download materi Religion 2

download materi  Religion 2

•           Functionalism

•           During the first decades of the 20th c. - the preoccupation with the origins of religion supplanted by other theoretical concerns

•           Functional approach to religion

•           Different questions:

–      What is the function of religion?

–      What does religion do for people, and for social groups?

1) totemic emblem – essential to totemic belief

–       a design that represents the clan’s totemic entity

–       confers sacredness to whatever it is marked on

–       marks the sacred away from the profane (cannot be touched etc)

2) totemic entity – animal or plant species

–       dietary prohibitions

3) human clan members

–       use of blood and bodily parts in the rituals

•           totemism not essentially about the totemic entity or the emblem but about the clan itself

•           the experience of the social group alone can generate in people intense feelings that sustain religion

•           totemic religion arose from collective tribal life style

Ø ritual events - generate a heightened emotional state -> “delirium” or “collective effervescence”

Ø The function of rituals

–       to strengthen the bonds attaching the believer to god

–       to strengthen the bonds attaching the individual to the social group

Ø Through ritual, the group becomes conscious of itself.

Ø Too rigid separation between the sacred and the profane

Ø many hunter-gatherers like the Andamanese lack corporate kin groups and totems but do have religion

Ø “religion establishes and reaffirms group solidarity” and has symbolic significance for a society.

–       But society is not a homogeneous entity but divided into social categories based on sex, class, ethnic affiliation etc.

Ø religious beliefs may have an ideological function legitimating the domination of one group or class over another