This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The aim of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the history and practice of the anthropology of religion through the past 150 years. Students will explore the 'anthropology of religion' to provide a historical and contemporary understanding of how anthropological studies of religion enrich knowledge of what it means to be religious. The course will examine and students will practise the anthropological method of rich participant observation and comparative analysis. Course content focuses on foundational and contemporary issues of religious definition, ritual, belief, embodiment, rationality and relationships in both Western and non-western contexts.
1-hour lecture per week, 2-hour seminar per week for 10 teaching weeks
Also available at Level 6 (TH621)
70% Coursework
30% Exam
Indicative reading:
Bowie, F. 2006. The anthropology of religion. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cohen, A. P. 1982 . Belonging: identity and social organization in British rural
cultures. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Day, A. 2011 Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson 1995. Ethnography: principles in practice. London: Routledge.
Lambeck, M. (ed.) 2002. A reader in the anthropology of religion. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Luhrmann, T. M. 2007. Persuasions of the witch's craft. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
By the end of the module, Level 5 and 6 students will have:
• acquired detailed and critical knowledge and understanding of core topics in anthropology and religion; e.g. notions of 'the primitive', cultural systems, ideas of belonging and ethnicity and the relationships between religion, nation and politics (programme outcomes A1, A2 and A4)
• demonstrated competence in applying these concepts within new and differing contexts (e.g. to see the relationship between religion and current debates about national identity) (programme outcomes A3, A4 and B3)
• shown cogent understanding of the principal academic methodologies within anthropological approaches to religious studies, especially the use of ethnography in evaluating anthropological research, and to appreciate both the potentialities and the limitations of these methodologies (programme outcomes A4, B3 and C1-4).
• the ability to analyse key texts critically (both primary and secondary) (programme outcomes B1, B2 and B4)
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