05 宗教人类学

Magicians use imitative magic to produce a desired effect by imitating it. If magicians wish to injure or kill someone, they may imitate that effect on an image of the victim. Sticking pins in “voodoo dolls” is an example. With contagious magic, whatever is done to an object is believed to an object is believed to affect a person who once had contact with it. Sometimes practitioners of contagious magic use body products from prospective victims---their nails or hair, for example. The spell performed on the body product is believed to reach the person eventually and work the desired result.

Anxiety, Control, Solace



Religion and magic also enter the realm of human feelings. Magical techniques can dispel doubts that arise when outcomes are beyond human control. Religion helps people face death and endure life crises.


Emile Durkheim, an early scholar of religion, stressed religious effervescence, the bubbling up of collective emotional intensity generated by worship. Victor Turner updated Durkheim’s notion, using the term communitas, an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness.

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According to Malinowski, magic is used to establish control, but religion “is born out of…the real tragedies of human life”. Religion offers emotional comfort, particularly when people face a crisis.

When people face uncertainty and danger, according to Malinowski, they turn to magic. However much knowledge and science help man in allowing him to obtain what he wants, they are unable completely to control chance, to eliminate accidents, to foresee the unexpected turn of natural events, or to make human handiwork reliable and adequate to all practical requirements.

From the Latin for soul, anima, Tylor named this belief animism.
万物有灵论：所有的生物与非生物，以及 人类，都具有灵魂（或生命力与人格）



Tylor proposed the religion evolved through stages, beginning with animism. Polytheism (the belief in multiple gods) and then monotheism (the belief in a single, all-powerful deity) developed later. Because religion originated to explain things people didn’t understand, Tylor thought it would decline as science offered better explanations for many things that religion once elucidated.
Animism

Sir Edward Tylor thought that religion was born as people tried to understand conditions and events they could not explain by reference to daily experience. Tylor believed that our ancestors---and contemporary nonindustrial peoples---were particularly intrigued with death, dreaming, and trance. In dreams and trances, people see images they may remember when they wake up or come out of the trance state.



Malinowski noted that it was only when confronted by situations they could not control that Trobrianders, out of psychological stress, turned from technology to magic. Despite our improving technical skills, we can’t still control every outcome, and magic persists in contemporary societies.

Tylor concluded that attempts to explain dreams and trances led early humans to believe that two entities inhabit the body: one active during the day and the other---a double or soul---active during sleep and trance states. Although they never meet, they are vital to each other. When the double permanently leaves the body, the person dies.

弗雷泽相信巫术先于宗教。当巫术被看作 是骗人的把戏的时候，人们开始寻找其它 的心理支持的手段，而且有了精神存在能 够帮助他们产生错觉。当人们看到宗教也 不灵光时，他们转向了科学。科学与巫术 都立足于操纵自然法则的信仰（尽管只有 前者是真实的），宗教与之相反，它信仰 精灵。科学家与巫师都充满信心地操作他 们的仪式，而祭司却充满恐惧地颤抖地献 祭
Magic and Religion

Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims. These techniques include spells, formulas, and incantations used with deities or with impersonal forces.

埃文斯－普理查德雄辩地将诸如泰勒、弗雷泽等 人的理智主义的立场，描述为“假如我是一匹马” 的荒谬。在缺乏任何真实证据的情况下，他们反 身自问，如果自己是个“原始人”会怎么做，会 如何将世界合理化。
如果这些学者是正确的，那么文明的进步方向是 越来越理性，而荒谬的推理将灭绝，但是相反， 万物有灵论的和巫术的世界观、祖先崇拜、对至 上存在的信仰，甚至在工业化的背景里，全都继 续存在着，而且经常共处
Origins of Religion


When did religion begin? No one knows for sure. Any statement about when, why, and how religion arose, or any description of its original nature, can only be speculative.
宗教人类学

鲍伊，2004，《宗教人类学导论》，北京： 中国人民大学出版社
What is Religion?


Anthony F. C. Wallace defined religion as “belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces”. The supernatural is the extraordinary realm outside (but believed to impinge on) the observable world. It is nonempirical and inexplicable in ordinary terms. It must be accepted “on faith.” Supernatural beings---gods and goddesses, ghosts, and souls---are not of the material world.


如同理智主义者的论证一样，马林诺夫斯基（以 及弗洛伊德）的情感主义理论，只是猜测性的。 埃文斯－普理查德注意到，尽管情感、愿望和冲 动无可怀疑地在宗教中发挥作用，但并非只要有 宗教的或巫术的行为，就会自发地产生马林诺夫 斯基所假定的效果 我们面对的是“假如我是一匹马”的另一种论证： “如果我们要举行原始人那样的仪式，我们便假 定我们是处在情感混乱的状态中，因为，要不然 的话，我们的理性将告诉我们，那些仪式客观上 是无用的。”


Another definition of religion focuses on bodies of people who gather together regularly for worship. These congregants or adherents subscribe to and internalize a common system of meaning. They accept (adhere to or believe in) a set of doctrines involving the relationship between the individual and divinity.