Week 13 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 13 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 98–115 minutes for everything. Each group links back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–24 min total)

• How do different cultures mark significant life transitions? — AnthroDorphins
• The Pandemic and the Process of Becoming — SAPIENS

① What makes something a religion

Chapter 13, Section “Define religion: spiritual beings, symbols, and stories” · Session 1, Segment 1, “What counts as religion” · Remember: Tylor defined religion as belief in spiritual beings, and Geertz looked at what a system of religious symbols does for people.

• What Is Religion? — ReligionForBreakfast — a scholar of religion explains why religion is hard to define and walks through more than one kind of definition; sort each definition you hear into one that asks what religion is and one that asks what it does, the split between Tylor and Geertz in the chapter. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
• Animism: The First Religion? — ReligionForBreakfast — a short history of the word animism, from the late nineteenth-century idea that it was the earliest religion to the later scholars who questioned that ranking; note where the video sets aside the old story of an earliest stage, the same move the course makes with unilineal evolutionism. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)
• Animism, section on modernist animism — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — a reference entry; read the short subsection that sets out Tylor's view of animism and the critics who answered it, and notice that the ranking words it reports belong to the older writers, not to the entry. (reading, 6–10 min)

② The three phases and the in-between

Chapter 13, Section “Read a rite of passage in three phases” · Session 1, Segment 2, “A rite of passage in three phases” · Remember: a rite of passage moves a person through separation, transition, and incorporation, and the middle is where liminality and communitas live.

• How do different cultures mark significant life transitions? — AnthroDorphins — an anthropologist walks through van Gennep's three parts of a rite of passage and the bond called communitas, then asks what happens when rites become tourist attractions; pick one rite from the course's rites set and name its three phases as you watch. The video calls the middle phase liminality, where the course names the phase transition and uses liminality for the state inside it, and its examples from particular peoples are the video's own. Use it while completing the Week-13 module overview. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
• What Does Ritual Have to Do with Religion?: Crash Course Religions #15 — CrashCourse — an episode on what rituals do, from marking time and space to creating new identities, whether they are religious or not; list two rituals it names that are not religious, the same point the chapter makes about the graduation and the retirement. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
• The Pandemic and the Process of Becoming — SAPIENS — an anthropologist uses an egg stuck halfway into a bottle to explain Turner's idea of liminality, the state of being betwixt and between; find the sentence where she says why the pandemic felt liminal, and say what was missing that a rite of passage would supply. This builds on Week 3's work with participant observation and two-column field notes, since the author reads her own household as an observer. (reading, 8–12 min)

③ Magic, religion, and uncertain outcomes

Chapter 13, Section “Explain magic: rituals for uncertain outcomes” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Magic and uncertainty” · Remember: magic aims a ritual at one result where the outcome is uncertain, and it is not the same thing as religion.

• What’s the Difference Between Religion and Magic? Crash Course Religions #4 — CrashCourse — an episode on how the word magic has been used, often as a put-down, and how some practitioners reclaim it; compare its answer with the chapter's one-question test, which asks whether a ritual aims at one result or expresses a whole sense of order. Where it describes Malinowski and the Azande, set its wording beside the chapter's pinned accounts, and treat its other figures and details as the episode's own. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)

④ Rituals that mark time, and rituals revived

Chapter 13, Section “Read change and the market's opening bell” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Rebuilding a culture, and the market's bell” · Remember: a calendrical ritual marks a regular point in time for a group, and a revitalization movement deliberately rebuilds a culture under stress.

• Five New Year’s Rituals of Renewal — SAPIENS — an anthropologist describes five seasonal and new-year celebrations and why marking calendar time together matters; for each one, ask whose status changes, if anyone's, and use your answer to tell a calendrical ritual from a rite of passage. (reading, 10–14 min)
• Inside the Revival of an Ancient Indigenous Ritual — PBS Documentaries — members of a Southeastern Native American nation talk about the Green Corn Ceremony at the start of the corn harvest, in their own words; note what they choose to share about renewal and community, and keep your notes to what they say on camera. The host's closing remarks about the environment are her own view, not part of the community's account. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• The Concept of Religion, A History of the Concept — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — a reference-work entry; read only section 1, which traces how scholars stretched the word religion and where Tylor's minimum definition fits, and skip the later sections on philosophical debates this course does not take up. (reading, 10–15 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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