Connecting authors and themes: SANT104
Lecture 1
- Shared Death: Self, Sociality and Internet Group Suicide in Japan – Chikako
Ozawa-de Silva (also about the self/personhood)
- Ohnuki-Tierney, japanese suicide even earlier than internet suicide already:
recognise influence japanese society and its norms + aestheticization. BUT
kamikaze pilots’ deaths aren’t seen as suicide by japanese society
- Durkheim, types of suicide -> egoistic suicide but does not explain why people
want to die together
- Betrayal by Idealism and Aesthetics: Special Attack Force (Kamikaze) Pilots and
Their Intellectual Trajectories – Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
- Durkheim, types of suicide and as a collective phenomenon
- Ozawa-de Silva: also about japanese culture and
romanticization+aestheticization of death
- Reading 6: Suicide – Durkheim
- Ohnuki-Tierney, examples of types of suicide
- Ozawa-de Silva, examples of types of suicide
- Can we link the argument that catholics commit less suicide because they have
more symbols and rituals to the readings about symbols and rituals from
Evans-Pritchard and others, or is that something completely different?
- Not sure, as I believe Durkheim's argument was that Protestantism
emphasized religious individualism and self-knowledge while Catholicism
emphasized the community through the use of rituals and traditions.
While E-P does not talk about the use of rituals as bringing people
together I think? Although that might be implied..
Lecture 2
- On the Concept of Function in Society – Radcliffe-Brown
- Durkheim: What Radcliffe-Brown gets from Durkheim is a concern with structure
and a definition of structure as the relationship between entities.
- Lévi-Strauss: They are two autonomous ways of thinking, rather than two stages
in an evolution of thought. Thus, magic is not primitive science. BUT R-B argues
that without savage religions a modern civilisation would not be possible
- Religion and Society – Radcliffe-Brown
- Myth in Primitive Psychology – Malinowski
- Lévi-Strauss: He disagrees with Malinowski’s outlook that those people’s
interests are determined by the basic needs of life, and says this is a widespread
conception considered as functionalism. For Lévi-Strauss, these ‘primitive’
people can also have disinteresting and even intellectual thoughts because they
are moved by a desire to understand the world around them.
, -Jackson, focusses on lived experience rather than cognitive and linguistic models
of meaning. Malinowski focuses on the lived reality rather than symbolic models
of meaning.?
- Baseball Magic – Gmelch
- E-P, rituals before events
- Malinowski, similar to the rituals of the Trobriand Islanders like before fishing for
sharks.
Lecture 3
- Sufferers from misfortune seek for witches among their enemies –
Evans-Pritchard
- The Poison Oracle in Daily Life – Evans-Pritchard
- Douglas: accountability in Azande
- Douglas: secular defilement: in the modern world, if anomalies occur we try to
create a new schema or ignore them. So maybe western world is not trapped by
the logic of the system as individuals? But in public culture the schemas are more
fixed, and if we ignore the anomalies perhaps also trapped by/in our system?
- 5: Accountability in the Azande – Douglas
- 4: The Logic in Witchcraft – Gluckman
- Evans-Pritchard, total system of belief vs internal logic of belief
- Turner, Turner refers to Gluckman’s work on the court jester, who came to be a
privileged moral spokesman.. In Africa you also have jesters associated with
African monarchs and they were frequently dwarfs or had some other kind of
distinguishing peculiarity, “These figures representing the poor and the deformed,
appear to symbolize the moral values of communitas as against the coercive
power of supreme political rulers
Lecture 4
- 4: The sorcerer and his magic - Lévi-Strauss
- Feld: food (and taboos) are good to think with. It doesn’t only mediate social
relationships; it comes to stand for them as well. To be hungry therefore, implies
more than merely a condition of physical need. It also implies isolation from
companionship.
- 1: The Science of Concrete - Lévi-Strauss
- 2: ‘Primitive’ thinking and the ‘civilized’ mind - Lévi-Strauss
- I don’t know which text of Lévi-Strauss this refers to exactly (someone help me out), but
just as Lévi-Strauss argues that the effect of the magic lies in the belief in it (example
pregnant woman) and that the mind creates these structures of belief and people are
trapped by it, Evans-Pritchard argues that people are imprisoned by their system of
belief. With what he calls secondary elaborations, people explain contradictions and
failures within the system. So both say that people have an intellect and can doubt, but
only within their system.
Lecture 1
- Shared Death: Self, Sociality and Internet Group Suicide in Japan – Chikako
Ozawa-de Silva (also about the self/personhood)
- Ohnuki-Tierney, japanese suicide even earlier than internet suicide already:
recognise influence japanese society and its norms + aestheticization. BUT
kamikaze pilots’ deaths aren’t seen as suicide by japanese society
- Durkheim, types of suicide -> egoistic suicide but does not explain why people
want to die together
- Betrayal by Idealism and Aesthetics: Special Attack Force (Kamikaze) Pilots and
Their Intellectual Trajectories – Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
- Durkheim, types of suicide and as a collective phenomenon
- Ozawa-de Silva: also about japanese culture and
romanticization+aestheticization of death
- Reading 6: Suicide – Durkheim
- Ohnuki-Tierney, examples of types of suicide
- Ozawa-de Silva, examples of types of suicide
- Can we link the argument that catholics commit less suicide because they have
more symbols and rituals to the readings about symbols and rituals from
Evans-Pritchard and others, or is that something completely different?
- Not sure, as I believe Durkheim's argument was that Protestantism
emphasized religious individualism and self-knowledge while Catholicism
emphasized the community through the use of rituals and traditions.
While E-P does not talk about the use of rituals as bringing people
together I think? Although that might be implied..
Lecture 2
- On the Concept of Function in Society – Radcliffe-Brown
- Durkheim: What Radcliffe-Brown gets from Durkheim is a concern with structure
and a definition of structure as the relationship between entities.
- Lévi-Strauss: They are two autonomous ways of thinking, rather than two stages
in an evolution of thought. Thus, magic is not primitive science. BUT R-B argues
that without savage religions a modern civilisation would not be possible
- Religion and Society – Radcliffe-Brown
- Myth in Primitive Psychology – Malinowski
- Lévi-Strauss: He disagrees with Malinowski’s outlook that those people’s
interests are determined by the basic needs of life, and says this is a widespread
conception considered as functionalism. For Lévi-Strauss, these ‘primitive’
people can also have disinteresting and even intellectual thoughts because they
are moved by a desire to understand the world around them.
, -Jackson, focusses on lived experience rather than cognitive and linguistic models
of meaning. Malinowski focuses on the lived reality rather than symbolic models
of meaning.?
- Baseball Magic – Gmelch
- E-P, rituals before events
- Malinowski, similar to the rituals of the Trobriand Islanders like before fishing for
sharks.
Lecture 3
- Sufferers from misfortune seek for witches among their enemies –
Evans-Pritchard
- The Poison Oracle in Daily Life – Evans-Pritchard
- Douglas: accountability in Azande
- Douglas: secular defilement: in the modern world, if anomalies occur we try to
create a new schema or ignore them. So maybe western world is not trapped by
the logic of the system as individuals? But in public culture the schemas are more
fixed, and if we ignore the anomalies perhaps also trapped by/in our system?
- 5: Accountability in the Azande – Douglas
- 4: The Logic in Witchcraft – Gluckman
- Evans-Pritchard, total system of belief vs internal logic of belief
- Turner, Turner refers to Gluckman’s work on the court jester, who came to be a
privileged moral spokesman.. In Africa you also have jesters associated with
African monarchs and they were frequently dwarfs or had some other kind of
distinguishing peculiarity, “These figures representing the poor and the deformed,
appear to symbolize the moral values of communitas as against the coercive
power of supreme political rulers
Lecture 4
- 4: The sorcerer and his magic - Lévi-Strauss
- Feld: food (and taboos) are good to think with. It doesn’t only mediate social
relationships; it comes to stand for them as well. To be hungry therefore, implies
more than merely a condition of physical need. It also implies isolation from
companionship.
- 1: The Science of Concrete - Lévi-Strauss
- 2: ‘Primitive’ thinking and the ‘civilized’ mind - Lévi-Strauss
- I don’t know which text of Lévi-Strauss this refers to exactly (someone help me out), but
just as Lévi-Strauss argues that the effect of the magic lies in the belief in it (example
pregnant woman) and that the mind creates these structures of belief and people are
trapped by it, Evans-Pritchard argues that people are imprisoned by their system of
belief. With what he calls secondary elaborations, people explain contradictions and
failures within the system. So both say that people have an intellect and can doubt, but
only within their system.
