Religion, Magic and Worldview
“The Worst Lover: Boyfriend Spirits in Senegal” by Rachel Mueller
“Baseball Magic” by George Gmelch
“Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage” by Jill Dubitsch
“Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner
#31: Body Ritual among the Nacirema (Horace Miner)
What are a few adjectives you’d use to describe the Nacirema? Why?
Explain.
The Nacirema…like you/ NOT like you?
What are some of the beliefs and body rituals of the Nacirema?
The most fundamental belief underlying the whole system?
Most fundamental belief underlying the whole system….
“The human body is ugly and its natural tendency is to debility and disease.” (288)
Ways to avert and cope are through ritual and ceremonies…
Every home has a shrine dedicated to this purpose… but not for families….private and secret individual ceremonies and rituals.
Shrines and charm boxes.
What are some of the body rituals of the Nacirema?
Body rituals among the Nacirema
Mouth –rites (bundles of hog hairs into the mouth)
Holy mouth men
Medicine men
Men-scrape and lacerate the skin on their face
Women bake their heads in ovens
How do these help people function?
What is the latipso, and for what is it used?
“Some natives are taken here never to recover”
Children resist going here necause that is where you go to die” (290)
What do you think the psychological functions of Nacireman body ritual are?
Who ARE the Nacirema?
The author describes this poorly understood people
“They are a North American group living between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and the Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and the Arawak of ther Antilles.”
“a highly developed marked economy…”
“A North American group living between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles.” (288)
Who are the Nacirema, and why do you think Miner wrote this article?
“Body Ritual among the Nacirema”
Offers a satirical view of American culture
Addresses assumptions about “primitive”/ “advanced” societies
Magic and superstition in an modern,
industrialized society
Cultural relativity
Ethnocentrism
Miner wrote this classic essay in 1958…
2018….changes?
#29: Baseball magic (George Gmelch)
This essay begins with a story about Dennis Grossini, a former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.
Why?
Why does the author (George Gmelch) discuss Bronislaw Malinowski’s theories on magic?
Lagoon
Open sea fishing
According to Gmelch, what is magic
and why do people practice it?
“By magic, anthropologists refer to practices (267)
Rituals
Taboos
Fetishes
(good luck charms)
What parts of baseball are most likely to lead to magical practice? Why?
Illustrate these concepts using examples from this article.
How does the risk and uncertainty of pitching and hitting affect players?
How do they try to control the outcome of their performance?
Uncertainty and Magic
Bronislaw Malinowski
B.F. Skinner
How are their theories of magic alike and different? What is each designed to explain?
Uncertainty and Magic
Bronislaw Malinowski
Anthropologist
Helps us understand how baseball players respond to uncertainty/ anxiety
Belief in having control increases confidence
B.F. Skinner
Behavioral psychologist
Sheds light on why personal rituals get established in the first place; linking particular behavior with a reward
Stuart Vyse adds: “Humans like Skinner’s pigeons tend to repeat any behavior that is coincident with success” (274) Baseball players unlike pigeons are quicker to change rituals once they no longer seem to work (274)
In a footnote, Gmelch notes some research of interest regarding cross-cultural comparisons between American and Japanese baseball players
Americans in general more superstitious than Japanese players
American players believed their superstitions, routines and rituals aided individual performance
Japanese players believed their superstitions aided team performance
Can you think of other areas in the U.S. where magic is practiced?
Do the same theories in this article account for these examples too?
Why do you think Gmelch wrote this article?
Gmelch, who in the 1960s played pro baseball for the Detroit Tigers
took an Anthropology course on “Religion, Magic and Witchcraft”
Listened to professor lecturing on magic and rituals of the Trobriand Islanders…where it occurred to him that what these so-called “primitive” people did wasn’t all that different from what he and his teammates did for luck and confidence in the ballpark (267)
“Baseball Magic”
Describes the use of magic by baseball players
Illustrates nature of magic, fetishes, taboo, and ritual
Ties the use of magic to anxiety related to uncertainty
Malinowski (stress reduction, uncertainty)
B. F. Skinner to show magic’s relationship to personal rituals nature of cause and effect
Intro ….“People seem most content
when they are confident about themselves and the world around them.” (254)
Uncertainty breeds anxiety…
“From time to time the unexpected or the contradictory intervenes to shake peoples’ assurance.”
Crops fail
A woman’s husband runs off with another woman
Death, natural disaster, countless other forms of adversity strike…
Magic, one way to cope with uncertainty
Helps people function
#28: The Worst Lover: Boyfriend Spirits on Senegal (Rachel Mueller)
Senegal shaped by two historical influences:
1000 -Muslims arrived w/ Sufi Islam
Prayer mats. head coverings,
marabouts (islamic holy men)
2)1800s- French colonization
French language & gov’t
French & Wolof
Key to the story
Rab…..
Faru rab
Teranga
Spirit Possession and Rab
Laye Fatou’s story?
Lebou religion
What attracts rab spirits?
In what ways do rab resemble humans?
Essay…negative effects of the faru rab on women
Demonstrates steps women must take to reject these spirits, including the dramatic ndepp ritual
Marabout (healer)/ Ndepp (public ritual)/ Ndeppkat (priestess)
Divination
Sacrifice
Ndepp ceremony
Ways of Communicating with the Supernatural World
Spirit possession occurs when a supernatural being enters an individual and controls that person’s behavior.
Onlookers can then communicate with the spirit.
Sacrifice is the act of giving up something to influence supernatural beings.
Prayer is a petition directed at a supernatural being.
Can boyfriend spirits co-exist with Islam?
“Rab” in Senegalese Society
What prognosis does Mueller provide for the survival of rab in changing Senegalese society?
Lébou people of Senegal claim to live among rab spirits alongside devout worship of Islam
Explains how rab fits into both Islam and Senegal
Historic religion
Archaic religion
Syncretism
Medical pluralism (rab healers * western trained doctors)
Syncretism
Creative blending of indigenous and foreign beliefs and practices into new cultural forms.
EG: Vodou (divine spirit) is an example of a syncretic religion as it combines both Christian and African belief systems.
Divination
is the use of supernatural force associated with selected material objects to learn answers to particular questions.
Example: The Bhils of India predict the abundance of summer rainfall by watching where a bird lands when it is released.
If it settles on something green, rain will be plentiful; if it settles on brown, the year will be dry.
“Signs”…omens
Divination, omens, signs
A method to prepare for the unknown and/or not yet present.
Divination- a magical procedure for determining the cause of a particular event, such as illness, or foretelling the future.
Do we practice this in our society?
Nechung Oracle Tibet
Divination
Palm readings
Tarot readings
I Ching
Dreams
#30: Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage (Jill Dubisch)
What is this essay about?
What kind of people started the Run for the Wall?
Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage (st. 1989)
Describes a yearly 10 day pilgrimage from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. by motorcyclists, many of whom are veterans of the Vietnam War (arr Memorial Day Weekend)
What does Dubisch mean by
the term “ritual”?
a pilgrimage?
Key terms
Ritual: “a patterned, repetitive, symbolic enactment of cultural belief or value” (279)
The primary purpose of a ritual is “transformation”
Rituals are often performed to mark important occasions times, transitions
Easter, Passover,etc
Often think of them as “traditional” being transmitted generation to generation – but the fact is that they an ongoing human activity are need to be recreated every time they are performed
Rituals subject to intentional and unintentional change
Run for the Wall
Yearly tradition – ritual
Modified and changed and added to every year by those who participate in it and those who host them along the way
Pilgrimage:
As a ritual
Is a journey
One type of “rite of passage”
Marked by a liminal period of physical separation created by the journey itself
Once the journey is over – the pilgrim often has an experience of inner transformation: healing, atonement for sim or spiritual renewal (280)
Anthropology of Ritual
Arnold van Gennep – Rites of passage: separation, betwixt or between (liminality) and reaggregation
Victor Turner – rituals as having two poles: the ideological and the sensory
Important messages about social values
Mircea Eliade – rituals often reenact the important myths of society
Dubisch argues that the Run for the Wall
has a strong emotional and transformative impact on those who participate.
What appears to generate such intense feelings?
Dangers of the road
Reawakening of memories from the trauma of war
a difficult period in history – era of the Vietnam war…and social protests
Purpose of the Pilgrimage:
1) to heal personal wounds
2) to ride for all veterans especially those who were left behind: POWs & MIAs
What were some of the storied moments Dubisch recounts in the pilgrimage?
The Navajo Reservation and the Brotherhood of Warriors
The Power of Places:Angel Fire, New Mexico
Linton, Colorado: remembering the Missing and the Dead
At the Wall; Confronting Sacred Space
Over 58,000 American names engraved
Individual and collective dead
Wall Magic
Night Patrol
Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage
Defines pilgrimage, ritual, and rites of passage
Notes the stress returning that veterans feel and illustrates the way the “run” contributes to healing
Shows how ritual can reinforce basic values
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