010069 VO Social Anthropology of Religion (2021S)

Aim:
The aim is to introduce students to the academic discipline of the social anthropology of religion, its main theories and approaches, and its history as an important subdiscipline of the general academic study of religion.

Students will:
• acquire knowledge of what constitutes the social anthropology of religion, how it can be studied in a comparative context, and how it is different from other subdisciplines such as the psychology of religion or the sociology of religion;
• acquire knowledge of the different approaches, theories, subject matter, and perspectives of the social anthropological study of religion, covering topics such as ritual, myth, and witchcraft, among others.

Description:
Social anthropology of religion is the discipline engaged with the academic study of religion as its subject matter and social anthropology as the method of inquiry. The main objectives of this discipline is to examine the ways in which lived religious practice, and the understanding of religion, get constituted inside and outside ‘Western’ and modern contexts. Inter alia, the social anthropology of religion seeks to understand how religion is understood in different local and broader contexts, what is ‘rational’ and what ‘bizarre’ in different cultural and social contexts, and the extent to which anthropology itself is a religious and/or a scientific quest of interpreting and explaining the religious reality of divergent and diverse social mileus.

Method:
Lectures with visual and textual material in English.