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The Anthropology of Religion | Reading Lists @ LSE 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of View Online Religion (Lent Term 2021/22) 180 items Synopsis (9 items) Through readings in contemporary ethnography and theory, the Lent term of this course will explore phenomena and questions classically framed as the anthropology of religion. We will consider topics such as shamanism, cargo cults, initiation, witchcraft and sorcery, cosmology, and human-nonhuman relations, primarily with reference to ongoing transformations of the indigenous traditions of Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, Australia, and the circumpolar north. Recurring themes will be: transformations in the definition of ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’; the nature of rationality; and the extent to which anthropology itself can be either – or both – a religious and a scientific quest to experience the wonder of unknown otherness. Old idolatry” : rethinking “ideology” and “materialism - S Jarvis Chapter | Essential chapter 4 Chapter | Essential chapter one Chapter | Essential A modified view of our origins’ - L Dumont Chapter | Essential The end of the body’ - Jonathan Parry Chapter | Essential Possession and shamanism’ Chapter | Essential Introduction’ Chapter | Essential Conclusions pages 495-508 plus Shamanism in Central and North Asia’ pp. 181-205 Chapter | Essential The performance of healing - 1996 Book | Essential Readings (5 items) The ‘Required Reading for Class’ should be read in preparation for class discussion. 1/21 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE Ideally, these required readings should be tackled in the order in which they have been listed. I have divided the further readings for each topic under diverse headings (‘Ethnographic studies’, ‘Theoretical and comparative work’, ‘Foundational readings’, etc.). Typically, the literature under these headings is listed chronologically from most recent to earliest – these readings can be tackled in any order you like. Unorthodox kin : Portuguese Marranos and the global search for belonging - Naomi Leite, 2017 Book | Essential Muslim becoming: aspiration and skepticism in Pakistan - Naveeda Ahmed Khan, 2012 Book | Essential John of God : the globalization of Brazilian faith healing - Cristina Rocha, 2016 Book | Essential Spacious minds : trauma and resilience in Tibetan Buddhism - Sara E. Lewis, 2020 Book | Essential Ripples of the universe : spirituality in Sedona, Arizona - Susannah Crockford, 2021 Book | Essential Week 1: The Shaman; or, There and back again (12 items) Orientation to Week 1 (1 items) Questions: To what does the term shamanism refer? Is what we call shamanism somehow paradigmatic of religion in general? Or is it, as Viveiros de Castro seems to suggest, a modality of the fullness of being itself? Is the anthropologist a shaman? Lecture: This lecture considers the concept of shamanism in its relationship to ongoing theoretical transformations in the social scientific study of religion. In the mid twentieth century, Mircea Eliade made shamanism central to his grand theory that all religion originates in personal experiences of ecstasy. In the late twentieth century, anthropologists questioned the usefulness of the category 'shamanism' for cross-cultural comparison and focused instead on culturally particular forms of healing. Today, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro has made shamanism a key trope for the practice of anthropology itself. Viveiros de Castro's reliance, in this project, on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze is examined in detail. Discussion: The class readings pit Viveiros de Castro's new approach to Amazonian shamanism against Charles Stépanoff's critical response based on recent fieldwork in Siberia. Required reading for class (2 items) 2/21 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian Spirits - Eduardo Viveiros De Castro, 2007 Article | Essential Devouring Perspectives: On Cannibal Shamans in Siberia - Charles Stépanoff, 2009 Article | Essential Ethnographic studies (5 items) Not quite shamans: spirit worlds and political lives in northern Mongolia - Morten Axel Pedersen, 2011 Book | Background Chapter 4. "The Healing Power of Shamanic Career Narration". - Suzanne Oakdale, 2005 Chapter | Background Dialogues with the dead: the discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India - Piers Vitebsky, 1992 Book | Background The art and politics of Wana shamanship - Jane Monnig Atkinson, 1989 Book | Background Shamans, housewives, and other restless spirits: women in Korean ritual life - Laurel Kendall, c1985 Book | Background Theoretical and comparative works (3 items) Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies - E. V. de Castro, 2004 Article | Background The Shaman: voyages of the soul trance, ecstasy and healing from Siberia to the Amazon - Piers Vitebsky, 2001 Book | Background Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstasy - Mircea Eliade, Bollingen Foundation, 1974 Book | Background Other Resources of Interest (1 items) shamanism.org Website | Background | Check out the webpage for the Foundation for Shamanic Studies founded by anthropologist Michael Harner. 3/21 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE Week 2: ‘Religion’ and its Others (18 items) Orientation to Week 2 (1 items) Questions: Is religion a universal phenomenon or a category specific to Euro-American history and informed by Judeo-Christian tradition? What are the opposites of religion and by what criteria? What is sacrificed and what is safeguarded by defining religion in one way or another? If religion and its opposites are all modern constructs, what was there before? Lecture: This lecture offers three sets of observations in response to Talal Asad's late twentieth century critique of the concept of 'religion'. First, it suggests that Asad's critique has diverted the anthropology of religion away from indigenous non-Western contexts and towards the study of so-called World Religions. Second, it revisits the work of three influential figures – Friedrich Max Müller, E. B. Tylor, and Emile Durkheim – with a view to understanding what, according to Asad, made their theories of religion essentialist and why this might be a problem. Finally, it suggests that Asad's critique leaves us with an unanswered question about the ontology of religion: is it a relation or an essence, or somehow both? Discussion: The required readings aim to lead students to consider Asad's critique as a myth of the origin of the religion concept and to interrogate the ontological implications of that myth via engagement with Scott's recent relational account of religion. Required reading for class (2 items) "The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category" - Talal Asad, 1993 Chapter | Essential The anthropology of ontology (religious science?) - Michael W. Scott, 2013-12 Article | Essential Some attempts at definition and critical responses (12 items) The original political society - Marshall Sahlins, 2017 Article | Background Dreaming of dragons: on the imagination of real life - Tim Ingold, 2013-12 Article | Background The inconstancy of the Indian soul: the encounter of Catholics and cannibals in 16th-century Brazil - Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro, 2011 Book | Background | READ pp. 1-18. 4/21 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE "Provincializing God? Provocations from an Anthropology of Religion" - Michael Lambek, 2008 Chapter | Background The Formation and Function of the Category "Religion" in Anthropological Studies of Taiwan - Stephan Feuchtwang, Fang-Long Shih, Paul-François Tremlett, 2006-02-01 Article | Background ‘Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame,’ or How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate - Bruno Latour, 2005 Chapter | Background Problems of Definition and Explanation. - Melford Spiro, 1966 Chapter | Background Religion as a Cultural System. - Clifford Geertz, 1966 Chapter | Background Science as a Vocation - Max Weber, 1946 [1919] Chapter | Background The elementary forms of the religious life - E ́ mile Durkheim, Joseph Ward Swain, 1995 [1912] Book | Background | READ: pp. 1-12, 34-44, 419-422 (Excerpt available in any edition of 'A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion', ed. Michael Lambek. BL256 R28) On the Origin and Growth of Religion. I. On the Perception of the Infinite - Müller, Max, 1878 Article | Background Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom, Vol.1 - Edward B. Tylor, 1891 Book | Background | Two volumes. Read the selections entitled ‘Religion in Primitive Culture’ in any edition of A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek, Chapter 1. BL256 R28 Introductory orientations (3 items) Godless intellectuals?: the intellectual pursuit of the sacred reinvented - Alexander Riley, 2010 Book | Background | Esp. pp. 152-220 The science of religion in Britain, 1860-1915 - Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay, 2010 Book | Background In search of origins: the beginnings of religion in Western theory and archaeological practice - G. W. Trompf, 2005 Book | Background 5/21 10/02/21 AN301/ AN402 - The Anthropology of Religion | Reading lists @ LSE Week 3: Encounter with the other (20 items) Orientation to Week 3 (1 items) Questions: Is wonder in the face of unknown otherness a fundamentally religious experience? By what strategies do people attempt to draw unknown others into
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