This taster lecture is part of the level 7 (MA level) module Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion which is offered on the MA Study of Religions, the MRes Religious Experience, and related study programmes. The focus of this lecture is on anthropology of religion which is part of the multi-disciplinary field of study of religions. We start with exploring the main features of anthropology of religion which will lead to a discussion of what anthropology contributes to the field of religious studies.

Introduction: What is anthropology of religion?

Anthropological approaches to the Study of Religions (also called ‘Religious Studies’) focus on the role of culture in determining religious belief and expression.

While gathering information via direct fieldwork (i.e. by observing or interviewing religious practitioners themselves) is perhaps the most popular image of what an anthropologist does, there are various approaches to the Anthropology of Religion. For example, one may utilise fieldwork reports from earlier anthropologists to try to see how a culture’s religion might change over the years. Or the researcher may wish to compare how the religions of two particular groups respond to the same types of colonial influences, or the introduction of new technologies. To fully understand a culture in its contemporary setting, however, it is necessary to undertake original fieldwork which involves learning the local language (if relevant), and living for a time as closely as possible within the group being studied, including participating in religious activities (see Lambek 2008).

A major issue in anthropology is the degree to which the anthropologist’s presence might influence or change the behaviour or information he or she is given access to. Here the insider-outsider problem is relevant. Kim Knott (2005: 246ff) explains that there are various ways of situating oneself in relation to the ‘other’ being studied (the ‘other’ being a ‘complete participant’ – the one being observed). These are: ‘complete observer’ (outsider), ‘observer-as-participant’ (outsider doing fieldwork among the ‘other’); ‘participant-as-observer’ (the insider doing fieldwork within his/her own tradition). These are, in fact, anthropological issues, and the Study of Religions has been greatly influenced by them. The importance of anthropological thought to the Study of Religions goes far beyond Anthropology as a field or as a method. In fact, much of Religious Studies per se shares many of the principles and characteristics of anthropology and faces some of the same fundamental questions.

Anthropological methods: from fieldwork to cognitive studies

The highly contextualized approach to studying individual cultures is called qualitative research. Quantitative research, on the other hand, will typically look at a wider range of cultures and will seek to address more general questions regarding ways in which religion and culture interact with each other (or indeed if they are even separable as categories). For example, the anthropologist may try to determine if there is a general human pattern to the function of shamanic rituals. As with other approaches to Religious Studies, Anthropology deals with both cultural particulars, and with universals, depending on the question being asked. While the issue of ‘universals’ is a controversial one, there has been renewed interest in the concept in recent years due to the development of the cognitive science of religion. Fieldwork is impractical for research involving quantitative analysis, and researchers will instead rely on existing ethnographies (the written reports describing the culture, and their religious customs and beliefs), or on databases of information about culture-groups worldwide (the most prominent of which is the Human Relations Area File, or HRAF). It should also be mentioned that qualitative and quantitative approaches are not mutually exclusive, and can be use together in a single study.

It is also important to point out that anthropology as a discipline is no longer confined to small-scale societies (i.e. what used to be called ‘tribal’ or even ‘primitive’ though these terms are now rejected) – one can take an anthropological approach to the ritual of Sunday service in the Church of England, or to the study of ancestor worship amongst the Igala of Nigeria. It is not the religion or the culture that defines the method, but the question(s) being asked. Generally speaking, however, anthropologists are likely to be less concerned with ‘canonical’ religious texts than in local oral traditions and the transmission of ritual from one generation to the next. In other words, they are more interested in how religion is actually constructed and lived.

Task:

Having in mind the change away from small-scale societies, think of a way how anthropological research can be carried out in today’s societies such as the UK or the USA. For inspiration you could listen to the podcast about the study of ayahuasca which was initially a core practice of small scale societies but gained popularity among Western societies. (See: Questioning the Silver Bullet: Critical Approaches for the Study of Ayahuasca | The Religious Studies Project)

Anthropologists – past and present

Most anthropological questions can be generalized as focussing either on the function of religion, or the structure of religion – hence the terms functionalism and structuralism. According to functionalist perspectives, religions are epiphenomenal (i.e. by-products) to the role(s) they play in society, arising in order to explain uncertainties surrounding life or death, or to serve a social purpose. Such perspectives often attempt to ascribe religious beliefs to a single factor or motive, such as dreams or attempts to understand natural phenomena (e.g. E.B. Tylor, 1832-1917; John Lubbock, 1834-1913). Like functionalism, structuralism seeks the underlying nature behind religious belief and behaviour, though does not rely on a belief’s social function as much as its general social context (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, 1908-2009). For example, a functionalist approach to afterlife beliefs might view them as a tool invented by the elite in order to maintain control over the masses through the use of ideas of divine reward and punishment to encourage good behaviour. A structuralist view, on the other hand, might be more concerned with the relationship between afterlife ideas and rites of passage rituals, as both concern transition from one state of being to another. They are not mutually exclusive perspectives – they are simply different approaches concerned with different kinds of understanding (see Gellner 1998 for further information about anthropological approaches).

Task:

Listen to the Round Table discussion about the legacy of Edward B. Tylor, the founding father of anthropology of religion. (See: The Legacy of Edward Tylor – Roundtable [transcript] | The Religious Studies Project). Reflect on the early anthropologists and how anthropology of religion has changed.

Anthropology and the Relationship between us and others

Anthropology is not entirely about ‘the other’, however: it is also about understanding ourselves in what Fiona Bowie (2006: 1) calls ‘the dialectical relationship between self and other’. She characterises the main questions of anthropology as:

Who is this ‘other’? And what can the other tell us about ourselves, our culture, our society…? Do small-scale ‘primitive’ societies mirror the evolutionary past of the ‘civilised’ world? What, if any, are the underlying similarities between peoples? Are we all so different that each culture and society can only be looked at in isolation – with little or no basis for comparison? Is religion merely a product of society, merely human invention and projection?

Like the Study of Religions, Anthropology has had to struggle with its own identity – confronting its assumptions and recognizing that it is not a truly objective or value-free endeavour. For example, the term ‘small scale societies’ has replaced terms like ‘primitive’, because the latter implies a hierarchical value judgement. It places the researcher in the normative (and thus elevated) position of being ‘modern’ and ‘civilized’, while viewing the ‘primitive’ as somehow more analogous to prehistoric early humans than to ‘us’. ‘Normativism’ is when one school of thought or system of belief is considered to be ‘the norm’ by which all others are compared or judged. To Anthropology and the Study of Religions, such perceptions of superiority of one religion over another have no place in scholarship. Both fields have gained a new reflexivity, characterized by an awareness of the complexity of the relationships between researcher and ‘other’.

Task:

Dr Fiona Bowie gave the keynote lecture at the conference of the Religious Experience Research Centre at UWTST in 2014. (See: one day conference 2014 Founders (panopto.com). Listen to the recording and reflect on how her research on mediumship contribute to the development of the study of religions.

Concluding comments

A word should also be said about the Archaeology of Religion – the study of religious beliefs and behaviour through the analysis of material culture left by past societies. Such material can include temples, tombs, cult installations, statues, and essentially any kind of religious paraphernalia one would care to imagine: jewellery, clothing, lamps, incense burners, offering tables, and the symbols and iconography associated with them. The archaeology of religion draws largely upon anthropology in using a method called ‘ethnographic analogy’: comparing ancient artefacts and their assemblages (i.e. how they are situated upon discovery) to apparently similar ones in existing societies in order to extrapolate what the past religious behaviour and/or belief might have been. For example, if one discovers a group of burials in which the bodies are all facing west, one might compare them to a current local culture which practices a similar burial method. The reason for the practice in the existing culture may be comparable to that in the ancient one (for example, that the realm of the dead is in the west – the direction of the setting sun). While it is problematic to assume that the relationship between material remains and human behaviour is generally the same, the technique does provide some guidance to how we can try to understand past religions (especially in non-literate societies). It is also important to remember that much of our information about religion comes from archaeological discoveries, from the ancient Judaeo-Christian texts found at the Dead Sea and Nag-Hammadi, to the tombs and temples of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Maya, etc.

More recently, there have been developments in the cognitive study of archaeology – attempts to actually determine the way ancient people conceptualized religious ideas by analysing their art, symbols, and other artefacts in relation to what is known about the development of brain function and consciousness (see Mithen 1996; Whitehouse 2004).

This lecture is part of the module Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religions which was initially developed by Peggy Morgan, Oxford, and expanded by Wendy Dossett, Gregory Shushan, and Bettina E. Schmidt, Lampeter. It is offered on the MA Study of Religions, the MRes Religious Experience, and other postgraduate programmes at UWTSD.