課程資訊
課程名稱
宗教人類學專題
Seminar on Anthoropological Study of Relligion 
開課學期
100-1 
授課對象
文學院  人類學研究所  
授課教師
王梅霞 
課號
Anth5028 
課程識別碼
125 U2140 
班次
 
學分
全/半年
半年 
必/選修
選修 
上課時間
星期五2,3,4(9:10~12:10) 
上課地點
水源人201 
備註
本課程中文授課,使用英文教科書。文化人類學次領域課程。
限學士班三年級以上
總人數上限:20人 
Ceiba 課程網頁
http://ceiba.ntu.edu.tw/1001religion 
課程簡介影片
 
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課程概述

100學年度第一學期
授課老師:王梅霞
授課時間:每周五上午9:10-12:10
授課地點:水源校區人類學系系館201
研究室:人類學系系館401;電話33664993
Office hour: 星期三下午3:00-5:00;人類學系系館401
Email:meihsia@ntu.edu.tw
 

課程目標
課程宗旨:這門課程著重在引導學生思考:不同學派(例如涂爾幹學派、主知論、韋伯學派、馬克思主義、宇宙觀論者)的人類學家在各自的知識論立場下,如何論證宗教和社會的關係。其中尤其針對某些議題深入分析,包括:轉換儀式、巫術和理性、宗教和資本主義、權力的合法化、象徵性的反抗。最後討論社會變遷的動態性質,尤其著重殖民與後殖民時期“國家”與“西方宗教”與當地社會文化相互轉化的過程。 
課程要求
修課要求:上課同學必須事先閱讀該週必讀(打*號者),並參與課堂討論。每人須選擇四週作課堂報告,並寫成書面報告,在該週上課結束時繳交。學期末再交一份研究報告,主題須先與授課老師討論。

評分方式:課堂討論 30%
     四篇書面報告 40%
     期末報告 30%
 
預期每週課後學習時數
 
Office Hours
備註: 評分方式:課堂討論 30%      四篇書面報告 40%      期末報告 30%  
指定閱讀
Week1: Introduction (16 Sep.)

Week2 & Week3: Durkheim on Religion and Society (30 Sep.)
What does Durkheim mean by ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic solidarity’, and how are they related to the division of labour? Are traditional tribal societies characterized by mechanical solidarity, and are they made of homogenous segments? What are ‘collective representations’? How does the ‘sacred’ symbolize society, and how is religion socially determined? What is the social function of religious ritual?
*Durkheim, E.
1915(1907) The elementary forms of the religious life, especially Introduction, Book1 chapter1, Book3 chapter5, Conclusion.
Morris, B
1987 Anthropological studies of religion, ch.3
Pickering, W.
1984 Durkheim’s sociology on religion, especially ch.7

Week4: Mauss on Bodily Techniques and the Notion of Person (7 Oct.)
What are ‘bodily techniques’ and how are they socially constructed? How is the body used to symbolize social organization and how is it culturally constituted? How should we consider the ‘person’ cross-culturally? What was the thrust of Mauss’s essay, and what were his claims about the crucial stages of evolution from ‘person’ to ‘individual’? Is the ‘individual’ a creation of a particular kind of religion?
*Mauss, M.
1979(1950) Sociology and psychology, especially part3 & 4
Durkheim, E. & Mauss, M.
1963(1903) Primitive Classification
Hertz, R.
1960 Death and the right hand
Carrithers, M. et al. (eds)
1985 The category of the person
Csordas, Thomas J.
1990 Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 18:5-47.
1994 The sacred self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. 2002 Body/Meaning/Healing.

Week5: Structural-Functionalism and Functionalism (14 Oct.)
Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski prioritize issues of ‘social statics’ over those of ‘social dynamics’. But are some of the assumptions of structural-functionalism still shared with the way evolutionism conceptualizes the nature of society?
*Radcliffe-Brown, A.
1952 ‘Religion and society’, in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown Structure and function I primitive society, pp153-77
1972(1951) ‘The comparative method in social anthropology’, in Adam Kuper (ed.) The social anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown, pp53-69
*Maliowski, B.
1948 Magic, Science and Religion
Radcilffe-Brown, Alfred Reginal
1964[1922] The Andaman Islanders. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.
Middleton, J.
1960 Lugbara religion: ritual and authority among an east African people
Gluckman, M.
1963 Order and Rebellion in tribal Africa
Kuper, A.
1988 The invention of primitive society
Goody, J.
1995 The expansive moment: anthropology in Britain and Africa 1918-1970

Week6 & Week7: Rituals of Transition (28 Oct.)
Why should changes in status be an occasion for ritual and ceremony? Why is ritual inversion a common feature of rites of passage? How are roles conferred and differentiated through ritual? How does ritual transmit cultural values and knowledge?
*Turner, V.
1967 The forest of symbols, especially chapters 1,2,4,7
1969 The ritual process, especially chs.1,3,4,5
Van Gennep, A.
1960(1909) The rite of passage
Hubert, Henri & Marcel Mauss
1964 (1898) Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function.
Barth, F.
1989 Cosmologies in the making.
Bloch, M. & Parry, J. (eds.)
1982 Death and regeneration of life
1992 Prey into hunter
Ashley, Kathleen M. (ed.)
1990 Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology.
McCauley, Robert N. & E. Thomas Lawson
2002 Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms.

Week8: Rationality and Order (4 Nov.)
How are witchcraft and spirit possession used in the explanation of misfortune? In what circumstances may these phenomena appear as 1.products of social tension; 2. means of social control; 3.moral concepts? Why do magic and witchcraft pose problems concerning rationality? Do anthropologists exaggerate the extent to which the religions of non-literate societies constitute ‘ordered’ system? How might literacy affect the systematization of religion?
Evans-Prichard, E.E.
*1937 Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande.
1956 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levi-Bruhl, L.
1926(1912) How natives think.
Wilson, B.
1970 Rationality.
Hollis, M. & Lukes, S. (eds)
1982 Rationality and relativism.
Overing, Joanna (ed.)
1985 Reason and Morality.
Goody, J.
1986 The logic of Writing and the organization of society.
Horton,R.
1993 Patterns of thought in Africa and the West: essays on magic, religion and science.

Week9 (11 Nov.) Midterm Report

Week10: Structuralism (18 Nov.)
Levi-Strauss has expressed differences between the cognitive processes of members of simple and complex societies in terms of binary contrasts. Is this approach satisfactory? How are the concepts of structure, mind, relation, transformation, communication, sign, contradiction, code, nature and culture, etc. used? How does Levi-Strauss analyze that totemic societies and caste societies are inverted transformations of each other?
Levi-Strauss, C.
*1966 The savage mind.
1963 Totemism.
1982 The way of the masks.
Leach, E.
1970 Levi-Strauss.
Dumont, L.
1980 (1966) Homo Hierarchicus: The caste system and its implication.

Week11: Weber on Religion and Capitalism (25 Nov.)
What is the ‘spirit of capitalism’, what is relation to religious belief, and how – according to Weber – did it contribute to the rise of capitalism? What is meant by ‘elective affinity’, and how does Weber’s sociology differ from Durkheim’s?
*Weber, M.
1956 The sociology of religion.
Weber, M.
1946 ‘The social psychology of the world religion’, in H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, pp267-301
1958 The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

Week12: Geertz (2 Dec.)
Does Weber’s concept of rationality suggest ways to understand the relation between contemporary religion and social change outside Western society? Given the fixed text and authority for religious doctrine, how would you explain religious variation in Muslim society?
Geertz, C.
*1960 The religion of Java
1968 Islam observed
1973 The interpretation of cultures
1983 Local knowledge

Week13: Marxists on Religion: Stability and Legitimation (9 Dec.)
Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of the epoch. How has anthropological research modified this view? Why are the origins of power and authority so often placed in the realm of the transcendental? Does religion provide the machinery for generating political change or does it legitimate changing political relations?
*Bloch, M.
1986 From blessing to violence: history and ideology in the circumcision ritual of the Merina of Maddagascar, especially chapters 1, 3, 4, 5 & 8
Godellier, M.
1977 Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology
Bloch, M.
1989 ‘The past and the present in the present’, in M. Bloch, Ritual history and power
1989 ‘Symbol, song, dance and features of articulation: is religion an extreme form of traditional authority?’ in M. Bloch, Ritual history and power.
1998 Internal and External Memory: Different Ways of Being in History, in How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy, M. Bloch, pp.67-84. Boulder: Westview Press.

Week14: Religion and Political Resistance (16 Dec.)
Can religions of ‘traditional authority’ also be religions of political ‘resistance’? Can conversion religions also be religions of political ‘resistance’? And how should we use the term ‘resistance’ in anthropological writing?
Comaroff, Jean
*1985 Body of power, spirit of resistance, especially part 1 & 2
1991 Of revolution and revelation. Vol. One, Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in south Africa, especially chapters 2,3,6
1992 Ethnography and the historical imagination, especially chapters 7,9
1997 Of Revelation and Revolution. Vol. Two, The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier.
Whitehouse, H.
1995 Inside the cult: religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea.
1996 ‘Rites of terror: emotion, metaphor and memory in Melanesian initiation cults’, in J.R.A.I. 2(4): 703-16
1998 ‘From mission to movement: the impact of Christianity on patterns of political association in Papua New Guinea’, in J.R.A.I 4(1): 143-64

Week15 & Week 16: Shamanism and Spirit Mediumship (30 Dec.)
What is the distinction between ‘shamanic’ and ‘chiefly’ forms of authority? Are shamanism and spirit mediumship to be understood only as the way of conducting politics in ‘peripheral’ (non-state) areas? If not, in what other ways can and should we understand these phenomena?How have spirit-related practices figured in recent ethnographies of complex, post-colonial situations, and how are these ethnographies born out the earlier images of spirit possession?
*Cannell,F. 1999 Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philipines. Cambridge:
Taussig, Michael T.
1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing.
Atkinson, J. M
1989 The art and politics of Wana shamanship.
Humphrey, C.
1994 ‘Shamanic practice and the state in Northern Asia: views from the center and periphery’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state.
Bloch, M.
1994 ‘The slaves, the king and Mary in the slums of Antanamarivo’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state
Stoller, P.
1995 Embodying colonial memories: spirit possession, power and the Hanka in West Africa.
Cannell, Fenella (ed.)
2006 The Anthropology of Christianity.
Keane, Webb
2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter.

Week 17 Final Report (6 Jan.)
 
參考書目
 
評量方式
(僅供參考)
   
課程進度
週次
日期
單元主題
第1週
9/16  Week1: Introduction (16 Sep.) 
第2週
9/23  Week2 & Week3: Durkheim on Religion and Society (30 Sep.)
What does Durkheim mean by ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic solidarity’, and how are they related to the division of labour? Are traditional tribal societies characterized by mechanical solidarity, and are they made of homogenous segments? What are ‘collective representations’? How does the ‘sacred’ symbolize society, and how is religion socially determined? What is the social function of religious ritual?
*Durkheim, E.
1915(1907) The elementary forms of the religious life, especially Introduction, Book1 chapter1, Book3 chapter5, Conclusion.
Morris, B
1987 Anthropological studies of religion, ch.3
Pickering, W.
1984 Durkheim’s sociology on religion, especially ch.7
 
第3週
9/30  Week2 & Week3: Durkheim on Religion and Society (30 Sep.)
What does Durkheim mean by ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic solidarity’, and how are they related to the division of labour? Are traditional tribal societies characterized by mechanical solidarity, and are they made of homogenous segments? What are ‘collective representations’? How does the ‘sacred’ symbolize society, and how is religion socially determined? What is the social function of religious ritual?
*Durkheim, E.
1915(1907) The elementary forms of the religious life, especially Introduction, Book1 chapter1, Book3 chapter5, Conclusion.
Morris, B
1987 Anthropological studies of religion, ch.3
Pickering, W.
1984 Durkheim’s sociology on religion, especially ch.7

 
第4週
10/07  Week4: Mauss on Bodily Techniques and the Notion of Person (7 Oct.)
What are ‘bodily techniques’ and how are they socially constructed? How is the body used to symbolize social organization and how is it culturally constituted? How should we consider the ‘person’ cross-culturally? What was the thrust of Mauss’s essay, and what were his claims about the crucial stages of evolution from ‘person’ to ‘individual’? Is the ‘individual’ a creation of a particular kind of religion?
*Mauss, M.
1979(1950) Sociology and psychology, especially part3 & 4
Durkheim, E. & Mauss, M.
1963(1903) Primitive Classification
Hertz, R.
1960 Death and the right hand
Carrithers, M. et al. (eds)
1985 The category of the person
Csordas, Thomas J.
1990 Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 18:5-47.
1994 The sacred self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. 2002 Body/Meaning/Healing.
 
第5週
10/14  Week5: Structural-Functionalism and Functionalism (14 Oct.)
Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski prioritize issues of ‘social statics’ over those of ‘social dynamics’. But are some of the assumptions of structural-functionalism still shared with the way evolutionism conceptualizes the nature of society?
*Radcliffe-Brown, A.
1952 ‘Religion and society’, in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown Structure and function I primitive society, pp153-77
1972(1951) ‘The comparative method in social anthropology’, in Adam Kuper (ed.) The social anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown, pp53-69
*Maliowski, B.
1948 Magic, Science and Religion
Radcilffe-Brown, Alfred Reginal
1964[1922] The Andaman Islanders. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.
Middleton, J.
1960 Lugbara religion: ritual and authority among an east African people
Gluckman, M.
1963 Order and Rebellion in tribal Africa
Kuper, A.
1988 The invention of primitive society
Goody, J.
1995 The expansive moment: anthropology in Britain and Africa 1918-1970
 
第6週
10/21  Week6 & Week7: Rituals of Transition (28 Oct.)
Why should changes in status be an occasion for ritual and ceremony? Why is ritual inversion a common feature of rites of passage? How are roles conferred and differentiated through ritual? How does ritual transmit cultural values and knowledge?
*Turner, V.
1967 The forest of symbols, especially chapters 1,2,4,7
1969 The ritual process, especially chs.1,3,4,5
Van Gennep, A.
1960(1909) The rite of passage
Hubert, Henri & Marcel Mauss
1964 (1898) Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function.
Barth, F.
1989 Cosmologies in the making.
Bloch, M. & Parry, J. (eds.)
1982 Death and regeneration of life
1992 Prey into hunter
Ashley, Kathleen M. (ed.)
1990 Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology.
McCauley, Robert N. & E. Thomas Lawson
2002 Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms.
 
第7週
10/28  Week6 & Week7: Rituals of Transition (28 Oct.)
Why should changes in status be an occasion for ritual and ceremony? Why is ritual inversion a common feature of rites of passage? How are roles conferred and differentiated through ritual? How does ritual transmit cultural values and knowledge?
*Turner, V.
1967 The forest of symbols, especially chapters 1,2,4,7
1969 The ritual process, especially chs.1,3,4,5
Van Gennep, A.
1960(1909) The rite of passage
Hubert, Henri & Marcel Mauss
1964 (1898) Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function.
Barth, F.
1989 Cosmologies in the making.
Bloch, M. & Parry, J. (eds.)
1982 Death and regeneration of life
1992 Prey into hunter
Ashley, Kathleen M. (ed.)
1990 Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology.
McCauley, Robert N. & E. Thomas Lawson
2002 Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms.
 
第8週
11/04  Week8: Rationality and Order (4 Nov.)
How are witchcraft and spirit possession used in the explanation of misfortune? In what circumstances may these phenomena appear as 1.products of social tension; 2. means of social control; 3.moral concepts? Why do magic and witchcraft pose problems concerning rationality? Do anthropologists exaggerate the extent to which the religions of non-literate societies constitute ‘ordered’ system? How might literacy affect the systematization of religion?
Evans-Prichard, E.E.
*1937 Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande.
1956 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levi-Bruhl, L.
1926(1912) How natives think.
Wilson, B.
1970 Rationality.
Hollis, M. & Lukes, S. (eds)
1982 Rationality and relativism.
Overing, Joanna (ed.)
1985 Reason and Morality.
Goody, J.
1986 The logic of Writing and the organization of society.
Horton,R.
1993 Patterns of thought in Africa and the West: essays on magic, religion and science.
 
第9週
11/11  Week9 (11 Nov.) Midterm Report 
第10週
11/18  Week10: Structuralism (18 Nov.)
Levi-Strauss has expressed differences between the cognitive processes of members of simple and complex societies in terms of binary contrasts. Is this approach satisfactory? How are the concepts of structure, mind, relation, transformation, communication, sign, contradiction, code, nature and culture, etc. used? How does Levi-Strauss analyze that totemic societies and caste societies are inverted transformations of each other?
Levi-Strauss, C.
*1966 The savage mind.
1963 Totemism.
1982 The way of the masks.
Leach, E.
1970 Levi-Strauss.
Dumont, L.
1980 (1966) Homo Hierarchicus: The caste system and its implication.
 
第11週
11/25  Week11: Weber on Religion and Capitalism (25 Nov.)
What is the ‘spirit of capitalism’, what is relation to religious belief, and how – according to Weber – did it contribute to the rise of capitalism? What is meant by ‘elective affinity’, and how does Weber’s sociology differ from Durkheim’s?
*Weber, M.
1956 The sociology of religion.
Weber, M.
1946 ‘The social psychology of the world religion’, in H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, pp267-301
1958 The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
 
第12週
12/02  Week12: Geertz (2 Dec.)
Does Weber’s concept of rationality suggest ways to understand the relation between contemporary religion and social change outside Western society? Given the fixed text and authority for religious doctrine, how would you explain religious variation in Muslim society?
Geertz, C.
*1960 The religion of Java
1968 Islam observed
1973 The interpretation of cultures
1983 Local knowledge
 
第13週
12/09  Week13: Marxists on Religion: Stability and Legitimation (9 Dec.)
Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of the epoch. How has anthropological research modified this view? Why are the origins of power and authority so often placed in the realm of the transcendental? Does religion provide the machinery for generating political change or does it legitimate changing political relations?
*Bloch, M.
1986 From blessing to violence: history and ideology in the circumcision ritual of the Merina of Maddagascar, especially chapters 1, 3, 4, 5 & 8
Godellier, M.
1977 Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology
Bloch, M.
1989 ‘The past and the present in the present’, in M. Bloch, Ritual history and power
1989 ‘Symbol, song, dance and features of articulation: is religion an extreme form of traditional authority?’ in M. Bloch, Ritual history and power.
1998 Internal and External Memory: Different Ways of Being in History, in How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy, M. Bloch, pp.67-84. Boulder: Westview Press.
 
第14週
12/16  Week14: Religion and Political Resistance (16 Dec.)
Can religions of ‘traditional authority’ also be religions of political ‘resistance’? Can conversion religions also be religions of political ‘resistance’? And how should we use the term ‘resistance’ in anthropological writing?
Comaroff, Jean
*1985 Body of power, spirit of resistance, especially part 1 & 2
1991 Of revolution and revelation. Vol. One, Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in south Africa, especially chapters 2,3,6
1992 Ethnography and the historical imagination, especially chapters 7,9
1997 Of Revelation and Revolution. Vol. Two, The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier.
Whitehouse, H.
1995 Inside the cult: religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea.
1996 ‘Rites of terror: emotion, metaphor and memory in Melanesian initiation cults’, in J.R.A.I. 2(4): 703-16
1998 ‘From mission to movement: the impact of Christianity on patterns of political association in Papua New Guinea’, in J.R.A.I 4(1): 143-64
 
第15週
12/23  Week15 & Week 16: Shamanism and Spirit Mediumship (30 Dec.)
What is the distinction between ‘shamanic’ and ‘chiefly’ forms of authority? Are shamanism and spirit mediumship to be understood only as the way of conducting politics in ‘peripheral’ (non-state) areas? If not, in what other ways can and should we understand these phenomena?How have spirit-related practices figured in recent ethnographies of complex, post-colonial situations, and how are these ethnographies born out the earlier images of spirit possession?
*Cannell,F. 1999 Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philipines. Cambridge:
Taussig, Michael T.
1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing.
Atkinson, J. M
1989 The art and politics of Wana shamanship.
Humphrey, C.
1994 ‘Shamanic practice and the state in Northern Asia: views from the center and periphery’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state.
Bloch, M.
1994 ‘The slaves, the king and Mary in the slums of Antanamarivo’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state
Stoller, P.
1995 Embodying colonial memories: spirit possession, power and the Hanka in West Africa.
Cannell, Fenella (ed.)
2006 The Anthropology of Christianity.
Keane, Webb
2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter.
 
第16週
12/30  Week15 & Week 16: Shamanism and Spirit Mediumship (30 Dec.)
What is the distinction between ‘shamanic’ and ‘chiefly’ forms of authority? Are shamanism and spirit mediumship to be understood only as the way of conducting politics in ‘peripheral’ (non-state) areas? If not, in what other ways can and should we understand these phenomena?How have spirit-related practices figured in recent ethnographies of complex, post-colonial situations, and how are these ethnographies born out the earlier images of spirit possession?
*Cannell,F. 1999 Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philipines. Cambridge:
Taussig, Michael T.
1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing.
Atkinson, J. M
1989 The art and politics of Wana shamanship.
Humphrey, C.
1994 ‘Shamanic practice and the state in Northern Asia: views from the center and periphery’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state.
Bloch, M.
1994 ‘The slaves, the king and Mary in the slums of Antanamarivo’, in Thomas, T. & Humphrey, C. (eds.) Shamanism, history and the state
Stoller, P.
1995 Embodying colonial memories: spirit possession, power and the Hanka in West Africa.
Cannell, Fenella (ed.)
2006 The Anthropology of Christianity.
Keane, Webb
2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter.
 
第17週
1/06  Week 17 Final Report (6 Jan.)