Theoretical perspective Major assumptions; Functionalism: Religion serves several functions for society. Religion as an Integrative Force 2. He struggles for his survival amidst the uncertainties, insecurities and dangers, Some-times he feels helplessness. Although subject of debate, religion in my view is very well possible without any supernatural beings, as Durkheim has debated in the case of Buddhism. They help us confront and explain death. In the light of social evolutionary models of human development, religious practice was perceived as providing a powerful index of the mental and moral levels of so-called primitive peoples. He struggles for his survival amidst the uncertainties, insecurities and dangers, Some-times he feels helplessness. Religion Anthropology. Durkheim was one of the first thoroughly functionalist thinkers, a man who always tried to discern what sociological functions a certain phenomenon fulfill. ", theorized a linear evolution of religion, from animism to polytheism to monotheism, adopted by Tylor and Frazer; theorizes that religion originates in an attempt to rationally explain the world but ultimately gives way to science, theorized that the natural beauty of the world inspires religion, theorized that desires and fantasies lead to religion, theorized that needs lead to a search for meaning that leads to religion, theorized that familiar relations lead to religion, structural functionalist who theorized that society produces religion because religion supports social systems; did not believe in individualistic religion or naturalistic origin, symbolic interactionalist who defined religion is a system of symbols, defined religion as a system of actions and interactions based upon culturally shared beliefs in sacred supernatural powers, wrote that people who believe in secularization miss the meaning of science; science cannot prove or disprove the superempirical, studied the structuralism of human minds, focusing on myth; believed all cultures share cognitive patterns (for example, binary oppositions), ritual involving the manipulation of religious symbols such as prayers, offerings, and readings of sacred literature, rituals that are required to be performed, rituals that arise spontaneously, frequently in times of crisis, rituals performed on a regular basis as part of a religious calendar, rituals performed when a particular need arises, such as a marriage or a death, rituals that attempt to influence or control nature, hunting and gathering rites of intensification, rituals that influence nature in the quest for food, rituals designed to protect the safety of people engaged in dangerous activities, rituals that seek information about the unknown, healing rituals; rituals that deal with illness, accident, and death, rituals that bring about illness, accident, or death, rituals that serve to maintain the normal functioning of a community, rituals that delineate codes of proper behavior and articulate the community's worldview, rituals that accompany changes in an individual's status in society, rituals that focus on the elimination of alien customs and a return to a native way of life, gifts or even bribes, or economic exchange designed to influence the supernatural, the anthropological study of medicinal plants, each position in a series of positions, each one defined in terms of appropriate behavior, rights and obligations, and relationships to one another, the relative placement of each position in the society, a ceremony whereby a male child becomes a member of the Jewish community, the first phase of a rite of passage, in which the individual is removed from his or her former status, the second step in a rite of passage, during which several activities take place that bring about the change in status, the final phase in a rite of passage, during which the individual reenters normal society, though in a new social relationship, the state of ambiguous marginality during which the metamorphisis takes place during a rite of passage, a state in which there is a sense of equality, but the mere fact that a group of individuals is moving through the process together brings about a sense of community and camaraderie, in many traditional societies, the boys who are initiated together and form very close bonds, a specific status defined by age, such as warrior or elder, the removal of the labia minora along with the clitoris, the removal of the entire clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora and the sewing together of the remnants of the labia majora, leaving a small opening for urination and the passing of menstrual blood, an impersonal supernatural force that is found concentrated in special places in the landscape, in particular objects, and in certain people, a characteristic of most symbols: no direct connection with the thing they refer to, the ability to use symbols to refer to things and activities that are remote from the user, the feature of symbols allowing one to create a new symbol, such as a name, to refer to a new object, has a positive meaning such as prosperity and good luck, but most Americans and Europeans looking at it experience anger or dread, any five-sided figure, but generally used to refer to a five-pointed star, the symbol most clearly associated with Christianity, a word that is derived from the first letter of a series of words, a pipe through which a spirit moves from a tomb into a temple sanctuary during rituals, a religious system focusing on expressions of sacred time and space, the fusion of elements from two different cultures, instruments that are struck, shaken, or rubbed, instruments that incorporate a taut membrane or skin, instruments with taut strings that can be plucked or strummed, hit, or sawed, instruments where air is blown across or into some type of passageway, such as a pipe, the manipulation of supernatural power as a direct means of achieving an end, magic depends on the apparent association or agreement between things, things that were once in contact continue to be connected after the connection is severed, assumes there is a causal relationship between things that appear to be similar, based on the premise that things that were once in contact always maintain a connection, the practice of making an image to represent a living person or animal, which can then be killed or injured through doing things to the image, such as sticking pins into the image or burning it, fertility rituals that function to facilitate the successful reproduction of a totem animal, the belief that signs telling of a plant's medical use are somehow embedded within the structure and nature of the plant itself, an oral text that is transmitted without change; the slightest deviation from its traditional form would invalidate the magic, an object in which supernatural power resides, antisocial magic, used to interfere with the economic activities of others and to bring about illness and even death, a perceived revival of pre-Christian religious practices, techniques for obtaining information about things unknown, including events that will occur in the future, involves some type of spiritual experience such as a direct contact with a supernatural being through an altered state of consciousness, usually possession, more magical ways of doing divination, including the reading of natural events as well as the manipulation of oracular devices, refers to a specific device that is used for divination and can refer to inspiration or noninspirational forms, divination that happens without any conscious effort on the part of the individual, divination that someone sets out to do, such as reading tarot cards or examining the liver of a sacrificed animal, refers to divination through contact with the dead or ancestors, fortuitous happenings, or conditions that provide information, reading the path and form of a flight of birds, refers to chance meeting with an animal, such as a black cat crossing one's path, the examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals, the placing of bones in a fire and reading the patterns of burns and cracks to determine a response, the use of flour (as in fortune cookies) for divination, using a forked stick to locate water underground, the reading of the lines of the palm of the hand, the study of the shape and structure of the head, either fortuitous or deliberate, an altered state of consciousness in which a supernatural being (be it an ancestor, a ghost, a spirit, or a god) communicates through an individual, fortuitous in that the prophet receives information through a vision unexpectedly, without any necessary overt action on the part of the individual, the possession of a medium by a spirit who then speaks through the medium, people who undergo deliberate possession involving an overt action whereby the individual falls into a trance, painful and often life-threatening tests that a person who is suspected of guilt may be forced to undergo, such as dipping a hand into hot oil, swallowing poison, or having a red-hot knife blade pressed against some part of the body, the assumption of a causal relationship between celestial phenomenal and terrestrial ones and the influence that the stars and planets have on the lives of human beings, relatively simple forms of magical thinking that represent simple behaviors that directly bring about a simple result, such as carrying a good luck charm, receives his or her power directly from the spirit world; acquires status and abilities, such as healing, through personal communication with the supernatural during shamanic trances or altered states of consciousness, a central vertical axis that links the middle zone, the upper world, and the lower world; allows the movement of the shaman between the realm of the natural and supernatural, a technique of body movements, or magical passes, aiming to increase awareness of the energy fields that humans are made of, "the near universal methods of shamanism without a specific cultural perspective", focused on an individual, as opposed to the community, often as a self-help means of improving one's life; choose to participate and focus on what they consider the positive aspects of shamanism, as opposed to the traditionally recognized "dark side of shamanism", full-time religious specialists associated with formalized religious institutions that may be linked with kinship groups, communities, or larger political units; given religious authority by those units or by formal religious organizations, participate in activities similar to those of U.S. medical practitioners; may set bones, treat sprains with cold, or administer drugs made from native plants and other materials, specialists in the use of plant and other material as cures; may prescribe the materials to be administered or may provide the material as prescribed by a healer or diviner, someone who practices divination, a series of techniques and activities that are used to obtain information about things that are not normally knowable, a mouthpiece of the gods; communicates the words and will of the gods to his or her community and to act as an intermediary between the gods and the people, refers to individuals who have an innate ability to do evil, not depending on ritual to achieve his or her evil ends but simply willing misfortune to occur, a belief in the gratification of one's desires, a new awareness of something that exists in the environment, occurs when a person, using the technology at hand, comes up with a solution to a particular problem, the apparent movement of cultural traits from one society to another, the process of inventing a new trait through the receiving of an idea of one culture from another, the rapid change experienced by a subordinate culture as traits from a dominant culture are accepted, often at a rate that is too rapid to properly integrate the traits of the dominant culture into the subordinate culture, when the dominated society has changed so much that is has ceased to have its own distinct identity, a fusing of traits from two cultures to form something new and yet, at the same time, permit the retention of the old by subsuming the old into a new form, the dispersion of a people from their homeland, a religious or secular movement to bring about a change in society, manifesting as a result of a reaction to assimilation, develop in societies in which the cultural gap between the dominant and subordinate cultures is vast; these movements stress the elimination of the dominant culture and a return to the past, keeping the desirable elements of the dominant culture to which the society has been exposed, but with these elements now under the control of the subordinate culture, attempt to revive what is often perceived as a past golden age in which ancient customs come to symbolize the noble features and legitimacy of the repressed culture, based on a vision of change through an apocalyptic transformation, believe that a divine savior in human form will bring about the solution to the problems that exist within the society, a belief system among members of a relatively undeveloped society in which adherents practice superstitious rituals hoping to bring modern goods supplied by a more technologically advanced society, a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. 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