Endogamy and Religion PDF

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Dr. Rector-Verelli...

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Endogamy: marriage of people from the same group (less common) ○ Maintain social differences, particularly in stratified societies ○ Royal endogamy: ■ Manifest function: the reason given for a custom ■ Latent function: the effects a custom has that are not explicitly recognized ■ No doubt their children should rule because power and property remain in the family Marriage as a group alliance: ○ Bridewealth: a gift from the husband’s kin to the wife’s kin ■ Compensates for loss of companionship, labor ■ Insurance against divorce ○ Dowry: marital exchange in which the wife’s group provides substantial gifts to the husband’s family ■ Correlated with low female status ○ Sororate: husband may marry the wife’s sister if the wife dies ○ Levirate: right to marry the husband’s brother if the husband dies ○ Customs continue the original alliance between groups of kin Divorce: more common in matrilineal societies ○ Cross-culturally, high divorce rates are correlated with secure female economic position ■ In patrilineal groups, children must stay with the father’s family, bridewealth returned Plural marriages: ○ Polygyny: multiple wives ■ Most men remain monogamous ■ Wives associated with wealth and prestige ■ Multiple wives potentially at risk, with no recourse without a legal union ○ Polyandry: multiple husbands: ■ Only practiced under specific conditions ■ Cultural adaptation to male mobility? ■ Limited resources? Religion: belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces; bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship ○ Supernatural: extraordinary realm outside the observable world ○ Communitas: great social solidarity, togetherness ○ Exists in all human societies ○ Binds and divides ○ Cultural universal, but religions are parts of particular cultures ■ Shamans: part-time magic religious practitioner (foraging) ■ Olympian: state religions with professional priesthoods (comes with social stratification) ■ Monotheism: worship of a single supreme being ○ Animism: belief in souls or doubles ■ Daytime vs. trance/dreamtime souls

■ Earliest form of religion? Mana: raw, impersonal power ■ People with too much mana are sacred and off-limits ■ Commoners forbidden from contacting royalty ■ Explains differential success? ○ Magic: supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims ■ Imitative (voodoo dolls) or contagious (accomplished through contact) ■ Associated with divers religious beliefs ■ Used in times of uncertainty ■ Magic and religion serve emotional and cognitive (explanatory) needs ■ Malinowski: Magic is used to establish control, but religions “is born out of … the real tragedies of human life” Ritual: formal-- stylized, repetitive, stereotyped behavior based on previously defined template ○ Social acts, conveying information about participants and their culture ○ Rites of passage: actions marking transitions between stages of life ■ Separation: withdrawal from group ■ Liminality: participant has left one place but not yet entered the next ■ Incorporation: participant re-enters society with a new status, having completed the rite Totemism: group has an animal, plant, or geographical feature from which they claim descent ○ Nature as a model for society ○ Form of cosmology: a system for understanding the universe Cultural Ecology: ○ Poor pastureland and marginal environments, cows are important for agriculture ○ Hindu ahisma doctrine Social Control: ○ Power of religion affects actions ■ Leaders have used religion to promote and justify their views and policies Witchcraft: accusations directed at socially marginal people ○ Leveling mechanism: reduces differences in group Religions of the world: ○ Christianity, Islam spreading the most rapidly Syncretisms: cultural mix, including religious blends, that emerge when two or more cultural traditions come into contact ○ Cargo cults: postcolonial, acculturative religious movement in the Pacific Antimodernism: rejection of modern in favor of perceived earlier, purer, and better way of life ○ Fundamentalism: anti modernist movements in various religions ■ Assert an identity separate from that of the larger religious group ■ Seek to rescue religion from absorption into the modern ○

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