).

Internal Colonialism

• Refers to the uneven effects of economic development on a regional basis, otherwise known as “uneven development” as a result of the exploitation of minority groups within a wider society which leads to political and economic inequalities between regions within a state.

• “In places where European settler colonies eventually broke from Europe, as in North, Central, and South America, anthropologists often speak of internal colonialism imposed on indigenous peoples within the borders of independent states.”

Nationalism

• Refers to colonial leaders claiming that colonized peoples, like other “nations” of the world, had a right to political self-determination: that is, they were entitled to become independent nation-states.

• A view that is ethnocentric in its core.

NGOs

• A non-governmental organization or non-governmental organization is an organization that generally is formed independent from government.

Neoliberalism

• Neo-liberalism is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War.