• Why have religion scholars tended to focus on belief? Why is this a problem?
• How does Nye define “ritual”? How can the same action be a ritual sometimes but not others?
• What shift took place in ritual studies during the 1990s? How is this relevant to your film essay?
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4. Ritual
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Thanks for being a great class!
Have a wonderful Reading Week!
Snider Lecture
• Oct. 2 @ 7pm in IB120
• Ali Rizvi
• “The Muslim Enlightenment: The rise of secular thought among young Muslims”
• Visit religious site with one or two other students from your tutorial
➡ Must be site no one is familiar with
➡ No one in group can belong to that religion
➡ Contract on Quercus (“Assignments”)
➡ Info and advice on Q for finding a site
➡ You can change contract afterwards!
➡ Due October 8 (worth 2%)6
Field Research Contract
• Buddhism
• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Indigenous traditions
• Jainism
• Judaism
• Islam
• Paganism
• Scientology
• Sikhism
• Taoism
• Unitarianism
• Wicca
• Zoroastrianism
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Field Research Contract Christians• Anglican
• Baptist
• Catholic
• Coptic
• Global Revival (“Catch the Fire”)
• Jehovah’s Witness
• Lutheran
• Mennonite
• Mormon (LDS)
• Orthodox
• Pentecostal
• Presbyterian
• Seventh-Day Adventist
• United Church
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Anonymous Feedback
• Can we choose Catholicism?
➡ Yes – if you’re not Christian(or know much about otherforms of Christianity)
• Break / room too cold
• Nice note
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Film Paragraph
• Congratulations on completing this!
• If you did not complete it:
➡ Please do it soon!
➡ Ask for help if you need it
• Film Analysis (due Oct. 20):
➡ Instructions + theories on Quercus
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Today
• Belief
1. Remaining theories
2. Belief + the study of religion
• Ritual
1. What is ritual?
2. Ritual studies
3. Ritual theories
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Belief 1: Theories of Belief
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Theories of Belief
• Cognitive vs. affective beliefs (p. 117)
• Habitus (p. 125-6)
• Reductionist theories (p. 108-9)
• Non-reductionist theories (p. 111-5)
• Belief and common sense (p. 119-123)
• Cognitive approaches (p. 109-11)
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“Common Sense”
• Leach, Malinowski, Geertz, Evans-Pritchard, Tonkinson (p. 119-123)
➡ Don’t worry about this section
➡ Main point: “belief” is complicated!!
Cognitive Approaches
• Study of the brain
• Luther Martin (note: he is NOT Martin Luther!)
• Non-reductionist (Whitehouse)
• Reductionist (Guthrie, Boyer)
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pareidolia
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Belief 2: The Study of Religion
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• Protestant Reformation (Christianity)
• Martin Luther: 95 Theses (1517)
➡ Catholic church: institution b/t person and God; “over-emphasis” on rituals
➡ New Testament (Paul): Faith over works:
“You have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
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Study of Religion
• Tylor: Religion is belief in spiritual beings
• Why this focus?
➡ Protestant Christian view(NOT universal view)
➡ Faith over works
• Scholars of religion from Protestant cultures
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Study of Religion
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Belief?
• Problems with thinking that religion is all about belief?
1. Language issues involving “belief”
➡ Various meanings in English
➡ No equivalent word for “belief” in some languages
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Study of Religion
• Problems with thinking that religion is all about belief?
2. Sometimes belief is not (that) important
➡ Different traditions
➡ Different people within the same traditions / communities
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Study of Religion
Ritual 1:What is “Ritual”?
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What is Ritual?
• Ritual = stuff people DO➡ But which stuff?? (Nye p. 129–33)
➡ Not necessarily repeated (e.g., rite of passage)
➡ Many definitions!
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• Nye: ritual as “meaningful action” (p. 133–34)
➡ Meaning is not about the act itself
➡ About relation between act and person
➡ Same action might be meaningful for one person/time/place but not others
➡ Examples?
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What is Ritual?
Today’s Song
• “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini (2006)
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“New Shoes”Woke up cold one Tuesday,
I’m looking tired and feeling quite sick,I felt like there was something missing
in my day to day life
Hey, I put some new shoes on,And suddenly everything is right,
I said, hey, I put some new shoes on and everybody’s smiling, it’s so inviting,
Oh, short on money,but long on time,Slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine
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Islamic Cultural Centreof Quebec City
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Rev. Dawn Leger (Anglican)Christ Church in Stouffville, ON
Eucharist
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Eid al-Fitr(Tajikistan)
Langar (Sikhism)
• Vegetarian food service in Gurdwara
• Free to all
• Principles of equality / no discrimination
• “the light of God is in all hearts”(Guru Granth Sahib)
• Golden Temple (Amritsar): feed approx. 80,000 people / day
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What is Ritual?
• Ritual = stuff people DO (i.e., actions)
➡ But which stuff??
➡ Many definitions!
• Ritual as meaningful action
➡ Meaning is relational➡ Meaning depends on the people and the
context
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Ritual 2:Ritual Studies
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Ritual Studies
• Ritual studies challenged academic assumption that religion was only about belief➡ Focus on
ACTIONS
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Ritual Studies
• Crisis in the 1990s (Nye p. 148)
• If so many things can be called “ritual,” is this really a useful term?
• Change in focus: ritual theories used for interpretation, not as description
➡ Theories as tools for understanding actions, and not for labelling them as “ritual” (or not “ritual”)
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Old question: “Is this action a ritual?”
New question: “What does this action mean?”
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Ritual Studies1. Ritual studies showed that actions were
important in religion
➡ Religion was not only about belief
2. Shift in focus within ritual studies
➡ From “Is this action a ritual?” to “What does this action mean?”
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Film Analysis
• Ritual paragraph:
➡ Do not worry about whether an action is a “ritual” or not
➡ Simply use a theory of ritual to analyze any action(s) you like
➡ Question: what does the action mean?
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Ritual 3: Ritual Theories
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Ritual Theories
• Emile Durkheim (society)
• Sigmund Freud (neurosis)
• Harvey Whitehouse (memory)
• Malory Nye (power)
• Arnold van Gennep (rites of passage)
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Ritual Theories
• Many theories focus on the FUNCTION of ritual (not “content”)
➡ Not about (symbolic) meaning(e.g., bread = body of Christ)
➡ About the effect of the action(s) on participants
➡ Film Analysis!
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Emile Durkheim
• Ritual binds people together (p. 141-2)
➡ Ritual does not just express relationships: “the performance of rituals actually creates those relationships”
➡ Regular attendance at religious site (church, mosque, synagogue, temple, etc.)
➡ Other examples?
➡ Lion King?60
Hakuna Matata
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Sigmund Freud
• Ritual = neurosis (p. 143)
➡ Repetition brings comfort; avoids real problem(s)
➡ Might be true sometimes (not always): but need to know context
➡ Examples?
➡ Lion King?
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Hakuna Matata
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Harvey Whitehouse
• Rituals and memory (p. 143-4)
➡ “Imagistic” mode: high intensity (dramatic and/or traumatic)
❖ E.g., wedding, funeral, assault
➡ “Doctrinal” mode: mundane repetition (routine)
❖ E.g., daily prayer, national anthem
➡ Lion King?67 68
Imagistic
Imagistic
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Doctrinal
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Doctrinal
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Doctrinal