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--- 2667:9 [2015/05/04 19:22] – [Key ideas for this week] Ryan Schram (admin)
+++ 2667:9 [2021/06/29 02:27] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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 ~~DECKJS~~
-# You can learn to be possessed #
+# Can you buy salvation? #
-## You can learn to be possessed ##
+## Can you buy salvation? ##
 Ryan Schram
@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
- May 2015
+ May 2016
+Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2667/9
 ### Readings ###
-Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2004. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary U.S. Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 518–28. doi:10.1525/aa.2004.106.3.518.
+Jones, Carla. 2010. “Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties about Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia.” American Ethnologist 37 (4): 617–37. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01275.x.
-Deren, Maya, Cherel Ito, and Teiji Ito. ca. 1947–1954. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Documentary. http://youtu.be/2YIO_dxyJio?t=1m27s.
+Brenner, Suzanne. 1996. “Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the Veil.’” American Ethnologist 23 (4): 673–97. doi:10.1525/ae.1996.23.4.02a00010.
+Meyer, Birgit. 1998. “Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana.” Development and Change 29 (4): 751–76. doi:10.1111/1467-7660.00098.
-## Is there any truth to religion and religious belief? ##
-a) A potentially explosive issue. It almost sounds as though this is
+### Other media ###
-asking which religion is right.
-b) More generally though I want to ask are there any grounds on which
+“Kosher Dining.” 2016. Cornell Center for Jewish Living, Cornell University. Accessed May 3. http://cornellcjl.com/kosher-dining/.
-one can believe in something unseen and unproven.
-c) We've ducked the issue.
+Medina, Jennifer. 2016. “A Few Miles From San Bernardino, a Muslim Prom Queen Reigns.” The New York Times, April 29. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/us/a-few-miles-from-san-bernardino-a-muslim-prom-queen-reigns.html.
-## What is religion? ##
+## What is (in) fashion? ##
-Let's think about how we might define religion. Write your own working
+* How would you describe fashion among students at this university?
-definition of religion.
-## William James ##
+* What do these trends or styles tell you about the people who wear them?
- * James is a philosopher interested in the nature of human
+## Are your friends fashion followers? ##
-   experience. As such, he is (more or less) to psychology what
-   Durkheim is to anthropology. It is interesting to note that they
-   were active at about the same time.
- * James is also a leading figure within the intellectual movement
-   called Pragmatism. Pragmatism is an argument that every idea needs
-   to be proven by evidence, and that real knowledge comes directly
-   from evidence, facts and the sense.
- * What do you suppose Pragmatists thought about religion?
-## What is happening in this religious event? ##
+* How many of you think that your friends follow what is in fashion?
-A clip from the *The Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti*, a film by Maya Deren et al.
+* How many of you think that your friends do not follow what is in fashion?
-https://youtu.be/2YIO_dxyJio?t=6m59s
+## Dress as communication and dress as consumption ##
-The beginning of ritual welcoming and honoring a *lwa* named Papa Legba. Pay attention to the man wearing a handkerchief around his head.
+A theory of clothing:
-## There are many varieties of religious experience ##
+* Let's assume that everyone has a choice of what to wear.
+* Let's also assume that people make judgements about what other people wear.
+* Dress is a social action - it sends a message, even if that message is not intended.
+* The message of dress is also implicitly a message about the person.
-* Healthy-mindedness: You feel as though part of you is good, and
+## Weber and hipsters ##
-  through your own actions and behavior you can cultivate goodness in
-  yourself and the world.
-* The sick soul. You see the world as a war between Good and
-  Evil. Everyone, including yourself, need to be saved from inherent
-  evils.
-* Conversion. You feel incomplete and imperfect, and so feel like you
-  need to seek change.
-* Mysticism. You feel like you have an intuitive knowledge about the
-  world from experience. You have a wisdom which you feel, but cannot
-  put into words.
-## God is real ##
+* Weber's theory of social action is relevant here: To understand social action, we must look at the meaning the actors puts in their action.
-"God is real because he produces real effects."
+* There are many levels of meaning in any one action: emotional (affective), (instrumentally) rational, and symbolic.
+* There is also another level of meaning, in which the action expresses a value.
+## Remember ANTH 1002 ##
+* Think back to Terry Woronov's lecture in ANTH 1002 about baby food and niche marketing. What was her main point?
+## Social identity and mass consumption ##
+A simplified theory of identity in mass societies:
+* Communication involves using codes. We express ourselves by encoding our thoughts in terms of symbols.
+* Living in a mass society means being a consumer of codes.
+* The choices presented by the mass market are linked to discrete, bounded categories of identity.
+## Religious identity in a mass society ##
+* If religion is a kind of social action, how does one practice one's religion in a mass society?
+* How does one express a religious identity as one's social identity in a mass society?
+## Religion and economy ##
+* Religious prohibitions on consumption
+* Religious critiques of wealth
+* Blessing of commodity consumption
+* Aimee Semple Macpherson and televangelism
+* Fundraising in Auhelawa churches