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Week 13 · Module overview

Week 13 — Religion, Ritual, and Worldview

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 13 Start Here page.

Why this matters

An education student planning a graduation ceremony and a nursing student sitting with a family through a hospital ritual both meet this week's question: what do rituals do for the people who perform them?

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.

  • Already covered: Week 2 gave you the symbol; Week 4 gave you nonverbal communication and emic terms.
  • This week: religion, rites of passage, magic, witchcraft, and calendrical ritual.
  • How they connect: a ritual is symbols and language put into action.
  • Where we're going next: Week 14, Health, Illness, and Healing.

Focus

What do rituals do for the people who perform them?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] name the three phases of a rite of passage
  • [ ] tell liminality from communitas
  • [ ] keep magic, religion, and witchcraft apart
  • [ ] read a calendrical ritual and its language

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 13 (about 35 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Ethnography Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: name the three phases of one rite you have lived through.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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