Ryan Schram

Mills 169 (A26)

ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

April 2, 2015

Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2667/5

Haynes, Naomi. 2012. “Pentecostalism and the Morality of Money: Prosperity, Inequality, and Religious Sociality on the Zambian Copperbelt.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18 (1): 123–39. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9655.2011.01734.x.

Robbins, J. 1998. “Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Desire among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea.” Ethnology 37 (4): 299–316. doi:10.2307/3773784.

Robbins, Joel. 2001. “God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 103 (4): 901–12.

Cannell, Fenella. 2005. “The Christianity of Anthropology*.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (2): 335–56. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9655.2005.00239.x.

DuBois, Bastien. 2013. “Cargo Cult” (Trailer). https://vimeo.com/62094392.

We understand that Durkheim and Weber complement each other, but we are still stuck with a nagging question. Aren't some religions more appropriately understood from the point of view of an individual? What, in general, is the relationship between the individual side of religious belief and practice and the social or collective side?

I want to take as given that some societies exhibit individualism as a chief value. Relationships and groups are ideally based on choice. People create their own paths in life.

By contrast other societies exhibit a different orientation. Societies based on all-encompassing social institutions such as kinship structure and hereditary leadership, for instance, tend to place obligations to the group over individual choice.

This does not mean that some societies are more free or have looser structures, or that other societies are more oppressive. Each type of society is based on different values. None are necessarily more or less oppressive.

• the rationality of salvation, specifically the concept of a “calling” or vocation.
• the disenchantment of the world
• the individual and society in Robbins and Haynes's work
• Pentecostalism