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• Rites of passage are religious rituals which mark and facilitate a person's movement from one (social) state of being to another (e.g., Plains Indians’ vision quests).
• Rites of passage have three phases: – Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the
group and begins moving from one place to another.– Liminality – the period between states, during which
the participant(s) has left one place but has not yet entered the next.
– Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society with a new status having completed the rite.
• Rituals play an important role in creating and maintaining group solidarity.
• In totemic societies, each descent group has an animal, plant, or geographical feature from which they claim descent.
– Totems are the apical ancestor of clans.
– The members of a clan did not kill or eat their totem, except once a year when the members of the clan gathered for ceremonies dedicated to the totem.
• Religion can be used to mobilize large segments of society through systems of real and perceived rewards and punishments.
• Witch hunts play an important role in limiting social deviancy in addition to functioning as leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in wealth and status between members of society.
• Many religions have a formal code of ethics that prohibit certain behavior while promoting other kinds of behavior.
• Religions also maintain social control by stressing the fleeting nature of life.
– Olympian religions first appeared with states, have full-time religious specialists whose organization may mimic the states, and have potent anthropomorphic gods who may exist as a pantheon.
– Monotheistic religions have all the attributes of Olympian religions, except that the pantheon of gods is subsumed under a single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being.
• Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to the values central to the Protestant faith: independent, entrepreneurial, hard working, future-oriented, and free thinking.
• The emphasis Catholics placed on immediate happiness and security, and the notion that salvation was attainable only when a priest mediated on one’s behalf, did not fit well with capitalism.
• Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in formal organized religions.
• New Age religions have appropriated ideas, themes, symbols, and ways of life from the religious practices of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and east Asian religions.
– Spending time in the Magic Kingdom reaffirms, maintains, and solidifies the world of Disney as all of the pilgrims share a common status as visitors while experiencing the same adventures.
– Most of the structures and attractions at the Magic Kingdom are designed to reaffirm and recall a traditional set of American values.
• Art is very difficult to define, but it generally refers to the manifestations of human creativity through which people express themselves in dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, pottery, cloth, storytelling, verse, prose, drama, and comedy.
• Definitions of both art and religion focus on the more than ordinary aspects of each with regard to how they are different from the ordinary and profane/secular.
• A lot of Western and non-Western art has been done in association with religion, but it is important to remember that not all non-Western art has ritual or religious importance.
• Some anthropologists have criticized that the study of non-Western art ignores the individual and focuses too much on the group.
• However, in many non-Western societies, there is more collective production of art than in Western cultures.
• Bohannan argued that among the Tiv, the emphasis should be on the critics rather than the artists because the Tiv do not recognize the same connection between artists and their art.
• The degree to which artists can be separated from their work varies cross-culturally.
• In many non-Western societies children born into certain lineages are destined for a particular artistic career (e.g., leather working, wood carving, and making pottery).
• Full craft specialists find support through their kin ties in non-Western societies or through patrons in Western societies.
• The arts rely on individual talent that is shaped through socially approved directions.
• Art is very difficult to define, but it generally refers to the manifestations of human creativity through which people express themselves in dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, pottery, cloth, storytelling, verse, prose, drama, and comedy.
• Definitions of both art and religion focus on the more than ordinary aspects of each with regard to how they are different from the ordinary and profane/secular.
• A lot of Western and non-Western art has been done in association with religion, but it is important to remember that not all non-Western art has ritual or religious importance.
• Some anthropologists have criticized that the study of non-Western art ignores the individual and focuses too much on the group.
• However, in many non-Western societies, there is more collective production of art than in Western cultures.
• Bohannan argued that among the Tiv, the emphasis should be on the critics rather than the artists because the Tiv do not recognize the same connection between artists and their art.
• The degree to which artists can be separated from their work varies cross-culturally.
• In many non-Western societies children born into certain lineages are destined for a particular artistic career (e.g., leather working, wood carving, and making pottery).
• Full craft specialists find support through their kin ties in non-Western societies or through patrons in Western societies.
• The arts rely on individual talent that is shaped through socially approved directions.