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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
sociology & soc. anthropology
Semester:
2nd Semester
Teaching Languages:
Hebrew
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Prof Nurit Stadler
Coordinator Office Hours:
Tuesday 8:30-10:00
Teaching Staff:
Prof Nurit Stadler
Course/Module description:
Religion represents an ideal subject for anthropologists and Sociologists. It is, on the one hand, a human universal—all groups of people develop complexes of symbols, rituals, and beliefs that connect their own experience to the essential nature of the universe. They do this, however, in a bewildering variety of ways that are a challenge to anthropologists and sociologists. A specific religions or belief may involve one god, or many of gods, and sometimes no gods, they may favor simple family rituals or elaborate state festivals; they may value individual transcendence, community ceremonialism, Dionysian ecstasy, or any number of other conceptions of ultimate good. In this context, the sociology and anthropology of religion explores how these different forms of religion come to be, how they change, and what they mean for the nature of human experience. Obviously, religion has stood at the center of sociological and anthropological research and theory since these disciplines began in the 19th century, and its development has reflected trends in the discipline generally. The classical studies of Marx, Weber is sociological thinking, and the studies of James Frazer, E. B. Tylor, Émile Durkheim, Levi Strauss, and others have changed the way we think about religion. These classics tended to focus on classifying religions and developing models of religious evolution. Later studies turned to smaller-scale ethnography, examining the ways that individual religious systems functioned within their particular social environments. More recently, anthropologists and sociologists have focused on the various dynamics of power and identity in religion, with particular focus on the ways that religion intersects with conceptions of gender, ethnicity, and nation. They have also looked increasingly at religious change and the influence of modern and postmodern social forms on religious life. In this course we outlines the scope of current sociological and anthropological literature on religion.
Course/Module aims:
Basis for writing doctorate chapters
Joint encounter of doctoral students and creation of joint working group
Preparing a lecture conference
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
The presence of all the lessons Calling All items bibliography Presenting the subject of Ph.D. Submission Writing outcomes
Attendance requirements(%):
90%
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
Lectures by students about their doctoral thesis
Discussion of key texts in the field
Course/Module Content:
Theory
Pilgrimage
Gender
Body and Embodiment
Place, Space, Landscape
New Media
Materiality
Required Reading:
Bibliography
Theory
Asad, T. (2003( Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bloch, Maurice: Prey into Hunter. The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Boyer, Pascal: Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Lambek, Michael: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. London: Blackwell, 2002. Morris, Brian: Anthropological Studies of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Pilgrimage
Coleman, S. (2002). "Do you believe in pilgrimage? Communitas, contestation and beyond." Anthropological Theory 2(3): 355-368.
Gender
Harris, Ruth 1999. Lourdes. Body and Spirit in the Secular Age. London: Allen Lane.
Mahmood, S. 2005. Politics of Piety, the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hirschkind, Charles, and Saba Mahmood. 2002. “Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency.” Anthropological Quarterly 75(2):339–54.
Body and Embodiment
Davidman, L. (2011). The Transformation of Bodily Practices among Religious Defectors. In C. BobeL & S. Kwan (Eds.), Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules (pp. 209–219). Vanderbilt University Press.
Bynum, C. (1987). Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. University of California Press
Place
Space
Landscape
Knott, K. (2010). Religion, space, and place: The spatial turn in research on religion. Religion and society: Advances in Research, 1(1), 29-43.
Atran, Scott: In Gods We Trust. The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford, 2002. Pp. vii-xi and 3-18.
Henig, David (2012) “‘This is Our Little Hajj:’ Muslim Holy Sites and Reappropriation of the Sacred Landscape in Contemporary Bosnia.” American Ethnologist 39 (4): 751-765.
New Media
Naas, M. (2012) Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion. Science, and the Media. New York: Fordham University Press.
Materiality
Meyer, B., & Houtman, D. (2012). Introduction: Material Religion–How Things Matter. status: published.
Morgan, D. (1997). Introduction: Visual piety: A history and theory of popular religious images. Univ of California Press.
Additional Reading Material:
Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 0 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 100 %
soon
Additional information:
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