About the course

• Disciplinary character of anthropology

– The everyday and the ordinary–Comparative–Reflexive–Anti-ethnocentrism– Counter-intuitive

• Method

• Descriptive / ethnographic• Long-term immersion/repeated contact• Use local language• Participant observation

Anthropology of religion today

• Renewed importance compared to 1970s

• Assumption:– Religion would fade away as secular

institutions took over religious functions

– Religion would become a private matter

– “Superstition” would be swept away by scientific/rational thinking

Instead…• Iranian Revolution of 1979 helps

bring a shift in thinking• The connection between religion

and politics becomes ever more obvious in succeeding 30 years

• Religion has renewed public significance

• Scientific discourse and language prevails but does not obliterate non-scientific interpretations of the world

How is anthropology of religion useful?

• Getting “inside” religious processes• Countering “received wisdom” about what

religion is and what it does• There are no lesser or greater religions, only

issues of scale, history, and complexity• Religion as an everyday experience and

practice of ordinary people, not just religious leaders and thinkers

Anthropological/social scientific premises

• Cannot approve or disapprove of the religious life of others

• Cannot prove or disprove the validity of other people’s religious beliefs or actions

• “Sympathetic skepticism”

“If you wish to avoid the necessity of taking religion seriously, then

study it sociologically.”