Religion, Magic and Symbolic Anthropology
Anthropology of religion studies beliefs, rituals, magic, symbolism and myth comparatively. The exam expects definitions, classical theories and a Kerala ritual example.
Concepts and theories
- Animism: Tylor's minimum definition of religion-belief in spiritual beings.
- Animatism/mana: impersonal supernatural force (Marett; mana in Melanesia).
- Totemism: Durkheim's analysis of clan emblems as representations of society.
- Magic: Frazer divided it into imitative (like produces like) and contagious (things once in contact remain connected); magic is coercive, religion is supplicatory.
- Taboo: prohibited persons, objects or actions.
- Ritual: patterned symbolic action; rites of passage (Van Gennep) have separation, liminality and reaggregation; Turner developed liminality and communitas.
- Symbolic anthropology: Geertz reads religion as a system of symbols.
Kerala example
Theyyam in northern Kerala is a ritual performance in which a possessed specialist embodies a deity, with drumming, costume and offerings. Analytically, it is a ritual with clear separation (preparation), liminal possession, and return to ordinary life; it also expresses caste, kinship and village relations.
Worked example
A person sticks a nail into a footprint to harm the person who made it. This is contagious magic, because the footprint is treated as having retained contact with the victim. If instead a doll is pierced while naming the victim, that is imitative magic. The reasoning rests on Frazer's two principles, not on whether the practice works.
Traps
Do not equate magic with religion; do not attribute animism to Tylor and mana to Frazer; avoid the evolutionist ladder from 'primitive' to 'civilised'; ritual is not meaningless-it has social and symbolic functions.