Ryan Schram

Mills 169 (A26)

ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

16 April 2015

Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2667/6

Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2009. “Market Islam in Indonesia.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: S183–201. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9655.2009.01549.x.

Wiegele, Katharine L. 2013. “Reframing Suffering and Success through the El Shaddai Movement of the Philippines.” Asia-Pacific Social Science Review 5 (2): 66–88. http://ejournals.ph/index.php?journal=dlsu-apssr&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=6741.

Cahn, Peter S. 2006. “Building Down and Dreaming Up: Finding Faith in a Mexican Multilevel Marketer.” American Ethnologist 33 (1): 126–42. doi:10.1525/ae.2006.33.1.126.

Osteen, Joel. 2015. “Choosing Faith In Spite Of The Facts 2015.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N9DF2yfjG8. Accessed February 15, 2015.

Search for more videos and information about Joel Osteen. Why is his “prosperity gospel” so controversial?

The World Social Forum, a meeting of groups from around the world who are all combating globalization, has a slogan: Another world is possible.

Is this the only world that is possible?

What other worlds are possible?

What would you change?

You can't have a war without both a winner and a loser.

You can't have a purchase without a buyer and a seller.

You can't have an economy where everyone is a business owner. If there are owners, then there are also workers who work for the owner. Aha. That is a class system.

You can't have a society in which everyone accumulates money. If one person is accumulating then one person is giving it up.

Think about adding salt to soup. A little bit makes it good. A lot makes it disgusting.

Think about snow on a mountain. It builds up and accumulates, until suddenly it all falls down in an avalanche.

Think about the last lecture you went to. Did it have definitions of concepts? Did it break down a big idea into its defining characteristics?

How do you know if this kind of a statement is true? Is this all there is?

• Liberal democracy is a system based on equality of all citizens, and each person's rights as an individual, and yet liberal democracies are the most economically unequal societies that have ever existed.
• Never before have humans been able to feed so many with so few resources, and yet starvation and obesity are both widespread.
• Biomedical technology has nearly wiped out mortality from infectious diseases … until we all die from superbugs.

Marx, Critique of the Philosophy of Right (1843):

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Marx, Critique of the Philosophy of Right (1843):

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.