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| 1) belief in spirits that reside in humans, animals, plants and “inanimate” objects; 2) a definition of religion first proposed by E. B. Tylor |
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| The comparative study of human cultures. As practiced by E. B. Tylor and other Victorian anthropologists, ethnology seeks to discover the patterns or laws that govern cultural evolution. |
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| A term used by Durkheim to refer to “rites of atonement and mourning, which follow upon a death or other tragic event” (NTR, 101) |
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| In contrast to the economic “base,” Marx used this term to refer to “institutions we associate with cultural life—family, government, the arts, most of philosophy, ethics and religion” (NTR, 124). |
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| The ongoing conflict in which oppressed and oppressor classes in different historical periods stand in “constant opposition to one another” (NTR, 118). This conflict ends in a “revolutionary re-construction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (NTR, 118) |
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| A term used by Durkheim to refer to prohibitions and taboos that serve to insulate the sacred from the profane. |
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| Belonging to “the ordinary, uneventful, and practical routine of everyday life” (NTR,91). The opposite of the sacred. |
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| The division of a tribe "into different clans, each of which claims its separate totem animal or plant." (NTR,93) These totems are viewed as spiritual representations of the clan and often have taboos associated with them. |
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| Marx thinks of alienation as an economic condition that prevents people from realizing their human potential. He thinks this happens under capitalism because workers are forced to sell their labor to sustain their existence, thereby losing their ability to determine their own destiny, to define their relationships with other people, and to own and enjoy the goods and services that they produce with their own labor. |
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| In Freud’s theory of the mind, the ego or “I” is the part of the self that seeks to reconcile the powerful unconscious desires of the id with the demands of reality and of the superego, which is the repository of social prohibitions that manifest themselves as conscience. |
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| The unconscious desire for sexual gratification that a child feels for its parent of the opposite sex, which results in ambivalent feelings of love and hate toward the parent of the same sex. Freud thought that becoming a “well-adjusted” adult requires a successful resolution of the Oedipus complex, and that the neurotic symptoms can result from an Oedipus complex that has not been successfully resolved. |
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| Durkheim thought of sociology as an independent branch of science that studies “social facts,” including language, laws, customs, cultural norms, ideas, values, traditions, concepts and expectations that are transmitted by social groups in which individuals come to participate. |
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| A term used by E. B. Tylor to refer to a stage of cultural development that comes after the “savage stage.” At the “barbaric stage,” belief in spirits has evolved into belief in various gods who rule over different parts of nature (forest, sea, sky, etc.), and whose worship is associated with more complex forms of social organization such as those involving temples and priests. |
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| functional definitions of religion |
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Definition
| In contrast to substantive definitions of religion, which are closer to “the common sense approach” (NTR, 11), and define religion “in terms of the beliefs or ideas that religious people affirm” (NTR, 11), functionalist definitions focus instead on “how [religion] operates in human life” (NTR, 11), for example, by providing individuals with a sense of security or by binding together the individual members of a social group. |
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| A term used by Durkheim to refer to rituals performed by members of a social group who share a set of common beliefs about the sacred. |
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| substantive definitions of religion |
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| Definitions of religion that emphasize “the content, or ideas that religious people affirm and find valuable” (IR, xvii), as opposed to the functions that religion performs. E. B. Tylor’s definition of religion as “belief in Spiritual Beings” (IR, 10) is an example of a substantive definition of religion. |
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| A term used by Durkheim to refer to a group of people who share the same beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, and are thereby united into a single moral community. |
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| A term used by Freud to refer to the part of the personality that imposes constraints on the instinctual desires that derive from the id, and is shaped by the expectations of our parents and the society in which we live. |
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| A term used by Freud to refer to the mental process whereby painful or socially unacceptable thoughts, desire and memories are forced into the unconscious, sometimes causing a type of mental illness called a neurosis. |
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| “[What] is left over after the workers wages . . . are subtracted from the much greater value they produce in their daily work” (NTR, 123). |
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| A term used by Marx to refer to economic realities that form the foundation of social life, including the division of labor and the ownership of the “means of projection,” such as land, raw materials, factories, etc. |
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| The intellectual activity that makes up what Marx calls the “superstructure” of society, which is a reflection of the underlying economic realities that make up the “base.” According to Marx “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,” i.e. ideas (including religious ones) that reflect the interests of the ruling class. |
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| The class of wage earners (especially industrial workers) in a capitalist society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor power, which they must sell to capitalists in order to feed and clothe themselves. |
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| A branch of sympathetic magic that has to do with what Frazer called "the law of contiguity," according to which things that were once in contact with each other are linked and can still affect each other. Magicians would use this type of magic to create voodoo dolls out of the hair or skin of another person to either cause harm or healing to that individual. |
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| A mental disorder that Freud theorized is caused by the repression of libido (the sex drive), and can manifest itself in the form of symptoms such as compulsive behavior. Freud noted certain similarities between religious behaviors and the behaviors of neurotics, and referred to religion as “the collective obsessional neurosis of humanity,” though he also observed that religious people are less likely to develop individual neuroses than non-religious people. |
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| A term used by E. B. Tylor and James Frazer to refer to the most primitive stage of cultural evolution, marked by hunter/gatherer societies and a simple belief in many spirits. For example, a savage period human might believe that every tree has an individual spirit as opposed to believing in a forest god. |
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| These were gods Frazer talked about in his book, The Golden Bough, which were linked to plant life and often died and regenerated in cycles. Adonis and Dionysus are two examples of vegetation gods. |
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