Be familiar with concepts and examples given in class, films, and book. Chapters 1-4 will be covered.
Four fields of anthropology
What is anthropology?
Comparative
- Universality
- Generality
- Particularity
Holistic
Armchair anthropology
Participant observation
Ethnocentrism
- Emic
- Etic
Cultural relativism
- Methodological cultural relativism
What is culture?
What is a symbol?
Perceiving the world
Religion/Science as epistemology
- Differing questions they ask
Approach to studying religion
- Evolutionary
- Marxist
- Functional
- Interpretive
- Psychosocial
Definitions of religion
- Analytic
- Functional
- Essentialist
Religious performance
Language
- Phonemes
- Syntax
- Semantics
Mayan cosmology
Mayan symbols
Folktales
Legends
Myths
- Origin
- Ex Nihlo
- Creation from Chas
- World parent
- Emergence
- Earth diver
- Flood
- Trickster
- Hero
Elements in a hero myth
- typical characters
- Myth cycle/stages
Rituals
Elements of rituals
- Sets
- Props
- Actors
- Actions
Basics of rituals
- Prescriptive
- Situational
Categories of ritual
- Control over the world
- Intensification
- Protective
- Revitalization
- Divination
- Healing
- Ethno-botany
- Therapy rituals
- Anti-therapy rituals
- Social Control
- Rites of passage
- Coming of age
- Body modification
- Clothing
- Painful procedure to the body
Nacirema beliefs/rituals
Personalistic
Hmong rituals
Hmong in the US
Yanamamo therapy and witchcraft
Liminality
Female/male circumcision
