Anthropology of Religion

Glazier, Stephen D.

doi:10.4135/9781412952453.n39

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Anthropologists have repeatedly noted that there has been little theoretical progress in the anthropology of religion over the past fifty years. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] By the 1960s, Geertz 2 had pronounced the field dead. Recently, however, evolutionary researchers have turned their attention toward understanding the selective pressures that have shaped the human capacity for religious thoughts and behaviors, and appear to be resurrecting this long-dormant but important area of research.…”

Section: What Is Religion?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Sosis

Alcorta

2003

Evolutionary Anthropology

544

351

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Many challenges confront evolutionary scholars of religion. The origins and adaptive value of religion and the conditions that selected for its evolution are difficult to discern. Patterns of religious behavior, like other areas of human social behavior, have undergone significant change over our evolutionary history. Evans-Pritchard 1 argued that dramatic historical changes in religious behavior render it impossible to generalize across categories of religions such as tribal, chiefdom, and contemporary world religions. Evolutionary theories of religion, however, necessarily assume that the relevant behaviors can be generalized across time and space. Moreover, the multiple roles and complex functions of religion render it difficult to capture within a single theoretical approach. Indeed, examining the origins of religion, the development of religious institutions, the ecological determinants of religious behavior, and whether religion is currently adaptive constitute separate areas of inquiry requiring different methodological tools. Even when analyses are restricted to a specific time and place, there is an extensive range of phenomena that fall under the rubric of religion, including myth, ritual, taboo, symbolism, morality, altered states of consciousness, and belief in noncorporeal beings. Concomitantly, there is enormous crosscultural variability within any one of these phenomena.Religious behaviors often entail significant proximate costs, such as time, energetic, and material costs, as well as physical and psychological pain, that appear to be greater than any derived benefits. Consequently, religious behavior poses a genuine challenge for those who employ optimization, rational choice, or other egoisticbased models to explain human behavioral variation. Researchers have sought to unravel this dilemma by positing somatic, reproductive, and psychological benefits conferred by religious behaviors on their practitioners that could outweigh these costs. Realized benefits include improved health, survivorship, economic opportunities, sense of community, psychological well-being, assistance during crises, mating opportunities, and fertility (see Reynolds and Tanner 27 for a review). Various scholars have independently concluded that religious communities are able to offer many of these benefits because religions solve significant communication problems inherent in human life. 28 -31 Although our understanding of how religion solves such problems is still incomplete, recent theoretical and empirical findings offer intriguing clues to religion's evolution and efficacy. WHAT IS RELIGION?While there are countless definitions of religion in the anthropological literature, 6,32,33 belief in the supernatural (that is, noncorporeal beings) Richard Sosis is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His current research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. He has conducted fieldwork on Ifaluk Atoll in the Federated States...

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Section: What Is Religion?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Sosis

Alcorta

2003

Evolutionary Anthropology

544

351

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In modern popular culture, a religion can be defined in many ways, causing the publishers of standard dictionaries no end of headaches as they attempt to keep up with ever‐changing cultural assumptions. Among the academics, each school of thought produces its own definition of religion (Glazier 1999; Braun & McCutcheon 2000; Hinnells 2005). All such definitions would have been regarded as irrelevant by an ancient people whose lives involved an integration of worldview, ethos, and the struggle for existence in an environment indifferent to their presence.…”

Section: Controversial Questions: Who Was a Canaanite? What Is Camentioning

confidence: 99%

Canaanite Religion

Noll

2006

Religion Compass

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Canaanite religion" is a controversial term because the Bible and some religious scholars distinguish between Canaanite and Israelite religions. However, biblical and archaeological data suggest that Israelite religion was one local variety of the larger, regional Canaanite religion. Canaanite religion is the religion of all peoples living on the eastern Mediterranean seaboard prior to the Common Era. The gods and the myths in this region display some stable characteristics, yet evolved new details and changing divine relationships throughout ancient times. At the center of Canaanite religion was royal concern for religious and political legitimacy and the imposition of a divinely ordained legal structure, as well as peasant emphasis on fertility of the crops, flocks, and humans. I. Sources for the Study of Canaanite ReligionANCIENT SOURCES Archaeological excavations have exposed Canaanite household religious shrines, personal religious artifacts such as amulets, rural religious shrines, large urban temples with public altars, ritual utensils and divine statues, as well as documents. Religious documents from ancient Canaan range from stone inscriptions to personal correspondence on broken pottery. In one important case, an archive of ancient clay writing tablets has been recovered. These tablets from a city called Ugarit contain poetic narrative myths, lists of the gods, and descriptions of rituals. The Bible is another significant literary resource, as well as texts from various sites such as Emar. Although the ancient literature is valuable, almost all ancient peoples were illiterate and therefore did not read these documents, which were composed by and for the wealthy. The documents depict the religious beliefs and rituals of the upper classes, and it is difficult to know how far down the social ladder such beliefs and rituals extended. The beginning student is especially encouraged to consult two bibliographical sections at the conclusion of this article:"Ancient texts in English translation" and "Reference works." RESEARCH METHODSAny investigation of religion, regardless of historical period or geographic focus, requires attention to questions of research method. Although the

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“…Esta relativa falta de teorización se hace evidente en el hecho de que muchos diccionarios o manuales, como los de Glazier y Bowie, guarden absoluto silencio respecto al estudio antropológico de la muerte. Glazier 1997;Bowie 2000. 8 Cfr.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

A dónde van los muertos: algunas reflexiones en torno a las relaciones entre vivos y difuntos en diversos tipos de sociedades del mundo

González

2017

Ilu (Madr.)

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A dónde van los muertos: algunas reflexiones en torno a las relaciones entre vivos y difuntos en diversos tipos de sociedades del mundo Resumen. Considerando que, según Robert Hertz, la muerte implica un cambio en las relaciones sociales, el presente trabajo se propone indagar sobre los tipos de vínculos que diversas poblaciones del mundo suponen establecer con sus difuntos. Por medio del contraste entre ejemplos procedentes de muy distintas épocas y regiones, se identifican tres estrategias principales que, aunque admiten cierto número de variantes, se caracterizan por la persistencia de una lógica común. Éstas son: el alejamiento, donde se modifican tanto las identidades como las relaciones; el reciclaje, en el que las identidades se mantienen pero las relaciones se transforman, y la retención, que acepta la trasmutación de las identidades pero no así de las relaciones. Una vez descritas las cualidades de cada una, se muestra que, lejos de identificarse algún condicionamiento económico-social, dichas estrategias pueden coexistir como posibilidades en la mentalidad de cada sociedad. Palabras clave: Concepción de la muerte; relaciones sociales; antropología comparada; variabilidad cultural.[en] Where the Deaths Go: Some Reflections about the Relations between Livings and Deaths in Differents Types of Societies around the World Abstract. According to Robert Hertz, death means a change in social relations. The purpose of this paper is to inquire about the kind of mediation that different world populations establish with their deaths. We compared examples from different eras and regions, and three main strategies are identified which, even if they admit certain number of variations, can be characterized by the persistence of a common logic. These are: distance, in which identities and relations are modified; recycling, when identities are maintained but relations are transformed; and retention, which accepts the transmutation of identities, but not of relations. Once described the qualities of each one, we show that, far from being able to identify any economic-social conditioning, these strategies can coexist as possibilities in the mind of every society. Keywords: Death conception; social relations; compared anthropology; cultural variability. Sumario. 1. Introducción. 2. Las estrategias de alejamiento. 3. Las estrategias de reciclaje. 4. Los ancestros y la retención de los muertos. 5. A manera de cierre: sobre la relativa independencia de las estrategias mortuorias. 6. Referencias bibliográficas. 7. Referencias hemerográficas. 8. Recursos electrónicos.Cómo citar: Martínez González, R. (2017), A dónde van los muertos: algunas reflexiones en torno a las relaciones entre vivos y difuntos en diversos tipos de sociedades del mundo, en Ἰlu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones 22, 221-244. 1Agradezco al programa PASPA de la DGAPA-UNAM por el apoyo recibido durante la estancia sabática de investigación que dio lugar a la presente publicación.

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Anthropology of Religion

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Canaanite Religion

A dónde van los muertos: algunas reflexiones en torno a las relaciones entre vivos y difuntos en diversos tipos de sociedades del mundo

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