Ethnology of Religion

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Religious ethnology ( Latin religio "conscientious consideration", ancient Greek ethnos "people", and -logy ) is a subject area of ethnology (ethnology) and examines the traditional religions of ethnic groups and indigenous peoples worldwide, in contrast to the sociology of religion , especially in (formerly) non-scriptural cultures . Religious ethnology is thus also a sub-area of religious studies . It mainly deals with the following questions:

As a rule, it is not about theological - philosophical debates of truth , but rather an attempt is made to answer questions about the social and individual relevance of religious views, modes of action and products. Therefore, lived religion is more likely to be observed in research and less lectured religion is interpreted. But since she tries to understand as an observer, she consciously refrains from taking a judgmental standpoint.

Specified branches of anthropology of religion, the religious ethnography and religious ethnohistorik .

Research subjects in religious ethnology are, for example, myths, rites and rituals, sacrifices, ways of thinking, connections between economic form, social organization and religion, sacred objects, dealing with ancestors and ideas of God.

history

Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917), James George Frazer (1854–1941) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) are considered the founders of religious ethnology . They were also the first to include the mind-psychological aspect in their research on the ethnology of religion. The first explicit standard work Religions-Ethnologie (964) comes from Carl August Schmitz (1920–1966).

In 1933 Nils-Arvid Bringeus established the first international research group on the subject of Ethnology of Religion in Stockholm. Her aim was to examine religious practices in everyday life. However, the term has only largely established itself in the German-speaking area. In the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area, studies of ethnic belief systems and religious practices have been referred to as anthropology of religion or cultural anthropological studies since around 1940 .

Early ethnologists were primarily concerned with the question of the origin of religion. It was believed to be able to recognize an early stage of human development in so-called "primitive" societies. Evolutionist models of religion were then derived from this (see John Lubbock , James Frazer, Edward Tylor). The sociologist of religion Émile Durkheim, however, had a far greater influence on the development of religious ethnology than the actual pioneers of the subject.

Until the 1930s, the idea of ​​a smooth transition from magic or animism to religion dominated. Paul Radin criticized this notion: Nobody could doubt that monotheism was also widespread in original tribal societies. It requires permanent devotion and, in contrast to "intermittent" cults with their situation-specific rituals, presupposes a more contemplative-philosophical temperament of the people. As an example, he cites the mother goddess Gauteovan of the Kagaba in Colombia, who is not addressed directly in prayer and not worshiped by cults. However, the objection is obvious that in many tribes it was the influence of missionaries that brought about a state of permanent devotion.

The evolutionist theories were also criticized by Bronisław Malinowski , who advocated a functionalist approach as early as the 1920s , which initiated a paradigm shift in religious ethnology. Malinowski established the most important method of religious ethnology, participatory observation.

The structural functionalism of Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown was based on Émile Durkheim. For him, as for Durkheim, it is not the role of religion for the individual that is in the foreground, but its role in stabilizing society by maintaining group structures.

Evans-Pritchard used himself in his work Theories of Primitive Religion (1965) against the assumption that the African religions are "primitive". He was no longer interested in the social functions of religion, but in the reconstruction and understanding of religious systems according to their own logic and based on their own preconditions. It is clear to Evans-Pritchard that these belief systems are about religion and not about worshiping natural phenomena, about animism or magic: Many African tribes such as B. the Nuer recognize high gods as creators of the world and movers of all things; but in religious life they are only called upon in extreme crisis situations because they are too far away or too good. In addition, they manifest themselves in spirits and natural phenomena, which can only be understood with reference to God.

Since the 1960s, there has been an increasing focus on the analysis of symbolic forms and thus the content of religions. Here are Mary Douglas and Victor W. Turner to name who had launched an interpretative turn, which can still be found in other cultural studies. Mary Douglas saw above all the order of things, especially its division into "pure" and "impure", as religiously sanctioned ( Purity and Danger , 1966). Clifford Geertz had a significant influence on this paradigm shift in ethnology and religious ethnology . With the turn from structure to meaning and from functional to content, the interest now turned to research into symbolic systems and symbolic actions in the various cultural systems. Geertz defined religions as universally widespread, but socially specified symbol systems that generate a framework for the world, surround it with the aura of the factual and thereby guide and motivate people's actions.

From the 1980s, however, this approach was also subjected to criticism, as there is no equivalent to the concept of religion in non-European cultures. In the foreground of interest and criticism came the ethnologist in his role as a western-universalist author and the effect of the writings he wrote on the phenomena he examined (or ignored or created or destroyed with the help of missionaries and colonial officials) . The distinction between the great tradition of Brahmanic Hinduism and the long ignored and then devalued because the “primitive” popular religion of the broad masses, which was hardly based on tradition, was interpreted as an expression of a missionary- orientalist discourse.

In recent times, the ethnology of religion no longer deals primarily with the "foreign" beliefs of the ethnic religions , but examines religious practices in the context of migration , transnationality and diaspora , which also the emergence and dissolution of ethnic-religious groups or the emergence of syncretic folk religions and Promote revival movements. This brings a question to the fore that was already outlined by Max Weber in his 1914 text on types of religious communalization .

Symbol research in the ethnology of religion

In relation to the study of religion, the most important contribution of the ethnology of religion is that it has focused attention on systems of symbols and their exploration. Claude Lévi-Strauss , for example, regarded it as the main task of ethnology to research symbolic thinking in its basic structures. With this approach, Levi-Strauss expanded ethnology into an anthropology of communication. Edmund Leach then worked out complex systems of classifications and nomenclatures of symbols. In symbol research, ethnology focuses primarily on myth and ritual. Mary Douglas ' approach tried to establish the connections between rituals and social systems. To this end, she researched the symbolism of physical experiences (e.g. “purity”), which, according to Douglas, symbolically convey ideas of social order and ritual staging.

Victor W. Turner , a representative of the Manchester School of Anthropology , developed a theory of religious symbolism in the context of ritual research. For him, rituals represent conglomerates of symbols. By analyzing the elementary combinations of these symbols, he tries to decipher the ritual. Symbols have a variety of meanings; In the ritual, they represent social and individual contexts such as conflicts, values, hopes or contradictions in a sensually perceptible way and thus create security. During the ritual, the participants move away from the given social order; they are in a threshold state of liminality in which z. B. the inequality is temporarily lifted.

Clifford Geertz is considered to be the most important representative of the symbolic direction of cultural anthropology . His studies are aimed at examining the cultural symbol systems of a society, which also includes religious symbols and rituals. His method of dense description is intended to capture the entire complexity of symbolic systems of meaning and not just present individual data.

See also

literature

  • Christa Bausch: Birth rites in Polynesia: A study of the ethnology of religion. In: Communications from the Anthropological Society in Vienna. Volume 96/97, 1967, ISSN  0373-5656 , pp. 191-247 (doctoral thesis University of Tübingen 1968).
  • Nils-Arvid Bringéus: Popular piety: Swedish religious-ethnological studies (= Münsteraner Schriften zur Volkskunde, European ethnology. Volume 4). Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-89325-716-0 .
  • Eveline Dürr, Stefan Seitz (Hrsg.): Religious- ethnological contributions to American studies (= ethnological studies. Volume 31). Lit, Münster 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3259-7 .
  • Thomas Hauschild : Religious Ethnology: Deconstruction and Reconstruction. In: Thomas Schweizer, Margarete Schweizer, Waltraud Kokot (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Ethnologie. Reimer, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-496-00446-0 , pp. 305-330.
  • Norbert Heck: Melanesian cult movement as a religious-ethnological phenomenon and problem of an understanding ethnology: the cargo expectation as a meaningful fulfillment of daily hardship. Doctoral thesis University of Frankfurt / M. 1982.
  • Walter Hirschberg : Religionsethnologie and ethnohistorische Religionsforschung: A comparison (= Wiener ethnohistorische Blätter. Supplement. Volume 1. ZDB -ID 186168-2 ). Institute for Ethnology of the University of Vienna, Vienna 1972 (2nd edition there 1976).
  • Klaus Hock : Introduction to Religious Studies. 2nd, revised edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-20048-9 .
  • Matthias Laubscher: Religious Ethnology . In: Hans Fischer (ed.): Ethnology: An introduction. Reimer, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-496-00739-7 , pp. 231-256.
  • Ferdinand Lipowsky: The historical proof of God and the more recent religious ethnology: The religious historical proof of God as causal proof of God. Schlusche, Lobnig-Freudenthal 1938.
  • Roland Mixture : Ethnology of Religion. In: Bettina Beer , Hans Fischer (ed.): Ethnology: Introduction and overview. 5th edition, new version. Reimer, Berlin a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-496-02757-6 , pp. 197-220.
  • Enrico Nodari: Analysis of the ethnological religion of the phenomenon of divination, illustrated using ethnographic material from sub-Saharan Africa. Doctoral thesis University of Freiburg (Breisgau) 1975.
  • Anton Quack: Healers, Sorcerers and Shamans: The Religion of Tribal Cultures. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-17473-9 .
  • Gustav Ränk : The mystical Ruto in Sami mythology. A study of the ethnology of religion (= Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion. Volume 21). Almquist & Wiksell, Stockholm 1981, ISBN 91-22-00411-4 .
  • Bettina E. Schmidt: Introduction to Religious Ethnology: Ideas and Concepts. Reimer, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-496-02813-0 .
  • Carl August Schmitz (Ed.): Religions-Ethnologie. Academic Publishing Company, Frankfurt / M. 1964.
  • Rüdiger Schott : African narratives as religious-ethnological sources: Illustrated using the example of narratives from the Bulsa in Northern Ghana (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Lectures. G. Volume 305). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, ISBN 3-531-07305-2 .
  • Fritz Stolz : Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski (1884–1942). In: Axel Michaels (ed.): Classics of religious studies: From Friedrich Schleiermacher to Mircea Eliade. Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42813-4 , pp. 247-263.
  • Josef Franz Thiel: Ancestors, spirits, highest beings: Religious ethnological studies in the Zaïre-Kasai area (= Studia Instituti Anthropos. Volume 26). Habilitation thesis University of Bonn 1977. Publisher of the Anthropos Institute, St. Augustin 1977, ISBN 3-921389-55-0 .
  • Josef Franz Thiel: Religionsethnologie: Basic concepts of the religions of writeless peoples (= Collectanea Instituti Anthropos. Volume 33). Reimer, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-496-00784-2 .
  • Ingrid Thurner: The transcendent and mythical beings of the San (Bushmen): A religious and ethnological analysis of historical sources (= Acta ethnologica et linguistica. Series Africana. Volume 17. ZDB -ID 1029173-8 ). Doctoral thesis University of Vienna 1981. Stiglmayr, Vienna 1983.
  • Gabriele Weiss: Elementary Religions: An Introduction to Religious Ethnology. Springer, Vienna et al. 1987, ISBN 3-211-82003-5 .

Web links

Commons : Anthropology of religion  - Collection of images and media files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl August Schmitz (Ed.): Religions-Ethnologie. Academic Publishing Company, Frankfurt / M. 1964.
  2. ^ Paul Radin : Monotheism among primitive peoples (= Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture. 7, ZDB -ID 1220465-1 ). Allen & Unwin, London 1924.
  3. ^ Edward E. Evans-Pritchard : Nuer Religion. Clarendon Press, London 1957, pp. 1 ff.
  4. ^ Clifford Geertz : Religion as a Cultural System. In: Michael Banton (Ed.): Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (= ASA monographs. 3, ISSN  0567-414X ). Routledge et al., London 1966, pp. 1-46.
  5. ↑ Andreas Nehring : Orientalism and Mission: The Representation of Tamil Society and Religion by Leipzig Missionaries 1840-1940 (= studies on the history of Christianity outside Europe [Asia, Africa, Latin America]. Volume 7). Habilitation thesis Augustana University Neuendettelsau. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-447-04790-9 , p. ??.
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Franz Höllinger: Religious Culture in Brazil: Between Traditional Folk Faith and Modern Awakening Movements. Campus, Frankfurt / M. u. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38473-3 .
  7. ↑ Max Weber: Religious Communities (= Complete Edition. Dept. 1: Writings and Speeches. Volume 22: Economy and Society. Part 2). Published by Hans G. Kippenberg . Mohr, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-16-147562-3 .

A) Klaus Hock : Introduction to Religious Studies. 2nd, revised edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-20048-9 .

  1. ↑ Hock, pp. 115-127.
  2. ↑ a b Hock, p. 112.
  3. ↑ a b c Hock, p. 113.
  4. ↑ Hock, p. 115.
  5. ↑ a b Hock, p. 125.
  6. ^ Hock, p. 126.