20.2.: Introduction, article-patronage distribution amongst attendees.
27.2.: Intro II: Systematics of General Anthropology / Patronage: Luboš
Everyone reads:
Malinowski, Bronislaw. “Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of This Inquiry.” In Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 28–66 [1–25]. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2002 [1922].
Questions:
1. What is the Kula? Why does Malinowski describe it at the beginning, before explaining how he did his research?
2. Malinowski says there are three basic requirements for good fieldwork. What are they, and why does he discuss them in the order he does?
3. What does Malinowski mean by “the imponderabilia of actual life”? Give three examples from the text. Why are these things hard to study?
4. What is a corpus inscriptionum, and why does Malinowski think it is important?
5. At the start of Section II, Malinowski compares ethnography to natural science. What is he criticising about earlier anthropological writing, and what does he think should be done differently?
6. Malinowski says there is a difference between “preconceived ideas” and “foreshadowed problems.” What is the difference, and why does it matter?
7. Malinowski says the ethnographer needs to capture three different layers of culture. How do these three layers relate to each other? Do they fit together neatly, or is there any tension between them?
8. Near the end of the introduction, Malinowski says the ethnographer’s goal is to “grasp the native’s point of view.” What does he mean by this, and what does his method have to do with achieving it?
9. Malinowski is very critical of traders, missionaries, and colonial officials as sources of information about native life. What exactly are his objections? Are his criticisms consistent with his own position as a researcher?
10. Section III begins with the famous passage “Imagine yourself suddenly set down...” Who is Malinowski writing for here, and what effect is he trying to create on the reader?
11. Malinowski uses the word “savage” several times. Does he use it in the same way each time? What does his use of the word tell us about the assumptions of early twentieth-century anthropology?
12. Later critics have argued that Malinowski’s method, despite its claims to empathy and objectivity, still treats the people he studied as objects of research rather than as equals. Can you find evidence in the text both for and against this view?
13. The introduction makes two kinds of argument at the same time: one about the Kula itself, and one about how ethnography should be done. How do these two arguments support each other? Could either one work without the other?
Further readings:
• Miner, Horace. “Body Ritual among the Nacirema.” American Anthropologist 58, no. 3 (1956): 503–507.
• Guest, Kenneth J. “Anthropology in a Global Age.” Chapter 1 in Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age, 4th ed., 3–33. New York: W.W. Norton, 2023.
Malinowski’s 1922 introduction is the founding manifesto of modern fieldwork-based anthropology, in which participant-observation and the imperative to grasp “the native’s point of view” were first articulated programmatically. Miner’s “Nacirema” complements this through satire to demonstrate why cultural relativism matters. Guest provides the contemporary systematic overview: the four-field structure, key concepts like culture and holism, and the discipline’s engagement with globalisation and inequality.
6.3.: Religion and Materiality / Patronage: Kryštof K. +
Everyone reads:
Meyer, Birgit. Mediation and the Genesis of Presence: Towards a Material Approach to Religion. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2012, Chapters II–IV.
Questions:
1. What is meant by the term “fetish”?
2. What does the concept of fetish have to do with the past encounters between Africans and Westerners? In what way does Meyer see the concept as initially both a clash between, but also common ground shared by Catholic and African religiosities?
3. What changes did the Enlightenment bring to the concept of fetish?
4. Who are the Ewe, what are their religious beliefs and practices, and what did they have to do with nineteenth century Protestant Missions? How does Meyer link this relationship to the concept of fetish?
5. What does Meyer mean by the “mentalistic” approach to religion, and what alternative approach does she call for?
6. How does Bruno Latour place “fetish” at the core of his critique of modernity? What does he mean by “factish”?
7. Meyer uses the notion of the fetish as a way into material approaches. What makes the fetish a “eye-opening” analytical starting point, and what does this suggest about ‘religion’ itself?
8. Meyer employs the conceptual framework of mediation. How is this framework used to think about religion?
9. What does Meyer mean by the notion of “sensational form” and how does she use it as a methodological tool?
10. How can aesthetics—broadly understood as sensory and sensory forms—help us understand the mediation of religion?
11. Why does Meyer argue for the inclusion of multiple media (e.g., pictures, objects, sounds, body techniques) in the study of religion?
12. How does the study of religious visual culture provide new insights into the material constitution of religion?
13. Discuss an example (either from Meyer’s work or from your own research) where visual media become central to religious presence or identity.
14. In discussing a model of mediation, Meyer essentially offers an alternative to the “belief-centered” model of religion. In what way(s) are these models compatible or in tension? Is either model more useful to us in the study of religion?
Further readings:
• Morgan, David. “The Sacred Gaze.” Chapter 1 in The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, 1–33. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
• Arab, Pooyan Tamimi, Jennifer Scheper Hughes, and S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate. “Introduction.” In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, edited by Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Jennifer Scheper Hughes, and S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate, 1–12. London and New York: Routledge, 2025.
Meyer’s article argues that religious “presence”, the felt reality of the divine or the sacred, is never immediate but always generated through material media, making mediation not an obstacle to authentic experience but its very condition of possibility. Morgan develops one dimension of this argument in depth through his concept of “visual piety,” reframing the act of looking at religious images as an embodied devotional practice rather than passive reception of symbolic content. Arab, Hughes, and Rodríguez-Plate provide the broadest overview, surveying the emergence of “material religion” as a field and its core commitment that religion never exists apart from matter.
13.3.: Post/De-Colonial Critique / Sofia L.; Saša H.
Everyone reads:
Masuzawa, Tomoko. “Introduction: A Fabrication of ‘World Religions.’” In The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, 1–33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Questions
1. What does Masuzawa mean by the term world religions and how is it different from simply talking about religions of the world
2. According to Masuzawa, in what historical period did the category world religion become central, and why is this timing significan?
3. How is the world religions narrative a turn away from nineteenth century western academic thought?
4. Why does Masuzawa argue that the idea of world religions is not merely descriptive but also ideological?
5. How does the concept of world religions reflect European universalism, and why is this problematic?
6. How does Masuzawa link the classification of religions to broader trends in European thought such as language study and race classification? How does she tie science to anti-Semitism?
7. In what ways does Masuzawa believe colleges and universities in the US to be business enterprises? What does this mean for Religious Studies?
8. What might Masuzawa's historical perspective tell us about the limits of comparative religion as a discipline?
9. Why might the inclusion of religions like Buddhism and Islam have been particularly significant in the development of the world religions concept?
10. How does Masuzawa's framing of the introduction challenge the assumption that the world religions is a neutral, globally applicable category?
11. What might Masuzawa’s historical perspective tell us about the limits of comparative religion as a discipline?
12. What does this discourse mean for us today as students of Religious Studies?
Further readings:
• Asad, Talal. “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, 27–54. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “Imperialism, History, Writing, and Theory.” Chapter 2 in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed., 20–43. London: Zed Books, 2012.
Masuzawa targets the commonsense assumption that there exist a handful of comparable “world religions” and shows this apparently pluralist taxonomy to be a nineteenth-century European invention that quietly preserved Christianity’s centrality. Asad pushes the critique deeper, arguing that any universal definition of “religion” inevitably smuggles in post-Reformation Christian assumptions, particularly the privileging of inner belief over outward practice. Smith broadens the frame beyond religion itself, demonstrating from an indigenous Māori perspective how Western research methodologies have historically functioned as instruments of colonial domination.
20.3.: Lived Religion / Klára D. + Sára M.
Everyone reads:
• Harvey, Graham. Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1–41).
Questions:
How does Harvey use the thought experiment of showing religion to visiting aliens to rethink what counts as “religion”? What assumptions about religion is he challenging?
2. What critique does Harvey make of defining religion primarily as “belief in god”? Why does he see this as misleading for understanding religion in everyday life?
3. In Harvey’s view, why might everyday activities — like eating meals or washing dishes — be relevant for a study of religion? What does this suggest about the boundaries between sacred and mundane?
4. What does Harvey mean by “real world” religion, and how does this contrast with how religion is often portrayed in academic and theological contexts?
5. How does this chapter challenge what we might think about phenomena such as ritual, taboo, and moral codes? Are these central to religion or peripheral?
6. How are the problems of defining religion and the problem of how we go about defining religion interrelated?
7. What would Harvey say to scholars who argue that the term “religion” cannot be used in a properly critical way?
8. What does Harvey mean by “going elsewhere” to study religion? Why might this be important for understanding religion beyond Western (Christian) frameworks?
9. Why does Harvey argue that anthropology and studies of indigenous practices can help us rethink what religion is? What examples (real or hypothetical) illustrate this?
10. How might the setting of tables and the washing of dishes after meals important in the study of religions?
11. How does Harvey reframe religious violence?
12. How might Harvey’s ideas about everyday religion change the way we teach or study religions in an academic setting? Should curricula pivot away from beliefs toward practices?
Further readings:
• McGuire, Meredith B. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 3–44).
• Orsi, Robert A. “Introduction: The Theology of the Streets.” In The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, 2nd ed., xix–xxxviii. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Harvey argues that everyday embodied activities (eating, hosting strangers, sexual conduct) should not merely supplement our understanding of religion but replace belief and doctrine as its definitional centre; his provocative thesis and wide comparative range (Māori, Ojibwe, Jewish, Pagan traditions) is ideal for our discussion. McGuire provides a clearer programmatic statement of the “lived religion” concept, arguing that scholars have systematically overlooked the hybrid, embodied practices through which people actually experience the sacred in everyday life. Orsi demonstrates what the approach yields ethnographically, showing through Italian immigrants’ street devotion to the Madonna that lived religion is not a residual category but the primary site where religion is made, contested, and felt.
27.3.: Religion and Media / Lucia L. + Jan B.
Everyone reads:
• Hirschkind, Charles. “Introduction: The Ethics of Listening.” In The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics, 1–31. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Questions:
1. Why does Hirschkind choose sound (and not just content) as central to his analysis of religion and politics?
2. How does Hirschkind challenge conventional assumptions about media, religion, and politics in the Middle East?
3. In what ways does listening to cassette sermons become more than passive reception according to Hirschkind?
4. In what way does listening to tapes contribute to Cairo’s ethical and political lifeworld?
5. How does Hirschkind’s focus on cassette sermons complicate typical analyses that reduce Islamic media to propaganda or indoctrination?
6. How does Hirschkind assert that this case study is an exemplary form of modern mass communication and social discipline?
7. Why might cassette sermons provide a more accessible and affective way of engaging with religion and politics than other media forms in Egypt?
8. What does Hirschkind have to say about the contemporary critique of Islamic activism?
9. What place does Orientalism have in this?
10. How does emphasising listening help us rethink the relationship between religion and modernity?
11. In what ways does Hirschkind’s framing of ethical listening push us to consider the body—not just the mind—in anthropology of religion and media?
Further readings:
• Hoover, Stewart M. Religion in the Media Age. New York: Routledge, 2006. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1–46).
• Campbell, Heidi A. “Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80, no. 1 (2012): 64–93.
Hirschkind shows how cheap cassette tapes circulating through Cairo became a medium for cultivating Islamic ethical sensibilities: listening not as passive reception of doctrine but as a bodily discipline training the ear, heart, and moral emotions. Hoover provides the foundational theoretical framework, arguing that media are not neutral channels for religious messages but environments in which religious identity, meaning, and authority are actively constituted. Campbell extends the conversation into digital environments, introducing her “religious-social shaping of technology” framework to show that religious communities don’t simply adopt or reject new media but actively negotiate them through existing structures of authority, identity, and practice.
3.4. Class cancelled (Spring Reading Week)
10.4.: Myths and Symbols / Kika B.; Adam Ch.
Everyone reads:
Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" (1973) From The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 412–453.
Questions:
1. Why does Geertz open the essay with a story about a police raid rather than with a theoretical claim about Balinese culture? Consider what the raid episode accomplishes for the Geertzs’ relationship with the villagers and what this implies about how anthropological knowledge is produced.
2. Geertz describes an elaborate identification between Balinese men and their fighting cocks that operates simultaneously at several levels — linguistic, psychological, and cosmological. What evidence does he marshal for each of these levels, and what holds them together? Pay attention to how the Balinese speak about cocks, how they care for them, and how cocks relate to the broader opposition between human and animal in Balinese culture.
3. Geertz devotes considerable attention to the Balinese horror of animality — the filing of children’s teeth, the treatment of eating as private and shameful, the revulsion at crawling babies. How does this cultural preoccupation with the human/animal boundary make the cockfight meaningful rather than merely entertaining? What is it that makes the cockfight disturbing — “disquietful,” in Geertz’s word — rather than trivially violent?
4. Geertz distinguishes sharply between two types of wagers: the centre bet (toh ketengah) between the principals and the side bets (toh kesasi) among the crowd. Why does this distinction matter for his argument? Think about what each type of betting reveals about the cockfight’s social logic: if you removed one type, what would change about what the cockfight means?
5. What does Geertz mean by borrowing Jeremy Bentham’s concept of “deep play,” and how does he transform it from an economic judgement into a cultural analysis? For Bentham, deep play is irrational and should be legally prohibited; for Geertz, it is precisely its irrationality that makes it culturally significant. What makes the difference?
6. Geertz argues that in deep cockfights what is really at stake is status, not money — yet he also insists that the large sums wagered are not incidental. How can both claims be true at the same time? What role does money play if it is not the point? Consider Geertz’s phrase: “it is at stake symbolically.”
7. Geertz presents a series of observations (points 1–17 in the text) about who bets on whom, under what conditions, and why. Select two or three of these that you find most analytically revealing and explain what they show about the relationship between the cockfight and Balinese social structure. What would a researcher need to know about Balinese kinship, village organisation, or status hierarchy in order to understand the betting patterns?
8. Geertz writes that the cockfight “renders ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed.” He compares the cockfight to King Lear and Crime and Punishment. What does this comparison accomplish, and what are its limits? In what sense is watching a cockfight like reading a novel? In what sense is it not?
9. What does Geertz mean when he claims that the cockfight is “a story the Balinese tell themselves about themselves”? If no one’s status actually changes as a result of a cockfight — no one is promoted or demoted, enriched or impoverished in any lasting way — what exactly has happened? What is the cockfight for, if not for winning?
10. Geertz concludes that “societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations. One has only to learn how to gain access to them.” What are the methodological consequences of this claim? How does the approach Geertz demonstrates in this essay differ from one that treats culture as a system of rules to be decoded or a set of functions to be identified?
11. Where in Geertz’s analysis can you identify the symbolic mechanisms discussed in the lecture — metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche? Consider: the relationship between cocks and men; between an individual fight and the social structure it dramatises; and between the cockfight as a single cultural form and Balinese culture as a whole.
17.4.: Rituals I / Petr V. + Nina M.
Everyone reads:
• Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, 93–111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.
Questions:
1. Turner chce zkoumat pouze jednu ze tří fází, které van Gennep rozlišuje u přechodových rituálů. Která to je a proč ji Turner považuje za analyticky nejzajímavější? Zkuste formulovat, co ho na zbývajících dvou fázích — separaci a agregaci — z jeho hlediska zajímá méně.
2. Turner rozlišuje mezi „stavem“ (angl. state) a „přechodem“ (transition). Jak každý z těchto pojmů definuje? Proč trvá na tom, že přechod nelze chápat jen jako pohyb z jednoho stavu do druhého, ale spíše jako specifický proces — nebo dokonce transformaci?
3. Turner tvrdi, že subjekt přechodového rituálu je v průběhu liminatní fáze strukturně „nevčlenitelný“. Co přesně tím myslí?
4. Turner popisuje dvě skupiny symbolů, které doprovází liminatní subjekty: jedny odkazují na smrt a rozklad, druhé na početí a zrození. Najděte konkrétní příklady. Jak mohou být tyto zdánlivě protichůdné procesy vyjádřeny týmiž symbolickými objekty či obrazy?
5. Jakou tezi M. Douglas Turner cituje a jak ji vztahuje na postavení liminatních bytostí ve společnosti? Turner zároveň navrhuje vlastní upřesnění jejího výkladu — rozlišuje dva typy „znečištění“. Dokážete tento rozdíl zachytit vlastními slovy?
6. Turner říká, že neofyté v liminatní fázi doslova „nemají nic“ — jsou zbaveni statusu, majetku, insignií i pohlatní identity. Vyjmenujte alespoň tři konkrétní věci, o které jsou připraveni. Co to podle Turnera vypovídá o povaze liminality?
7. Turner rozlišuje dva typy vztahů, které vznikají v liminální fázi: vztah neofytů k jejich instruktorům (starším) a vztahy neofytů navzájem. Jak každý z těchto vztahů charakterizuje? V čem se liší od vztahů, které platí v „normalním“ společenském životě?
8. Turner rozlišuje tři způsoby, jimž jsou sacra neofytům předávána. Jaké to jsou? A proč Turner zdūrazňuje, že nejcennější (a nejpřísněji tajené) jsou právě ty složky, které tvoří „jádro liminality“ (crux of liminality)?
9. Turner polemizuje se starším výkladem, podle něhož jsou monstrózní masky v iničiačních rituálech projevem halucinací a nočních můr. Jaké nabízí alternativu? Jak mu přitom pomáhá Jamesův „zákon disociace“ (law of dissociation)?
10. Turner analyzuje Incwalu jako příklad přechodového rituálu, jehož subjektem není individuální iniciand, ale sám král a zprostředkovaně celý národ. Které konkrétní rysy tohoto rituálu odpovídají obecnému modelu liminality, jak ho Turner nastínil v předchozích částech textu?
11. Turner říká, že liminatní fáze je prostorem jisté svobody. Zároveň však upozorňuje, že tato svoboda má poměrně úzké meze. Jak toto napětí mezi otevřeností a omezením chápete ve světle celého článku? Co tuto svobodu ohraničuje?
Further readings:
• Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960 [1909]. Chapters 1–2 (pp. 1–25).
• Bell, Catherine. “Ritual Traditions and Systems.” Chapter 5 in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 91–137. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Turner’s essay sits at the productive intersection of theory and ethnography: he argues that the liminal phase of rites of passage constitutes a distinctive social condition characterised by ambiguity, symbolic inversion, and communitas, building the case through vivid Ndembu initiation material. Van Gennep provides the foundational model Turner builds on: the tripartite structure of separation, transition, and incorporation that organises rites of passage across cultures. Bell steps back to offer a synoptic perspective, surveying how different societies organise their ritual practices into coherent systems and reflecting on the analytical categories scholars have used to classify them.
24.4.: Rituals II / Agáta Š.
Everyone reads:
• Bell, Catherine. “The Ritual Body.” Chapter 4 in Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 94–117. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Questions:
• Bell zahajuje kapitolu přehledem tří tradic, které přispěly k tomu, že se tělo stalo ústředním analytickým pojmem v humanitních vědách. Dokážete tyto tři tradice ve čtení identifikovat? Jaký specifický příspěvek každá z nich přináší k tématu rituálu a těla?
• Bell zmíňuje protichůdné výklady původu tělesných projevů: darwinistický argument na jedné straně a přístup Durkheima, Mausse a Hertze na straně druhé. V čem se tyto dvě pozice liší? Co z tohoto střetu vyplývá pro porozumění tělu jako předmětu studia v antropologii náboženství?
• Bell oceňuje přínos Foucaulta, Comaroffové a Bourdieua pro studium rituálu a těla, ale vzapětí formuluje vůči všem třem společnou kritickou výhradu. Co jim Bell přesně vytyká?
• Bell zavadí pojem ritualizované tělo (ritualized body). Jak ho definuje? Věnujte pozornost tomu, co Bell rozumí výrazem „praktické mistrovství“ (practical mastery, Bourdieuův termín) — jak jej vysvětluje a v čem se liší od vědomé znalosti pravidel rituálu?
• Bell uvadí příklad klečení jako ilustraci toho, jak ritualizace funguje tělesně. Podle ní klečení nepředává pouze zprávu o podřízenosti — dělá něco více. Co?
• Bell popisuje tři základní procesy, skrze něž ritualizace pracuje s binárními opozicemi. Dokážete je identifikovat a stručně popsat? Bell poté rozebírá příklad katolické eucharistie. Jak tento příklad konkrétně ilustruje popsané procesy?
• Bell se obrací k Derridovu pojmu difference (odlišování smyslu), aby vysvětlila, jak ritualizace nakládá se sociálními problémy a rozpory. Jakým způsobem Bell tento Derridův pojem aplikuje na ritualizaci?
• Bell rozlišuje mezi tím, co ritualizace považuje za svůj cíl, a tím, co skutečně dělá. Dokážete tento rozdíl vlastními slovy popsat? Proč je podle Bell toto „nevidění“ pro účinnost ritualizace klíčové, a nikoliv jen vedlejší efekt?
• Bell zpochybňuje přístupy, které chápou rituál primárně jako formu komunikace nebo jako jazyk. Jaký argument pro toto odmítnutí předkládá? Jak se k jejímu stanovisku staví Bourdieuova pozice, na níž se Bell odvolává?
• Na konci kapitoly Bell zavadí pojem vykupitelská hegemonie (redemptive hegemony). Jak jej vysvětluje? Při splnění kterých dvou podmínek je podle ní ritualizace vnímána jako nejefektivnější forma jednání?
• Bell v celé kapitole staví na Bourdieuově teorii praxe a jeho pojmech jako „habitus“ a „praktické mistrovství“. Pokuste se na základě čtení pojmenovat: v čem Bell Bourdieuův přístup přebírá bez změny a kde ho modifikuje, rozšiřuje nebo kritizuje.
Further readings:
• Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Schechner, Richard. “From Ritual to Theatre and Back: The Efficacy-Entertainment Braid.” In Performance Theory, revised and expanded ed., 112–142. New York: Routledge, 2003 [1977].
Bell argues that ritual should be understood not as a symbolic text to be decoded but as a bodily strategy that produces and naturalises relations of power through the disposition of bodies in space and time: instead of asking “what does the ritual mean?” she asks “what does the ritual do to bodies?”. Hobsbawm’s short introduction shows that many rituals presented as ancient are in fact recent inventions designed to manufacture legitimacy for modern political projects. Schechner addresses the ontological boundary of ritual itself, arguing through his efficacy-entertainment continuum that ritual and theatre are not different kinds of action but different emphases within the same performance spectrum.
1.5.: Class Cancelled [Gender]
TBS
8.5.: Class Cancelled [Shamanism]
TBS
15.5.: Magic and Witchcraft / Viki T. + Štěpánka J.
Everyone reads:
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. “The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events.” In Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, abridged ed., edited by Eva Gillies, 18–32. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 [1937].
Questions:
• At the opening (Section I, pp. 63–65), Evans-Pritchard insists witchcraft is everywhere in Zande life but is met with annoyance rather than awe. How does he describe the typical Zande response, and how does it differ from what he expects his European readers to assume?
• At the start of Section II (p. 65), Evans-Pritchard poses the question the rest of the chapter sets out to answer. What is it? Why might it matter for an anthropologist working in the 1930s?
• Look at the boy who stubs his toe on a stump (pp. 65–66, returned to on pp. 67–68). According to the boy, what is caused by the stump, and what by witchcraft? Why does Evans-Pritchard return to this example in Section III?
• The granary example at the end of Section III (pp. 69–70): termites have eaten the supports, and people are sitting underneath for shade. What does witchcraft explain, and what does it not explain? Then test the formula on p. 72 (witchcraft explains why events are harmful but not how they happen) against the granary in your own words.
• Why does Evans-Pritchard introduce the umbaga, or “second spear” (pp. 73–74)? What does the metaphor add to what the granary example already showed?
• Section VI (pp. 74–78) lists situations in which witchcraft is not cited (adultery, lying, broken taboos, plain incompetence, old age). Pick three. What do they share? Then look at p. 78, where Evans-Pritchard notes that the sufferer and the people around them often disagree about whether witchcraft was involved. What pattern does he describe, and what might it suggest about how witchcraft-talk actually works in everyday life?
• In Section VII (pp. 80–83), Evans-Pritchard claims Zande witchcraft is “actualised” in behaviour rather than “intellectualised” as doctrine, and that their ideas are “imprisoned in action” (p. 83). How does this connect back to Section I’s claim that witchcraft is unremarkable and provokes annoyance rather than wonder?
• Evans-Pritchard repeatedly contrasts Zande thought with “our” thought: on the granary, on disease, on natural and supernatural, on responsibility for crime. By the end, what does he want us to see witchcraft is for the Azande, and what does he want his European readers to see about themselves?
• Evans-Pritchard is writing in 1937, and his vocabulary (“primitive peoples,” “credulous forefathers,” “the African, with his meagre scientific knowledge”) belongs to a colonial anthropology. Mark one or two passages where the framing feels dated. Does it affect how you read the analytical argument?
Further readings:
• Geschiere, Peter. “Introduction: Witchcraft as the Dark Side of Kinship.” In The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, 1–22. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.
• Favret-Saada, Jeanne. “Unbewitching as Therapy.” American Ethnologist 16, no. 1 (1989): 40–56.
Evans-Pritchard’s lucid, economical opening chapter is arguably the single most influential text in the anthropology of religion. In it he argues that Azande witchcraft is not irrational belief but a coherent “natural philosophy” supplying a socially relevant cause where physical causation leaves the question “why me, why now?” unanswered. Geschiere disrupts the temporal framing of the classic account, showing through contemporary Cameroon that witchcraft is not a relic of “traditional” society but is intensifying alongside capitalism, state politics, and urbanisation. Favret-Saada shifts the terrain to rural France and introduces a radical methodological challenge, arguing that the anthropologist cannot understand witchcraft from detached observation but must be “caught” in the system of accusation and therapeutic unbewitching.
22.5.: Changed States of Consciousness: Psychedelics / Kája N. + Adina M. M.
Everyone reads:
• Smith, Huston. “Do Drugs Have Religious Import?” The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 18 (1964): 517–530.
Questions:
1. V úvodu se Smith vymezuje vůči stanovisku, že drogy „nemají náboženský význam“. Kdo toto stanovisko zastává a o co se opírá?
2. V odstavci o Mary Barnard Smith rozlišuje mezi tím, zda drogy náboženské zážitky napodobují, nebo je vytvářejí. Proč je tento rozdíl pro Smithův argument zásadní?
3. Co znamenají pojmy set a setting, které Smith zavádí ve druhé části, a proč jsou pro jeho argumentaci důležité?
4. Proč Smith pokládá Pahnkův experiment z Velkého pátku za rozhodující podpůrný důkaz svého stanoviska?
5. Když Smith vyvrací Zaehnerovy tři důvody, opírá se o rozdíl mezi popisem zážitku a jeho povahou. V čem rozdíl spočívá?
6. Jaké dvě hypotézy Smith ve třetí části nabízí jako vysvětlení toho, proč drogové zážitky působí nábožensky?
7. Na začátku čtvrté části Smith říká, že drogy umí vyvolat náboženské zážitky, ale ne náboženské životy. Co tímto rozlišením chce říct?
Further readings:
• Munn, Henry. “The Mushrooms of Language.” In Hallucinogens and Shamanism, edited by Michael J. Harner, 86–122. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
• Doblin, Rick. “Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment’: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23, no. 1 (1991): 1–28.
Smith’s article asks: are chemically induced experiences are phenomenologically indistinguishable from “spontaneous” mystical states, can we dismiss them as religiously inauthentic? Munn demonstrates what ritual context looks like from the inside, showing through the Mazatec velada that the mushroom experience is not a private pharmacological event but a fundamentally linguistic and social one constituted by sacred chanting, kinship bonds, and the healer’s authority. Doblin subjects the question to empirical scrutiny, tracking down Good Friday Experiment participants twenty-five years later and finding lasting spiritual significance alongside serious methodological problems.
Poslední úprava: Pehal Martin, Mgr., Ph.D. (19.05.2026)
