Technology used and required

Students will need to have access to iLearn in order to complete the weekly question assignments and to take the three quizzes scheduled throughout the semester. Especially in the case of the quizzes, we suggest to students that they find a high-speed, secure internet connection. 

At times, iLearn can be slow to reload, so students will find that, especially if their connection is weak, they may be under unnecessary stress. 

All lectures are recorded, and many of the materials made use of in class are available through iLearn however, remember that this course has a Course Reader that you are required to buy. 

Lecture and Tutorial times.

Please see the university time table for your update Lecture and Tutorials times. Also they will be posted on iLearn 

Teaching and Learning Strategy

Detailed information can be found in iLearn.  

Week 1

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Dr Gabriele Marranci

Introduction: How do anthropologists study religion?

This week we will cover the key topics of the Unit and introduce students to the broad field of the Anthropology of Religion. We will identify the concepts, questions and issues that are currently at the centre of this field of study and make a start to understanding the unique ways in which anthropology undertakes the study of all things religious.

No tutorial this week but you should read the course outline thoroughly, familiarise yourself with the assignments for this Unit and make a start on the reading for next week. If you have any questions please bring them to next week’s tutorial

Week 2

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Part 1. In search of the sacred: What is religion? 

Defining religion has been an ongoing challenge for anthropologists, but despite the difficulties we can identify a number of concepts that are generally connected to ideas about the religious. These include the idea of spirits and of the supernatural and certain moods and motivations but the most enduring concept in studies of religion is that of the sacred.  What is ‘sacred’ is set against its opposite; the ‘profane’, but it is not always an easy or appropriate distinction when we take a cross-cultural view. Even in our own culture the way we define religion determines what exactly can be taken to be religious practise; for instance, Michael Jindra has explored Star-Trek Fandom as a religious phenomenon in the US.

Part 2. Culture and Belief: Santa Claus—a case study

One of the key questions to be debated as anthropological studies of religion developed was that of ‘belief’. Studies of non-Western cultures revealed that much of what we take to be matters of belief are rooted in our particular histories and cultures. We will explore the fascinating question of belief through an examination of the cultural histories of what we know in Australia to be the phenomenon of Santa Claus.

Film: The Legends of Santa 

Required Tutorial Readings; 

Winzler, R.L. (2008) Anthropology and Religion: What we Know, Think, and Question. Ch 1,pp 1-22. Plymouth, UK: Altamira Press.

Wolf, E. (2007 [1964]) Santa Claus: Notes on a Collective Representation. In R. A. Manners (ed.) Process and Pattern in Culture, pp 147-155. New Brunswick and London: Aldine Transaction.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Durkheim, E. (1979) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. In  W. A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological approach. 4^th Ed. pp 27-35. NY: Harper & Row Publishers.

Goody, J. (2010) Religion and Ritual from Tylor to Parsons: the definitional problem.  In Myth, Ritual and the Oral, Ch 1, pp 13-40, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Week 3

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Part 1: European Saints and Melanesian Magic 

Bringing together our examination of the sacred and our brief meeting with Saint Nicholas, this week we consider closely the distinctions between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’, as we explore the different ways these concepts are used to describe what often turn out to be very similar phenomena.

Part 2: Pilgrims, Pilgrimage, and Sacred sites

Saints and their sacred relics, and sites of religious significance that we generally call sacred, draw many thousands of people or ‘pilgrims’ together in an experience that has famously been described by Victor Turner as communitas. In this lecture we also look at Turner’s influential work on liminality as it is applied to the sacred domain and consider some apparently less ‘sacred’ sites such as the sporting arena and the music festival that might also initiate religious experiences.

Required Tutorial Readings;

Eliade, M. (1959) The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Introduction, pp 8-18.New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Moore, J. D. (1997) Victor Turner: Symbols, Pilgrims, and Drama. In Visions of Culture, Ch 18, pp 228-237. California, London, New Delhi: Altamira Press.

Turner, E. (2009) Legitimization or Suppression? The Effect of Mary’s Appearances at Knock, Ireland. In A Hermkens, W. Jansen and C Notermans (eds) Moved by Mary: The Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World, Ch12, pp 201-214. Surry and Burlington: Ashgate.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Orsi, R. (2005) ‘The Many Names of the Mother of God’, Ch 2, pp 48-72, Between Heaven and Earth: The religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them, Princeton and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morinis, A. (ed) (1992) ‘Introduction; The Territory of the Anthropology of Pilgrimage’, Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, pp 1-28. Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press.

Turner, V. and E. Turner (1978) Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 

Turner, V.  (1970)  ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in rites de Passage’ The Forest of Symbols, (Ch IV) pp. 93-111.  Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Week 4

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Part 1: Understanding sorcery as a religious phenomenon

This lecture is based on a case study of the cosmology of the Vula’a people of Papua New Guinea who were converted to Christianity during the colonial era at the end of the 19^th century, and who continue to engage in the beliefs and practices that are today described as ‘sorcery’. Anthropological analysis shows that what is today described as sorcery was once an important part of a pre-Christian religion.

Part 2: Writing the ethnography of death

Sorcery at its most fundamental is about the power over life and death, and it is often in matters of death that religion comes to the foreground, and where social relationships are laid bare. In this lecture we will look at some of the most influential ethnographies of mortuary rituals. We will also begin to prepare for your ethnographic writing assignment.

Film: In her own time/ Act 111 Communications; directed by Lynne Littman c2007.

Required Tutorial Readings;

Stephen, M. (1987) Master of Souls: the Mekeo Sorcerer. In Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia, Ch 2, pp 41-80. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Van Heekeren, D. (2007) The Essence of Vula’a Historical Consciousness. History and Anthropology, Vol.18(4):405-426.

Myerhoff, B. (1992) A Death in Due Time: Conviction, Order, and Continuity in Ritual Drama, In M. Kaminsky (ed.) Remembered Lives, pp159-190. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

Leenhardt, M. (1979) The Living and the Dead. In Do Kamo: Person and Myth in the Melanesian World. Ch 3 pp24-42. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press

Week 5

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Songs that move spirits 

Music and song which is often connected to dance is perhaps the most powerful vehicle for religious expression and experience. It is often argued that direct interaction between spirits and humans is created through music and sound. As Anthony Seeger has suggested in his study of the Amazonian Suya: 

“whenever music is heard, something important is happening. Usually some connection is being created or recreated between different domains of life, the universe, or the human body and its spirits. Music transcends time, space, and existential levels of reality. It affects humans, spirits, animals, and those hard-to-imagine beings in between.“ (Seeger 1987:7)

In this lecture we will explore the place of music in a range of religious and cultural contexts.

Film: The Gospel according to the Papuans

Required Tutorial Readings;

Gray, E. R. And S. L. Thumma (1997) The Gospel Hour: Liminality, Identity, and Religion in a Gay Bar. In P. E. Becker and N. L. Eisland (eds), Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader, Ch 3, pp79-98. California, London, New Delhi: Altamira Press.

Van Heekeren, D. (2011) Singing it ‘local’: the appropriation of Christianity in the Vula’a villages of Papua New Guinea, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 12(1): 44-59.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Jennings, M. (2008) ‘Won’t you break free?’ An ethnography of music and the divine-human encounter at an Australian Pentecostal Church, Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol (9)2: 161-174.

Friedson, S.  (1996) The Musical Construction of clinical Reality. In Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, (Ch 4) pp 100-127. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Feld, S. (1990)Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, USA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Seeger, A. (1987) Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian people, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Butler, M. L. (2008) The Weapons of our Warfare: Music, Positionality, and Transcendence among Haitian Pentecostals, Caribbean Studies, Vol 36(2): 23-64.

Week 6

Guest: Dr Sean Durbin

What is a cult?

In popular discourse the word ‘cult’ carries negative meaning. It has been said that if you believe in it, it is religion, but if you fear and hate it, it is a ‘cult’. In this lecture we explore the gap between the theological meaning of the word, and the way it is deployed in popular usage. We will look at the development of the idea of the ‘cargo cult’ in anthropological studies and the relationship between cults, social change and ‘new religious movements’.

Required Tutorial Readings;

Wallace, Anthony F. C. (1956)  Revitalization Movements, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol 58(2): 264-281.

Kila, T. A. and C. Kopyoto (1985) The Geno Gerega Movement. In G. Trompf and C. Loeliger (eds) New Religious Movements in Melanesia,Ch 11, pp106-118.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Williams, F. E.  (1976)  ‘The Vailala Madness in Retrospect’, Ch 6, pp 385-395, “The Vailala Madness” and Other Essays, London: C. Hurst & Company.

Hermann, E. (1992)  The Yali Movement in retrospect: rewriting history, redefining ‘cargo cult’, Oceania, Vol 63(1): 55-71.

Lawrence, P. (1964)Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District New Guinea. Manchester University Press.

**Nb: Quiz this week**

Week 7

Dr Deborah Van Heekeren

Myth Precedes Ritual?

In this lecture we will explore the relationship between myth and ritual. We will examine the major anthropological approaches to the study of myth and consider how the term is differently interpreted when it is applied to oral cultures and religions as opposed to text-based cultures and religions. We will also consider the place of myth in the modern world.

Required Tutorial Readings;

Cohen, P. (1969) Theories of Myth, Man New Series Vol 4 (3): 337-353.

Malinowski, B. (2002) Myth in Primitive Psychology in M. Lambek (ed) A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell.

Further recommended readings for this topic;

Feld, S. (1982) “The boy who became a muni bird” Ch 1 pp. 20-43 in Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Van Heekeren, D, (2012) “From myth as narrative to mythic being” Ch 8 pp. 173-190 in The Shark Warrior of Alewai: a phenomenology of Melanesian identity, Wantage UK: Sean Kingston Publishing.

Leach, E. (1967) ‘Genesis as Myth’  in J. Middleton (ed) Myth and Cosmos: readings in mythology and symbolism,  Ch 1 pp1-13, New York: The American Museum of Natural History.

Herdt, G. (1994) Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity, Ch 8 ‘Male Parthenogenisis: a myth and its meaning’ pp. 255-294, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Week 8

Dr Gabriele Marranci

**Ethnographic Paper due 5pm today**

Reading Rituals 

What are rituals? How can we make sense of them? In this lecture we will discuss traditional and more recent approaches to the study and explanation of rituals. We will also observe a particular ritual in South Italy, which has been popularised in a well known musical stereotype: the tarantella. 

A) The complexity of studying rituals 

The first part of the lecture will focus on understandings of rituals both in classical anthropological theories as well as more recent developments, including cognitive theories of rituals.  

B) The study of the tarantella by Ernesto De Martino. 

In the second part of the lecture we will observe a particular ritual that was performed until the 1960s in the Italian region of “Salento” in Apulia, which then has been transformed into a stereotyped musical form, the tarantella. We will use the ethnography of Ernesto de Martino and we will observe how we can understand such ritual, which after hundreds of years has disappeared in its original and pure form. 

Required Tutorial Readings;

Fogelin, L. (2007). The archaeology of religious ritual. Annu. Rev. Anthropol.,36, 55-71.

Torsello, D. (2008). The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism, by Ernesto De Martino. Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, 8(1), 35-36.

Further recommended readings 

McCauley, R. N. (2001). "Ritual, Memory, and Emotion: Comparing Two Cognitive Hypotheses," Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Experience. J. Andresen (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 115-140

Week 9

Guest TBA

Week 10

Dr Gabriele Marranci

To Study Religion or Study Believers? One of the questions that, as an anthropologist researching Muslim communities, I found challenging and necessary to debate is what exactly are we studying. Are we studying a cultural expression labelled ‘religion’ or are we studying human beings’ practices and beliefs? What came to be known as the anthropology of Islam is still debating this question. This week we will follow the debate and try to observe the impact that it has on understandings of Muslims and often also policy-making.  

A) Muslims as Cultural Objects?  The first part of the lecture will discuss theories and anthropological approaches which tend to understand Muslims as products of a symbolic discourse. These approaches derive in particular from the influential views of anthropologists such as Geertz and Gellner. 

B) Muslims as Human Beings?  The second part of the lecture will discuss a different approach to understanding Muslims. This starts from two postulates: the universality of some characteristics of how we are human (i.e biological, neurological and cognitive) and the understanding of culture as part of a larger complex environmental system. 

Required Tutorial Readings; Varisco, D. M. (2005). Islam obscured: The rhetoric of anthropological representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ch 1, pp 1-20. Marranci, G. (2008) Elenchos in G. MarranciThe anthropology of Islam. Oxford: Berg. pp 1-3.

Further recommended readings for this topic; Maranci, G. (2010) Sociology and Anthropology of Islam: A Critical Debate in B. S.  Turner, The new Blackwell companion to the sociology of religion. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell. Ch 16, pp 364-386. Marranci, G. (2008) Beyond the stereotype: challenges in understanding Muslim identities, in G. MarranciThe anthropology of Islam. Oxford: Berg. pp 89-102.

**Nb: Quiz this week**

Week 11

Dr Gabriele Marranci

The Power of Spirits: Heteropraxy, Hegemony and Religion  In the Muslim world, as in many other religions and cultures, spirits, saints and the supernatural play an important role despite being sometimes met with opposition. As in many other contexts, anthropologists have noticed the politics of gender that affect such phenomena, as well as the counter-hegemonic character of such beliefs.  

A) Female Muslim Saints in South Asia     In the first part of the lecture, we will discuss the social and cultural role of female saints (pirs) in South Asia through an ethnographic example from Bangladesh. In a society such as the rural Bengali one, women are in a subordinate position vis-a-vis the men within a strong patriarchal social structure. Even in the domain of pirs, we will see that there are gender differences, so that while the power of male saints is attributed to the individual, the female saint’s power is adduced to the spirit that associates with her. Yet the saintly status, including the fear of spirits, helps these women to resist some of the patriarchal norms, such as the virilocal rule of residence. 

B) Conversion and Spirits in Africa  In the second part of the lecture, we will observe the ethnographic case of conversion to Islam  through spirit possession in Giriama. Spirits make people ill until they accept Islam, which consists of values and practices that clash with Giriama culture. We will observe how the anthropological analysis shows that the possession in reality helps the conversion transition by naturalizing the notion that there is an intrinsic clash between their ethnic habits and Islam. 

Required Tutorial Readings;

Callan, A. (2008) Female saints and the practice of Islam in Sylhet, Bangladesh. American Ethnologist, 35(3):396-412. Further recommended readings for this topic; McIntosh, J. (2004) Reluctant Muslims: embodied hegemony and moral resistance in a Giriama spirit possession complex. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10 (1): 91-112.

Week 12

Dr Gabriele Marranci

Religion and Body Modification: 

  Anthropologists had for a long time an interest in body modification such as tattoos, piercing and scarification. Many of these practices are linked to religious beliefs and performed at rituals. Circumcision is a body modification that can still be found in monotheistic religions. Jews, Muslims and some Christian groups practice male circumcision. In a few regions Christians and Muslims also perform female circumcision. Such practice is today referred to as genital mutilation and there are efforts to eradicate it.  This has opened debates among anthropologists whom have studied the phenomenon. In this lecture we will discuss the different forms of circumcision, how anthropologists have explained such practices and the ethical issues derived from the discussion. Also we will see that such genital modifications are not limited to “primitive” or non-western cultures, as some have assumed, but rather can indeed be found in western countries, including among Australia’s white population as part of ‘cosmetic’ procedures. 

A) Circumcision and Anthropology    The first part of the lecture will focus on how anthropologists have tried to make sense of circumcision as a cultural and religious practice. We will also discuss the ethical issues and the efficacy of the UN-sponsored campaigns aimed at the eradication of female circumcision, but not male circumcision, and the reasons behind such gender differentiation.  Finally we will discuss some examples of genital mutilation which are performed today among western people but which are often excluded from the discussion of genital mutilation. 

B) Discussing Circumcision in Southeast Asia and Australia   In this second part we will observe first female and male circumcision among the South Thai Muslims, particularly how the practices are changing and the local discourse which supports both. We will discuss how the Southeast Asian practices differ from the African ones. Then we will move to the ethically problematic and contentious issue of circumcised refugee women of African origin in Australia, their views about female circumcision and the reasons for which they may ask, after giving birth, to be re-infibulated. 

Required Tutorial Readings; Silverman, E. K. (2004). Anthropology and Circumcision. Annual Review of Anthropology,Vol 33:  419-445.

Further recommended readings for this topic; Merli, C. (2008). Sunat for girls in southern Thailand : its relation to traditional midwifery, male circumcision and other obstetrical practices. Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration. pp 32-41. Manderson, L. (2004). Local Rites and Body Politics. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(2):285-307.

Week 13 This will be a review lecture where you will have the opportunity to ask questions about the course and seek advice for final essay submission. Please take the time to consult with your tutors during this week if you need any assistance.

NB there are no tutorials this week **Final essay due 5pm Thursday 12th**