Dr Michael W. Scott, OLD 6.16 and Dr George St.Clair (LT)

This course is compulsory for BA/BSc Social Anthropology. It is optional for BA Anthropology and Law. Available to General Course students and as an outside option with permission.

Students should have a substantial background in Social Anthropology.

This course covers selected topics in the anthropology of religion, focusing upon relevant theoretical debates. Reference will be made to ethnographies of the ritual, symbolism and religious knowledge of non-Western societies.

Various anthropological approaches to the study of religion, ritual and symbolism will be covered. Key topics will include some or all of the following: the religious representation of life, death, sex, morality and gender; the relation between cosmology and magical practice; typologies of thought: the religious, the aesthetic, the scientific; religion and the social construction of the emotions; the work of the symbol; myth and history; shamanism and spirit possession; theodicy and world religions; persons, objects and spirits in the process of conversion; the problem of religious belief; the category of 'religion'; ritual.

Lectures AN301 weekly MT, LT, Classes AN301.A weekly MT, LT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the classes and are required to write assessment essays.

Anthropology students taking this course will have an opportunity to submit a tutorial essay for this course to their personal tutors. For non-Anthropology students taking this course, a formative essay may be submitted to the course teacher.

G Bateson & M C Bateson, Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred; D Battaglia, E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces; M Bloch, From Blessing to Violence; K Burridge, Mambu; E Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande; B Kapferer, The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power; A Lattas, Cultures of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults; C Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; L Lévy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality; M A Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia; G Schrempp, Magical Arrows: The Maori, the Greeks, and the Folklore of the Universe; R Willerslev, Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among Siberian Yukaghirs. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

A three-hour examination in the ST worth 80%. Two assessed essays (2,000-2,500 words each) one per term (20%).