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Religion as a Cultural System

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture

culture

An historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.

A religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and longlasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

(1) a system of symbols which acts to

symbol: a vehicle for conception cultural patterns have an intrinsic double aspect: they give meaning, that is, objective conceptual form, to social and psychological reality both by shaping themselves to it and by shaping it to themselves.

Model-of: Model-for: (ethos)

(2) establish powerful, pervasive, and longlasting moods and motivations in men by

Motivation: a persisting tendency, a chronic inclination to perform certain sorts of acts and experience certain sorts of feeling in certain sorts of situations. moods

(3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and

Transcendent truths The will to believe Dealing with chaos, uncanny Analytical capacities

Powers of endurance: problem of suffering As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer. Problem of meaning are a matter affirming the ultimate explicability of experience, the more affective aspects are a matter of affirming its ultimate sufferableness.

Moral insight

Myth of Dinka The problem of meaning is a matter of affirming, or at least recognizing, the inescapability of ignorance, pain, and injustice on the human plane while simultaneously denying that these irrationalities are characteristic of the world as a whole.

(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that

The meaning of belief Placing the religious perspective against the background of three of the other major perspectives in terms of which men construe the worldthe common-sensical, the scientific, and the aesthetic

Acceptance and faith vs. action upon reality Commitment vs. analysis Actuality vs. factuality Persuasive authority In a ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms.

(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

The movement back and forth between the religious perspective and the common-sense perspective.

Bororo as parakeet Ritual sense Common-sensical perspective

For an anthropologist, the importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve as a source of general, yet distinctive, conceptions of the world, the self, and the relations between them. Religious concepts spread beyond their specifically metaphysical contexts to provide a framework of general ideas in terms of which a wide range of experienceintellectual, emotional, moralcan be given meaningful form.

They do not merely interpret social and psychological processes in cosmic terms, but they shape them. Two-stage operation: first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper. Second, the relating of these systems of socialstructural and psychological processes. Only when we have a theoretical analysis of symbolic action comparable in sophistication to that we now have for social and psychological action, will we be able to cope effectively with those aspects of social and psychological life in which religion plays a determinant role.

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