Week 13 · Chapter

Chapter 13 — Religion, Ritual, and Worldview

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 8 (interpret religion, ritual, and healing: apply the three phases of a rite of passage, liminality, and communitas, explain magic, witchcraft, and revitalization movements as anthropologists have analyzed them, and distinguish disease from illness using explanatory models and the idea of structural violence), Objective 3 (analyze language as a cultural system: distinguish language from communication, explain dialect, register, and code-switching, evaluate the strong and weak forms of linguistic relativity, and describe nonverbal communication and language endangerment) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

Every group of people has ways to mark big changes in life, to face danger, and to explain bad luck. This week you will meet religion (beliefs and practices about spiritual beings and the order of the world) and ritual (a patterned set of acts people repeat because it means something to them). You will learn the three phases of a rite of passage (a ritual that moves a person into a new status, such as a graduation). You will also see how anthropologists have studied magic (ritual action meant to bring about a result) and witchcraft (a way of explaining why misfortune strikes particular people at a particular moment). Last, you will read the running market's opening bell as a small ritual of its own.

Why you already care about this

Picture an illustrative family on New Year's Eve. There is a special meal that nobody cooks at any other time of year. At 10 seconds to midnight, everyone counts down together. A grandparent tells the same story every year about why the family eats this dish, and the youngest child can now recite it too.

Nobody in that room would call the evening a religion. Yet it has a lot in common with what anthropologists study under that heading. It has a set order of acts, a story about how the custom began, and a feeling that the year will go better if it is done right. It also marks a line in time: the old year ends, and a new one begins.

You have been through bigger versions of this. Think of a graduation, a wedding, a first day at a new job, or a farewell party for someone retiring. Each one moves a person from one place in life to another, and each follows steps that people rarely question.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

explain religion in words using Tylor's and Geertz's definitions, and define worldview, myth, and ritual;
name the three phases of a rite of passage and apply them to a rite from the course's rites set;
explain liminality and communitas and find them in the middle phase of a rite;
explain Malinowski's account of magic and uncertainty, and tell magic apart from religion;
explain how witchcraft answered "why them, why now" for the Azande, and name three kinds of religious specialist;
define a revitalization movement, and read the market's opening bell as a calendrical ritual rather than a rite of passage.

Carry this sentence with you: a rite moves a person; a bell marks the time.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 2 taught that a symbol stands for something else by convention, and it read the market's bell as a symbol and waiting for it as a norm. Week 3 recorded the bell in a field note. Week 4 taught nonverbal communication and heard the vendors' own term, "the bell". Week 10 met the wedding in the rites set as a marriage.
This week: definitions of religion; myth and worldview; rites of passage and their three phases; liminality and communitas; magic and uncertainty; witchcraft as explanation and religious specialists; revitalization movements; and the market's opening bell as a small calendrical ritual.
How they connect: Week 2 gave you the symbol, and religion in Geertz's sense is a whole system of symbols. Week 4 gave you the tools for the language of ritual, from a hush to a set call.
Where we're going next: Week 14, Health, Illness, and Healing, continues this unit on meaning: an illness explained by witchcraft or by a doctor is read with the tools you learn here.

Two earlier ideas carry this week. From Week 2, a symbol is something that stands for something else by convention, with no natural link between the thing and its meaning, such as a flag, a gesture, or a bell. From Week 4, nonverbal communication is the meaning people convey without words, through gesture, facial expression, and the use of space. This week the market's bell returns a third time, now as part of a ritual.

1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories

Go back to the New Year's Eve dinner. If you asked the family what the evening is about, you might hear about luck, about the ancestors who started the custom, or about being together. Some families would mention prayers or spirits, and some would not. So where does "religion" start?

Anthropologists have offered more than one answer. The course uses two, and it states both in words.

The first is old and short. Tylor (1871), Primitive Culture, the same work that gave the course its first definition of culture, offered a minimum definition of religion: belief in spiritual beings. He called that belief animism.

Animism is Tylor's name for belief in spiritual beings, which he offered in 1871 as the minimum definition of religion.

The second comes almost a century later and looks at what religion does. Geertz (1966), "Religion as a Cultural System", defines religion as a system of symbols that shapes people's moods and motivations and their sense of the order of existence. The course paraphrases that definition and quotes none of it. In plain words, religion is a set of symbols that changes how people feel and what they want to do, and that tells them how the world fits together.

Put the two together, and you get the course's working definition.

Religion is a system of beliefs and practices about spiritual beings and the order of the world; Tylor's minimum definition is belief in spiritual beings, and Geertz described it as a system of symbols that shapes people's moods and motivations and their sense of the order of existence.

Geertz's phrase about the order of existence points to a wider idea.

A worldview is a people's broad sense of how the world is ordered and what it means, which religion and ritual help to shape and express.

Religions carry their worldviews partly through stories.

A myth is a sacred story that explains how things came to be, told and retold by the people who hold it.

In everyday English, "myth" often means "a false belief". In anthropology it does not. The word names a kind of story by what it does for the people who tell it, not by whether an outsider believes it. A myth is language at work: it is spoken, learned, and passed on, as Week 4 said every language is.

Last, there is the practice side of religion, and of much of life outside religion.

A ritual is a patterned, repeated sequence of acts that people perform because it carries meaning for them; it is not meaningless repetition.

Worked example — reading the New Year's Eve dinner with two definitions (illustrative). The family is constructed for this chapter. Ask what each definition picks up.

What was observed. A special meal once a year, a countdown together, and a grandparent's story about why the family eats the dish.
Tylor's test. Is there belief in spiritual beings? The scene as described names none, so Tylor's minimum definition does not call it religion.
Geertz's lens. Are there symbols that shape moods and a sense of order? Yes: the dish stands for luck, the countdown builds a shared mood, and the story explains how the custom came to be.
What the course calls it. A ritual, with a story that works like a family myth, whether or not anyone in the room calls it religious.

In words: the two definitions draw the line in different places, so the dinner is a ritual under either one, and it is religion under Geertz's lens only in a loose sense and not at all under Tylor's.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a custom from your own family, team, or workplace that has a set order of acts. What does it mean to the people who do it?
(b) Tylor's definition asks about spiritual beings, while Geertz's asks what symbols do. Which definition would you use to compare two very different communities, and why?

Misconception check. Students often hear "myth" and think "a false story", so they call a people's sacred story a myth to mean it is untrue. That is tempting, because everyday English uses the word that way. But anthropology uses "myth" for a sacred story that explains how things came to be, and the term says nothing about whether it is true. The cure: ask what the story does for the people who tell it.

2. Read a rite of passage in three phases

Think about the last time you changed who you were in the eyes of other people. Maybe you finished high school, started a job, or moved out of a family home. The change did not happen in one instant. There was a before, an awkward middle, and an after.

One scholar gave that shape a name. Van Gennep (1909), Les rites de passage, identified three phases in rites that move people from one status to another. His book appeared in French in 1909, and its English translation, The Rites of Passage, appeared in 1960. That means 1960 − 1909 = 51 years passed before English readers had it.

A rite of passage is a ritual that moves a person from one social status to another, such as a graduation, a wedding, or a retirement; it need not be religious.

The three phases, in order:

Separation is the first of van Gennep's three phases of a rite of passage, in which a person is set apart from their old status.
Transition is the middle phase of a rite of passage in van Gennep's scheme, in which a person has left the old status but not yet entered the new one.
Incorporation is the last of van Gennep's three phases of a rite of passage, in which a person is welcomed back into the community in a new status.

Van Gennep's three phases are a classroom model. They organize comparison; they do not settle a real case on their own, and real rites can stretch or blur a phase.

The course's rites-of-passage set (Dataset E, illustrative, constructed for this course) lays out six rites, each with its three phases pinned.

Dataset E (illustrative): six rites of passage and the pinned separation, transition, and incorporation phase of each
Rite	Separation	Transition (liminal)	Incorporation
A graduation	Graduates leave family seats, put on caps and gowns, and line up apart	The procession and ceremony, waiting to be called — no longer students, not yet graduates	Name read, diploma handed over, tassel turned; welcomed back by family as graduates
A naming ceremony	Parent and newborn stay apart from public life for a set number of days after the birth	The days when the baby has no public name	The baby is presented to the community and named
A military recruit's basic training	Recruits leave home, hand in civilian clothes, and get the same haircut	Basic training, where recruits are equal, stripped of former status, and bonded	The graduation parade; the recruit returns as a soldier with a rank
A wedding	The couple get ready apart, often with separate parties beforehand	The ceremony and vows, between single and married	Presented as a married couple at the reception
A coming-of-age ceremony	The young person withdraws from ordinary routines to prepare	A period of instruction or testing, neither child nor adult	Publicly recognized as an adult member of the community
A retirement	The last day at work; keys and badge handed in	The farewell gathering, between worker and retiree	Takes up the new status of retiree among family and community

Worked example — the graduation, phase by phase. Use the first row of Dataset E, then count the whole table.

Separation. Graduates leave family seats, put on caps and gowns, and line up apart. They are set apart from their old place among family and from their old status as students.
Transition. The procession and ceremony, waiting to be called: no longer students, and not yet graduates.
Incorporation. Name read, diploma handed over, tassel turned, and welcomed back by family as graduates.
The whole set. 6 rites, each with 3 pinned phases (separation, transition, and incorporation), so 6 × 3 = 18 pinned phase entries.
The liminal column. Each rite has 1 transition phase, so 6 of the 18 entries are liminal, and 18 − 6 = 12 entries are separation or incorporation.

In words: the graduation moves a person from student to graduate through separation, transition, and incorporation, and every one of the 6 rites in the set follows the same three-phase shape.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Pick a rite you have been through, such as a graduation, a first job, or a team tryout. Name what happened in each of the three phases.
(b) Pick one row of Dataset E other than the graduation. Which phase seems hardest to see from the outside, and why?

Misconception check. Students often read a rite of passage as always religious, as if the term belonged only to worship. That is tempting, because many famous rites take place in religious settings. But the graduation and the retirement rows of Dataset E name no spiritual being, and they still move a person into a new status in three phases. The cure: ask "does this move a person from one status to another?" rather than "is this religious?"

3. Name the middle: liminality and communitas

Think about the hour before a graduation ceremony. The graduates have handed back their library books and cleaned out their lockers, but nobody has handed them a diploma. They sit in rows, dressed alike, and talk to people they barely knew all year. For a short time, the usual ranks of popular and unknown, honors and not, seem to matter less.

An anthropologist built two ideas on that strange middle.

Liminality is the in-between state of the transition phase of a rite of passage, when a person is no longer in the old status and not yet in the new one; Turner developed the idea.

Turner (1967), "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage", in The Forest of Symbols, developed liminality in an essay first presented in 1964.

Communitas is the intense bond among people who share the liminal state of a rite of passage together; Turner developed the idea in The Ritual Process (1969).

Turner (1969), The Ritual Process, is where communitas is set out. In plain words, people who are stripped of their usual rank and go through the in-between together often come out feeling bonded in a way their ordinary lives would not produce.

Worked example — the recruit's basic training (Dataset E, illustrative). Read the third row of the set for both ideas.

Separation. Recruits leave home, hand in civilian clothes, and get the same haircut. Clothes and hair are symbols of who a person was, and both are taken away.
Transition. Basic training, where recruits are equal, stripped of former status, and bonded. That is liminality with communitas: the in-between state, shared by people of equal standing, producing a strong bond.
Incorporation. The graduation parade, where the recruit returns as a soldier with a rank.

In words: the recruit's basic training shows liminality in the transition phase, when recruits are no longer civilians and not yet soldiers, and it shows communitas in the bond among recruits made equal by that middle.

A second row shows the same middle in a different setting. In the coming-of-age ceremony, the transition is a period of instruction or testing, neither child nor adult. The set does not pin a bond there, so the course reads liminality in that row and leaves communitas as a question to ask of a real case.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a time you shared an in-between stretch with others, such as a first week at a new school, a training program, or a long wait before a performance. Did a bond form, and why?
(b) Why might stripping people of their usual clothes, titles, or rank help a rite move them into a new status?

Misconception check. Students often read ritual as meaningless repetition, the same acts done over and over "because that's how it's done". That is tempting, because a ritual's steps are fixed and repeated, and an outsider sees only the steps. But the recruit's same haircut and the shared hardship of training do work: they strip away an old status and build a bond. The cure: for any repeated act, ask what it changes for the people who perform it.

4. Explain magic: rituals for uncertain outcomes

Picture an illustrative high-school basketball player before a big game. She ties her left shoe before her right, taps the doorframe twice on the way to the court, and wears the same socks she wore in last season's win. She practices her free throws for hours, and she knows the practice is what makes them go in. The routine is for the part she cannot control.

Anthropologists have a word for ritual aimed at a result.

Magic is ritual action that people use to try to bring about a result directly, such as a good catch or a safe voyage; Malinowski argued it is used where outcomes are uncertain, and it is not the same as religion.

The classic case comes from Malinowski, whose fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands you met in Week 3. In the 1910s, Trobriand Islanders used magic for dangerous open-sea fishing but not for safe lagoon fishing. Malinowski argued that magic is used where outcomes are uncertain. He made the argument in his essay "Magic, Science and Religion", first published in 1925 and collected after his death in Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1948).

Notice what the contrast shows. The same fishermen, with the same skills, used magic in one setting and not the other. Their fishing knowledge did not change between the lagoon and the open sea; the danger and the uncertainty did.

Worked example — reading the Trobriand contrast in four moves. Walk the course's order for any reading.

What was observed. In the 1910s, Trobriand Islanders used magic for open-sea fishing and did not use it for lagoon fishing.
What it might mean to the people involved. Open-sea fishing was dangerous and its results uncertain; lagoon fishing was safe.
What the concept calls it. Magic as ritual action aimed at a result, used where outcomes are uncertain, in Malinowski's argument.
What a comparison adds. The illustrative basketball player's pregame routine sits on the uncertain part of the game, not on the free-throw practice she controls.

In words: magic went where the outcome was uncertain, in the Trobriand case and in the pregame routine alike, while skill and knowledge did the work where the outcome was safe.

A caveat for your own reading: the pregame routine is an illustrative comparison, not evidence about the Trobriand Islands. It helps you see Malinowski's argument, but each case needs its own fieldwork.

How does magic differ from religion? The course draws the line this way. Magic aims a ritual at a specific result and treats the ritual as working directly. Religion, in Tylor's and Geertz's senses, is a wider system of belief in spiritual beings and of symbols about the order of the world. A person can hold a religion and also use magic, so the two are not rival boxes; they are different things a ritual can be doing.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a routine you or someone you know uses before an uncertain event, such as a test, a game, or a job interview. Does it fit Malinowski's argument?
(b) Why might people use ritual where the outcome is uncertain but not where it is safe? Give a reason other than "they don't know better".

Misconception check. Students often read magic and religion as the same, as if any ritual with a spiritual flavor were both at once. That is tempting, because both use ritual and both may involve unseen forces. But magic, in Malinowski's account, aims a ritual at a specific result where the outcome is uncertain, while religion is a wider system of belief and symbols. The cure: ask "is this ritual aimed at one result, or does it express a whole sense of how the world is ordered?"

5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists

Picture an illustrative commuter whose bike chain snaps on the one morning of the year she has a job interview. She knows chains wear out. She knows hers was old. Yet the question that keeps coming back is a different one: why this morning, of all mornings, and why her?

That second question is the heart of one of anthropology's best-known studies. Evans-Pritchard (1937), Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, came from fieldwork in the late 1920s. In the late 1920s, Azande accepted that termites weakened a granary's supports. But they asked why it fell at the moment particular people sat beneath it, and witchcraft answered the "why them, why now".

Witchcraft, as Evans-Pritchard described it among the Azande in the late 1920s, is a way of explaining why a misfortune struck particular people at a particular moment, alongside knowledge of its natural causes.

Worked example — the Azande granary, two questions at once. Read the account by separating the two questions it answers.

What was observed. A granary fell while particular people sat beneath it, and the Azande explained the event by witchcraft.
The "how" question. Termites weakened the granary's supports. The Azande accepted this natural cause.
The "why them, why now" question. Termites explain why a granary falls someday. They do not explain why it fell at that moment, on those people. Witchcraft answered that.
What a comparison adds. The illustrative commuter knows how the chain broke and still asks why it broke on that morning, for her.

In words: Azande witchcraft did not replace knowledge of termites; it answered the separate question of why misfortune struck particular people at a particular moment, a question people everywhere ask.

Who handles questions like these? Many communities have people with recognized roles in religious life.

A religious specialist is a person with a recognized role in a community's religious life, such as a shaman, a priest, or a diviner.
A shaman is a part-time religious specialist who contacts the spirit world on behalf of others.
A priest is a full-time religious specialist who serves as an official of an organized religion.
A diviner is a religious specialist who seeks hidden knowledge, such as the cause of a misfortune, through set procedures.

The course names these roles in words and describes no community's sacred procedures. Where a community keeps knowledge restricted to its own members, anthropology respects that line, and so does this course.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a misfortune you or someone you know faced, such as a lost phone or a canceled trip. How did people answer "how did it happen" and "why us, why then" differently?
(b) Why might a society want a specialist, rather than each person alone, to answer questions about the cause of a misfortune?

Misconception check. Students often read witchcraft belief as ignorance of natural causes, as if the Azande blamed witches because they did not know about termites. That is tempting, because outsiders often assume a supernatural explanation must replace a natural one. But the Azande knew about termites; witchcraft answered a different question, "why them, why now". The cure: separate the "how" from the "why them, why now" before judging any explanation.

6. Read change and the market's opening bell

Think about a neighborhood after its biggest employer closes. People leave, a school shrinks, and old festivals stop. Then, some years later, a group of residents decides to act. They meet, make a plan, and work together to bring back what made the place feel like home, while changing what no longer works.

Anthropologists have studied efforts like that on a much larger scale.

A revitalization movement is a deliberate, organized effort by members of a society to build a more satisfying culture in a time of stress, as Wallace described in 1956.

Wallace (1956), "Revitalization Movements", American Anthropologist, set out the idea. The Ghost Dance movement of 1889 to 1890 is a commonly taught example, and the course names it in words only. Its meaning belongs to the communities who took part and their descendants, so the course describes none of its practices.

Worked example — sorting three illustrative cases with Wallace's definition. Each case is constructed for this chapter. Check the four parts of the definition: deliberate and organized, by members of the society, to build a more satisfying culture, in a time of stress.

A town whose mill closed organizes, through its own residents, classes in the town's old language and a revived harvest festival, to rebuild a life that feels worth living. All four parts fit, so the case has the shape of a revitalization movement.
A clothing style that spreads among teenagers by chance is not deliberate or organized, so it is a change but not a revitalization movement.
A company's ad campaign to sell a town's "heritage" to tourists is not led by members of the society to build their own culture, so it does not fit.

In words: 1 of the 3 cases fits all four parts of Wallace's definition and 2 do not, so 1 + 2 = 3, and the one that fits is the one that is deliberate, organized, and led by the people whose culture it is.

The market's opening bell as a calendrical ritual

Now walk back into the running fieldwork site, the illustrative, unnamed weekly neighborhood farmers' market of 24 stalls (Dataset A, illustrative, constructed for this course). You have read its opening bell as a symbol and a norm in Week 2 and as the manager's signal in Week 7. This week it gets one more name.

A calendrical ritual is a ritual performed at a regular point in time, such as each week, season, or year, that marks the passing of time for a group rather than moving one person to a new status.

Worked example — the opening routine against the rites set (Dataset A and Dataset E, illustrative). Read the routine with the pinned field notes, then set it beside the rites.

The routine. The hush as vendors finish setting up, the bell at 8:00 a.m., the call "Bell's rung!", and the first sale.
The timing. Visit 1 ran from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., and the bell rang at 8:00 a.m., so from 7:30 to 8:00 is 30 minutes into the visit.
The field notes around the bell. 2 entries come before the bell (7:40 a.m. and 7:55 a.m.), 1 entry records the bell (8:00 a.m.), and 7 entries come after it (8:20 a.m. to 9:25 a.m.), so 2 + 1 + 7 = 10 pinned entries.
The routine's shape. The hush, the ring with "Bell's rung!", and the first sale within a minute make a 3-part sequence, like the 3 phases, but the routine moves the market from setting up to selling once each market day and moves no person to a new status.

Here is the reading in plain words: the opening bell is a small calendrical ritual, not a rite of passage, because it marks the same line in time each market day while each of the 6 rites in the set moves a person through separation, transition, and incorporation into a new status.

Week 4's tools show how much of this ritual is language. The hush is nonverbal communication: silence tells everyone that setup is ending, with no word spoken. "Bell's rung!" is a set call, the same words each market day, in a register no vendor uses for anything else. And "the bell" is the vendors' own emic term for the manager's 8:00 a.m. signal that selling may begin. In the course's illustrative interview, the vendor said selling does not start until "the bell", and that people talk about anyone who sells before it.

An honesty note on this reading: the ten field notes come from one visit, so they show one market day. Calling the bell "calendrical" rests on the pack's description of a weekly opening routine, and a fieldworker would confirm it across more visits before writing it up.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a calendrical ritual you take part in, such as a weekly team meeting, a yearly holiday, or a first-day-of-school routine. What line in time does it mark?
(b) Make the strongest case that the market's bell routine is a small rite of passage after all, and then the strongest case that it is not.

Misconception check. Students often call any ritual with a before, a middle, and an after a rite of passage. That is tempting, because the bell routine's three parts look like van Gennep's three phases. But a rite of passage moves a person into a new status, and the bell moves no one; it marks the same line in time each market day. The cure: ask "whose status changed?" If nobody's status changed, look for a calendrical ritual instead.

Key terms

Animism — Tylor's name for belief in spiritual beings, which he offered in 1871 as the minimum definition of religion. (first used: 1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories)
Religion — A system of beliefs and practices about spiritual beings and the order of the world; Tylor's minimum definition is belief in spiritual beings, and Geertz described it as a system of symbols that shapes people's moods and motivations and their sense of the order of existence. (first used: 1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories)
Worldview — A people's broad sense of how the world is ordered and what it means, which religion and ritual help to shape and express. (first used: 1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories)
Myth — A sacred story that explains how things came to be, told and retold by the people who hold it. (first used: 1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories)
Ritual — A patterned, repeated sequence of acts that people perform because it carries meaning for them; it is not meaningless repetition. (first used: 1. Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories)
Rite of passage — A ritual that moves a person from one social status to another, such as a graduation, a wedding, or a retirement; it need not be religious. (first used: 2. Read a rite of passage in three phases)
Separation — The first of van Gennep's three phases of a rite of passage, in which a person is set apart from their old status. (first used: 2. Read a rite of passage in three phases)
Transition — The middle phase of a rite of passage in van Gennep's scheme, in which a person has left the old status but not yet entered the new one. (first used: 2. Read a rite of passage in three phases)
Incorporation — The last of van Gennep's three phases of a rite of passage, in which a person is welcomed back into the community in a new status. (first used: 2. Read a rite of passage in three phases)
Liminality — The in-between state of the transition phase of a rite of passage, when a person is no longer in the old status and not yet in the new one; Turner developed the idea. (first used: 3. Name the middle: liminality and communitas)
Communitas — The intense bond among people who share the liminal state of a rite of passage together; Turner developed the idea in The Ritual Process (1969). (first used: 3. Name the middle: liminality and communitas)
Magic — Ritual action that people use to try to bring about a result directly, such as a good catch or a safe voyage; Malinowski argued it is used where outcomes are uncertain, and it is not the same as religion. (first used: 4. Explain magic: rituals for uncertain outcomes)
Witchcraft — As Evans-Pritchard described it among the Azande in the late 1920s, a way of explaining why a misfortune struck particular people at a particular moment, alongside knowledge of its natural causes. (first used: 5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists)
Religious specialist — A person with a recognized role in a community's religious life, such as a shaman, a priest, or a diviner. (first used: 5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists)
Shaman — A part-time religious specialist who contacts the spirit world on behalf of others. (first used: 5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists)
Priest — A full-time religious specialist who serves as an official of an organized religion. (first used: 5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists)
Diviner — A religious specialist who seeks hidden knowledge, such as the cause of a misfortune, through set procedures. (first used: 5. Explain misfortune: witchcraft and religious specialists)
Revitalization movement — A deliberate, organized effort by members of a society to build a more satisfying culture in a time of stress, as Wallace described in 1956. (first used: 6. Read change and the market's opening bell)
Calendrical ritual — A ritual performed at a regular point in time, such as each week, season, or year, that marks the passing of time for a group rather than moving one person to a new status. (first used: 6. Read change and the market's opening bell)

Summary

Tylor defined religion as belief in spiritual beings, which he called animism.
Geertz described religion as a system of symbols shaping moods and a sense of order.
A myth is a sacred story; the word does not mean "false".
A rite of passage moves a person through separation, transition, and incorporation.
Liminality is the in-between state; communitas is the bond it can build.
Magic aims ritual at a result where outcomes are uncertain.
Azande witchcraft answered "why them, why now", not how termites work.
The market's opening bell is a calendrical ritual, not a rite of passage.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative summer camp records 5 end-of-season rites in a table with one column for each of van Gennep's three phases. How many phase cells does the table hold, and how many of them are liminal?
At an illustrative nursing school's pinning ceremony, students wait backstage in identical white uniforms, walk on stage one at a time to receive a pin, and then join their families as new nurses. Name the three phases.
An illustrative student wears a lucky sweatshirt to every final exam but never to an ungraded practice quiz. Which idea from Malinowski does this fit, and is it religion or magic in the course's terms?
A classmate writes, "The Azande believed in witchcraft because they did not understand termites." Name the wrong turn and rewrite the sentence so it is fair.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Each of the 5 rites has 3 phases, so 5 × 3 = 15 phase cells. Each rite has 1 transition phase, so 5 of the 15 cells are liminal, and 15 − 5 = 10 cells are separation or incorporation.
Separation: the students wait backstage in identical uniforms, set apart from family and from their old status. Transition: the walk on stage, no longer students and not yet nurses. Incorporation: they receive the pin and rejoin their families as new nurses. It moves a person into a new status, so it is a rite of passage, and it names no spiritual being.
It fits Malinowski's argument that magic is used where outcomes are uncertain: the sweatshirt goes to the high-stakes exam and not to the safe practice quiz. In the course's terms it is magic, a ritual aimed at one result, not a religion, which would be a wider system of belief and symbols.
The sentence reads witchcraft belief as ignorance of natural causes. A fair version: "In the late 1920s, Azande accepted that termites weakened a granary's supports and used witchcraft to explain why it fell on particular people at a particular moment."

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, Health, Illness, and Healing reads an illness explained by witchcraft with a new model, the explanatory model.

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