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.
TBS
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.
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.
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].
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.
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 that teach students to hold enthusiasm and critical rigour in tension.
Poslední úprava: Chadwin Joseph, Dr. phil. (27.02.2026)
