cultural belief system essay

Cultural Belief System: Experiences and Traditions Essay

Every culture is constituted of many factors such as belief systems. The belief systems are made of the values and individual attitudes expressed within a community based on experiences and traditions.

In most communities, the belief systems form the basis for validity of governance systems in the community as well as the acceptable laws governing behavior in the society. The belief systems are expressed in the day to day life of such communities through behavior, language, religious beliefs, norms and roles accorded to different gender among others (Gamman, pg. 73).

Many ancient world cultures and civilizations reflect cultural belief systems in almost all features of their lifestyles such as the social order, legal systems, labor division and specialization and even in various artistic expressions such as architecture, painting, sculpture and literature (Nagle, pg.5). In the 11 th and 12 th century cultural belief systems were developed in Europe.

The high medieval Europe defined women’s’ roles in relation to those of the men. The woman’s role was set as that of marriage and child bearing. The social order established the men’s roles to run businesses and the political systems of the community. The women who would not commit themselves to marriage pursued religious paths and served as spiritual advisors, writers and counselors (World History Project, para.8).

The communities also established stable political systems under holy roman emperors. The communities believed in supernatural dynasty and the political leaders were regarded as God’s chosen.

The Christian beliefs was an integral societal component and a strong Slavic Christian culture was established f rom the 10 th century and was so strong as to survive the Mongol conquest. The laws governing the communities borrowed heavily from the belief in Christianity and a strong bond of relationship existed between the political class and the church (World History Project, para.10).

The belief systems of these communities were also expressed in artistic expressions. The religious inclination to Christianity was reflected in literature and arts. Religious literature dominated with handwritten manuscripts of sermons, saints’ bibliographies, miracle stories.

Most of these were originally written in Latin the dominant language of the time but with increased demand for the literature translations into English, German, French and Portuguese were done. Artistic expressions of their beliefs were manifested through decorations and paintings.

Portraits of Jesus, the Christian messiah and other saints of the time as well as religious symbols such as vines, beasts, vessels and plants reflected the peoples’ religious beliefs (World History Project, para.8).

The architecture of the day also reflected their belief in the roman guided Christian beliefs. Under the influence of religious and secular forces, the Romanesque style became dominant. The style was characterized by large cathedrals, with solid religious stone carvings. The integration of the gothic styles in the 12 th century revolutionized the architectural designs to create a sense of a heavenly aura in the buildings.

The music was another artistic method of expressing the society’s believes since to a large extent it reflected biblical stories and excerpts as well as worshiping the heavenly God the community believed in (World History Project, para.18).

The ancient European community belief system seems inclined towards religion to a large extent. The secular elements common especially among the urbanites and the emergence of more intellectually driven innovations resulted in animosity between the conservative Christian community that dominated Europe and the urban society (World History Project, Para. 17). This indicates the significant role a belief system plays in shaping all other cultural features in a community.

Works Cited

Gamman, John. Overcoming Obstacles in Environmental Policymaking: Creating Partnerships Through Mediation. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1994.

Nagle, Brendan. The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History . New York: Prentice Hall, 2010.

World History Project. The Dynamic Culture of the middle Ages . 2007. Web.

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Cultural Identity Essay

27 August, 2020

12 minutes read

Author: Elizabeth Brown

No matter where you study, composing essays of any type and complexity is a critical component in any studying program. Most likely, you have already been assigned the task to write a cultural identity essay, which is an essay that has to do a lot with your personality and cultural background. In essence, writing a cultural identity essay is fundamental for providing the reader with an understanding of who you are and which outlook you have. This may include the topics of religion, traditions, ethnicity, race, and so on. So, what shall you do to compose a winning cultural identity essay?

Cultural Identity Paper: Definitions, Goals & Topics

Before starting off with a cultural identity essay, it is fundamental to uncover what is particular about this type of paper. First and foremost, it will be rather logical to begin with giving a general and straightforward definition of a cultural identity essay. In essence, cultural identity essay implies outlining the role of the culture in defining your outlook, shaping your personality, points of view regarding a multitude of matters, and forming your qualities and beliefs. Given a simpler definition, a cultural identity essay requires you to write about how culture has influenced your personality and yourself in general. So in this kind of essay you as a narrator need to give an understanding of who you are, which strengths you have, and what your solid life position is.

Yet, the goal of a cultural identity essay is not strictly limited to describing who you are and merely outlining your biography. Instead, this type of essay pursues specific objectives, achieving which is a perfect indicator of how high-quality your essay is. Initially, the primary goal implies outlining your cultural focus and why it makes you peculiar. For instance, if you are a french adolescent living in Canada, you may describe what is so special about it: traditions of the community, beliefs, opinions, approaches. Basically, you may talk about the principles of the society as well as its beliefs that made you become the person you are today.

So far, cultural identity is a rather broad topic, so you will likely have a multitude of fascinating ideas for your paper. For instance, some of the most attention-grabbing topics for a personal cultural identity essay are:

Memorable traditions of your community
A cultural event that has influenced your personality
Influential people in your community
Locations and places that tell a lot about your culture and identity

Cultural Identity Essay Structure

As you might have already guessed, composing an essay on cultural identity might turn out to be fascinating but somewhat challenging. Even though the spectrum of topics is rather broad, the question of how to create the most appropriate and appealing structure remains open.

Like any other kind of an academic essay, a cultural identity essay must compose of three parts: introduction, body, and concluding remarks. Let’s take a more detailed look at each of the components:

Introduction

Starting to write an essay is most likely one of the most time-consuming and mind-challenging procedures. Therefore, you can postpone writing your introduction and approach it right after you finish body paragraphs. Nevertheless, you should think of a suitable topic as well as come up with an explicit thesis. At the beginning of the introduction section, give some hints regarding the matter you are going to discuss. You have to mention your thesis statement after you have briefly guided the reader through the topic. You can also think of indicating some vital information about yourself, which is, of course, relevant to the topic you selected.

Your main body should reveal your ideas and arguments. Most likely, it will consist of 3-5 paragraphs that are more or less equal in size. What you have to keep in mind to compose a sound ‘my cultural identity essay’ is the argumentation. In particular, always remember to reveal an argument and back it up with evidence in each body paragraph. And, of course, try to stick to the topic and make sure that you answer the overall question that you stated in your topic. Besides, always keep your thesis statement in mind: make sure that none of its components is left without your attention and argumentation.

Conclusion

Finally, after you are all finished with body paragraphs and introduction, briefly summarize all the points in your final remarks section. Paraphrase what you have already revealed in the main body, and make sure you logically lead the reader to the overall argument. Indicate your cultural identity once again and draw a bottom line regarding how your culture has influenced your personality.

Best Tips For Writing Cultural Identity Essay

Writing a ‘cultural identity essay about myself’ might be somewhat challenging at first. However, you will no longer struggle if you take a couple of plain tips into consideration. Following the tips below will give you some sound and reasonable cultural identity essay ideas as well as make the writing process much more pleasant:

Start off by creating an outline. The reason why most students struggle with creating a cultural identity essay lies behind a weak structure. The best way to organize your ideas and let them flow logically is to come up with a helpful outline. Having a reference to build on is incredibly useful, and it allows your essay to look polished.
Remember to write about yourself. The task of a cultural identity essay implies not focusing on your culture per se, but to talk about how it shaped your personality. So, switch your focus to describing who you are and what your attitudes and positions are.
Think of the most fundamental cultural aspects. Needless to say, you first need to come up with a couple of ideas to be based upon in your paper. So, brainstorm all the possible ideas and try to decide which of them deserve the most attention. In essence, try to determine which of the aspects affected your personality the most.
Edit and proofread before submitting your paper. Of course, the content and the coherence of your essay’s structure play a crucial role. But the grammatical correctness matters a lot too. Even if you are a native speaker, you may still make accidental errors in the text. To avoid the situation when unintentional mistakes spoil the impression from your essay, always double check your cultural identity essay.

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Module 3: Culture

Culture, values, and beliefs, learning outcomes.

Compare material versus nonmaterial culture
Describe cultural values and beliefs

Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens nearly 250,000 years ago, people have grouped together into communities in order to survive. Living together, people form common habits and behaviors—from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food. In modern-day Paris, many people shop daily at outdoor markets to pick up what they need for their evening meal, buying cheese, meat, and vegetables from different specialty stalls. In the United States, the majority of people shop once a week at supermarkets, filling large carts to the brim. How would a Parisian perceive U.S. shopping behaviors that suburban Americans take for granted?

Note that in the above comparison we are looking at cultural differences on display in two distinct places, suburban America and urban France, even though we are examining a behavior that people in both places are engaged in. It’s important to note that geographical place is an important factor in culture—beliefs and practices, and society—the social structures and organization of individuals and groups.

Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. In the United States, people tend to view marriage as a choice between two people, based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other cases, through a direct system, such as a “mail order bride.” To someone raised in New York City, the marriage customs of a family from Nigeria may seem strange or even wrong. Conversely, someone from a traditional Kolkata family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love as the foundation for marriage and lifelong commitment. In other words, the way in which people view marriage depends largely on what they have been taught.

Behavior based on learned customs is not a bad thing. Being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and “normal.” Also, perhaps such cultural traditions are comforting in that they seem to have already worked well enough for our forebears to have retained them. Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety and learned behaviors.

A crowd of people behind closed subway car doors is shown.

Figure 1. How would a visitor from the suburban United States act and feel on this crowded Tokyo train? (Photo courtesy of simonglucas/flickr)

Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether people are commuting in Dublin, Cairo, Mumbai, or San Francisco, many behaviors will be the same, but significant differences also arise between cultures. Typically, a passenger will find a marked bus stop or station, wait for his bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might have to run, because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. Dublin bus riders would be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behavior would be considered the height of rudeness in the United States, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.

In this example of commuting, culture consists of both intangible things like beliefs and thoughts (expectations about personal space, for example) and tangible things (bus stops, trains, and seating capacity).

The objects or belongings of a group of people are considered material culture . Metro passes and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are automobiles, stores, and the physical structures where people worship, or engage in other recognizable patterns of behavior.

Nonmaterial culture , in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture, namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture, but the teaching methods and educational standards within it are part of education’s nonmaterial culture. These material and nonmaterial aspects of culture can vary subtly or greatly from region to region. As people travel farther afield, moving from different regions to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between others’ symbolic and material worlds and our own.

Values and Beliefs

The first, and perhaps most crucial, elements of culture we will discuss are its values and beliefs. Values are a culture’s standard for discerning what is good and just in society. Values are deeply embedded and critical for transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs. Beliefs are the tenets or convictions that people hold to be true. Individuals in a society have specific beliefs, but they also share collective values. To illustrate the difference, Americans commonly believe in the American Dream—that anyone who works hard enough will be successful and wealthy. Underlying this belief is the American value that wealth is good and important.

Values help shape a society by suggesting what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, to be sought or avoided. Consider the value that the United States places upon youth. Children represent innocence and purity, while an adult who is youthful in appearance signifies sexual vitality. Shaped by this value, individuals spend millions of dollars each year on cosmetic products and surgeries to look young and beautiful. The United States also has an individualistic culture, meaning people place a high value on individuality and independence. In contrast, many other cultures are collectivist, meaning the welfare of the group and group relationships is a primary value.

Living up to a culture’s values can be difficult. It’s easy to value good health, but it’s hard to quit smoking. Marital monogamy is valued, but many spouses engage in infidelity. Cultural diversity and equal opportunities for all people are valued in the United States, yet the country’s highest political offices have been dominated by white men.

Values often suggest how people should behave, but they don’t accurately reflect how people actually do behave. Values portray an ideal culture , the standards society would like to embrace and live up to. But ideal culture differs from real culture , the way society actually is, based on what occurs and exists. In an ideal culture, there would be no traffic accidents, murders, poverty, or racial tension. But in real culture, police officers, lawmakers, educators, and social workers constantly strive to prevent or repair those accidents, crimes, and injustices. American teenagers are encouraged to value celibacy. However, the number of unplanned pregnancies among teens reveals that not only is the ideal hard to live up to, but the value alone is not enough to spare teenagers the potential consequences of having sex.

Two male soldiers in uniform are shown from behind walking and holding hands.

Figure 2. In many parts of Africa and the Middle East, it is considered normal for men to hold hands in friendship. How would Americans react to these two soldiers? (Photo courtesy of Geordie Mott/Wikimedia Commons)

One way societies strive to put values into action is through sanctions : rewards and punishments that encourage people to live according to their society’s ideas about what is good and right. When people observe the norms of society and uphold its values, they are often rewarded. A boy who helps an elderly woman board a bus may receive a smile and a “thank you.” A business manager who raises profit margins may receive a quarterly bonus. People positively sanction certain behaviors by giving their support, approval, or permission, or negatively sanction them by invoking formal policies of disapproval and nonsupport. Sanctions are a form of social control , a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms. Sometimes people conform to norms in anticipation or expectation of positive sanctions: good grades, for instance, may mean praise from parents and teachers. From a criminal justice perspective, properly used social control is also inexpensive crime control. Utilizing social control approaches pushes most people to conform to societal rules, regardless of whether authority figures (such as law enforcement) are present.

When people go against a society’s values, they are punished. A boy who shoves an elderly woman aside to board the bus first may receive frowns or even a scolding from other passengers. A business manager who drives away customers will likely be fired. Breaking norms and rejecting values can lead to cultural sanctions such as earning a negative label—lazy, no-good bum—or to legal sanctions, such as traffic tickets, fines, or imprisonment.

Values are not static; they vary across time and between groups as people evaluate, debate, and change collective societal beliefs. Values also vary from culture to culture. For example, cultures differ in their values about what kinds of physical closeness are appropriate in public. It’s rare to see two male friends or coworkers holding hands in the United States where that behavior often symbolizes romantic feelings. But in many nations, masculine physical intimacy is considered natural in public. This difference in cultural values came to light when people reacted to photos of former president George W. Bush holding hands with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2005. An example of nonmaterial culture, the simple gesture of hand-holding carries great symbolic differences across cultures.

Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
What is Culture?. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:-HOYsFU6@8/3-1-What-Is-Culture . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

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6.3: Culture, Values, and Beliefs

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Learning Outcomes

Compare material versus nonmaterial culture
Describe cultural values and beliefs

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/13279

Values and Beliefs

One way societies strive to put values into action is through rewards, sanctions, and punishments. When people observe the norms of society and uphold its values, they are often rewarded. A boy who helps an elderly woman board a bus may receive a smile and a “thank you.” A business manager who raises profit margins may receive a quarterly bonus. People positively sanction certain behaviors by giving their support, approval, or permission, or negatively sanction them by invoking formal policies of disapproval and nonsupport. Sanctions are a form of social control , a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms. Sometimes people conform to norms in anticipation or expectation of positive sanctions: good grades, for instance, may mean praise from parents and teachers. From a criminal justice perspective, properly used social control is also inexpensive crime control. Utilizing social control approaches pushes most people to conform to societal rules, regardless of whether authority figures (such as law enforcement) are present.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/13280

Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
What is Culture?. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:-HOYsFU6@8/3-1-What-Is-Culture . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

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Article contents

Religion, culture, and communication.

Stephen M. Croucher , Stephen M. Croucher School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey Business School, Massey University
Cheng Zeng , Cheng Zeng Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä
Diyako Rahmani Diyako Rahmani Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä
and Mélodine Sommier Mélodine Sommier School of History, Culture, and Communication, Eramus University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.166
Published online: 25 January 2017

Religion is an essential element of the human condition. Hundreds of studies have examined how religious beliefs mold an individual’s sociology and psychology. In particular, research has explored how an individual’s religion (religious beliefs, religious denomination, strength of religious devotion, etc.) is linked to their cultural beliefs and background. While some researchers have asserted that religion is an essential part of an individual’s culture, other researchers have focused more on how religion is a culture in itself. The key difference is how researchers conceptualize and operationalize both of these terms. Moreover, the influence of communication in how individuals and communities understand, conceptualize, and pass on religious and cultural beliefs and practices is integral to understanding exactly what religion and culture are.

It is through exploring the relationships among religion, culture, and communication that we can best understand how they shape the world in which we live and have shaped the communication discipline itself. Furthermore, as we grapple with these relationships and terms, we can look to the future and realize that the study of religion, culture, and communication is vast and open to expansion. Researchers are beginning to explore the influence of mediation on religion and culture, how our globalized world affects the communication of religions and cultures, and how interreligious communication is misunderstood; and researchers are recognizing the need to extend studies into non-Christian religious cultures.

communication
intercultural communication

Intricate Relationships among Religion, Communication, and Culture

Compiling an entry on the relationships among religion, culture, and communication is not an easy task. There is not one accepted definition for any of these three terms, and research suggests that the connections among these concepts are complex, to say the least. Thus, this article attempts to synthesize the various approaches to these three terms and integrate them. In such an endeavor, it is impossible to discuss all philosophical and paradigmatic debates or include all disciplines.

It is difficult to define religion from one perspective and with one encompassing definition. “Religion” is often defined as the belief in or the worship of a god or gods. Geertz ( 1973 ) defined a religion as

(1) a system which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting 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. (p. 90)

It is essential to recognize that religion cannot be understood apart from the world in which it takes place (Marx & Engels, 1975 ). To better understand how religion relates to and affects culture and communication, we should first explore key definitions, philosophies, and perspectives that have informed how we currently look at religion. In particular, the influences of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel are discussed to further understand the complexity of religion.

Karl Marx ( 1818–1883 ) saw religion as descriptive and evaluative. First, from a descriptive point of view, Marx believed that social and economic situations shape how we form and regard religions and what is religious. For Marx, the fact that people tend to turn to religion more when they are facing economic hardships or that the same religious denomination is practiced differently in different communities would seem perfectly logical. Second, Marx saw religion as a form of alienation (Marx & Engels, 1975 ). For Marx, the notion that the Catholic Church, for example, had the ability or right to excommunicate an individual, and thus essentially exclude them from the spiritual community, was a classic example of exploitation and domination. Such alienation and exploitation was later echoed in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844–1900 ), who viewed organized religion as society and culture controlling man (Nietzsche, 1996 ).

Building on Marxist thinking, Weber ( 1864–1920 ) stressed the multicausality of religion. Weber ( 1963 ) emphasized three arguments regarding religion and society: (1) how a religion relates to a society is contingent (it varies); (2) the relationship between religion and society can only be examined in its cultural and historical context; and (3) the relationship between society and religion is slowly eroding. Weber’s arguments can be applied to Catholicism in Europe. Until the Protestant Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries, Catholicism was the dominant religious ideology on the European continent. However, since the Reformation, Europe has increasingly become more Protestant and less Catholic. To fully grasp why many Europeans gravitate toward Protestantism and not Catholicism, we must consider the historical and cultural reasons: the Reformation, economics, immigration, politics, etc., that have all led to the majority of Europeans identifying as Protestant (Davie, 2008 ). Finally, even though the majority of Europeans identify as Protestant, secularism (separation of church and state) is becoming more prominent in Europe. In nations like France, laws are in place that officially separate the church and state, while in Northern Europe, church attendance is low, and many Europeans who identify as Protestant have very low religiosity (strength of religious devotion), focusing instead on being secularly religious individuals. From a Weberian point of view, the links among religion, history, and culture in Europe explain the decline of Catholicism, the rise of Protestantism, and now the rise of secularism.

Emile Durkheim ( 1858–1917 ) focused more on how religion performs a necessary function; it brings people and society together. Durkheim ( 1976 ) thus defined a religion as

a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things which are set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. (p. 47)

From this perspective, religion and culture are inseparable, as beliefs and practices are uniquely cultural. For example, religious rituals (one type of practice) unite believers in a religion and separate nonbelievers. The act of communion, or the sharing of the Eucharist by partaking in consecrated bread and wine, is practiced by most Christian denominations. However, the frequency of communion differs extensively, and the ritual is practiced differently based on historical and theological differences among denominations.

Georg Simmel ( 1858–1918 ) focused more on the fluidity and permanence of religion and religious life. Simmel ( 1950 ) believed that religious and cultural beliefs develop from one another. Moreover, he asserted that religiosity is an essential element to understand when examining religious institutions and religion. While individuals may claim to be part of a religious group, Simmel asserted that it was important to consider just how religious the individuals were. In much of Europe, religiosity is low: Germany 34%, Sweden 19%, Denmark 42%, the United Kingdom 30%, the Czech Republic 23%, and The Netherlands 26%, while religiosity is relatively higher in the United States (56%), which is now considered the most religious industrialized nation in the world ( Telegraph Online , 2015 ). The decline of religiosity in parts of Europe and its rise in the U.S. is linked to various cultural, historical, and communicative developments that will be further discussed.

Combining Simmel’s ( 1950 ) notion of religion with Geertz’s ( 1973 ) concept of religion and a more basic definition (belief in or the worship of a god or gods through rituals), it is clear that the relationship between religion and culture is integral and symbiotic. As Clark and Hoover ( 1997 ) noted, “culture and religion are inseparable” and “religion is an important consideration in theories of culture and society” (p. 17).

Outside of the Western/Christian perception of religion, Buddhist scholars such as Nagarajuna present a relativist framework to understand concepts like time and causality. This framework is distinct from the more Western way of thinking, in that notions of present, past, and future are perceived to be chronologically distorted, and the relationship between cause and effect is paradoxical (Wimal, 2007 ). Nagarajuna’s philosophy provides Buddhism with a relativist, non-solid dependent, and non-static understanding of reality (Kohl, 2007 ). Mulla Sadra’s philosophy explored the metaphysical relationship between the created universe and its singular creator. In his philosophy, existence takes precedence over essence, and any existing object reflects a part of the creator. Therefore, every devoted person is obliged to know themselves as the first step to knowing the creator, which is the ultimate reason for existence. This Eastern perception of religion is similar to that of Nagarajuna and Buddhism, as they both include the paradoxical elements that are not easily explained by the rationality of Western philosophy. For example, the god, as Mulla Sadra defines it, is beyond definition, description, and delamination, yet it is absolutely simple and unique (Burrell, 2013 ).

How researchers define and study culture varies extensively. For example, Hall ( 1989 ) defined culture as “a series of situational models for behavior and thought” (p. 13). Geertz ( 1973 ), building on the work of Kluckhohn ( 1949 ), defined culture in terms of 11 different aspects:

(1) the total way of life of a people; (2) the social legacy the individual acquires from his group; (3) a way of thinking, feeling, and believing; (4) an abstraction from behavior; (5) a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave; (6) a storehouse of pooled learning; (7) a set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems; (8) learned behavior; (9) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior; (10) a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men; (11) a precipitate of history. (Geertz, 1973 , p. 5)

Research on culture is divided between an essentialist camp and a constructivist camp. The essentialist view regards culture as a concrete and fixed system of symbols and meanings (Holiday, 1999 ). An essentialist approach is most prevalent in linguistic studies, in which national culture is closely linked to national language. Regarding culture as a fluid concept, constructionist views of culture focus on how it is performed and negotiated by individuals (Piller, 2011 ). In this sense, “culture” is a verb rather than a noun. In principle, a non-essentialist approach rejects predefined national cultures and uses culture as a tool to interpret social behavior in certain contexts.

Different approaches to culture influence significantly how it is incorporated into communication studies. Cultural communication views communication as a resource for individuals to produce and regulate culture (Philipsen, 2002 ). Constructivists tend to perceive culture as a part of the communication process (Applegate & Sypher, 1988 ). Cross-cultural communication typically uses culture as a national boundary. Hofstede ( 1991 ) is probably the most popular scholar in this line of research. Culture is thus treated as a theoretical construct to explain communication variations across cultures. This is also evident in intercultural communication studies, which focus on misunderstandings between individuals from different cultures.

Religion, Community, and Culture

There is an interplay among religion, community, and culture. Community is essentially formed by a group of people who share common activities or beliefs based on their mutual affect, loyalty, and personal concerns. Participation in religious institutions is one of the most dominant community engagements worldwide. Religious institutions are widely known for creating a sense of community by offering various material and social supports for individual followers. In addition, the role that religious organizations play in communal conflicts is also crucial. As religion deals with the ultimate matters of life, the differences among different religious beliefs are virtually impossible to settle. Although a direct causal relationship between religion and violence is not well supported, religion is, nevertheless, commonly accepted as a potential escalating factor in conflicts. Currently, religious conflicts are on the rise, and they are typically more violent, long-lasting, and difficult to resolve. In such cases, local religious organizations, places facilitating collective actions in the community, are extremely vital, as they can either preach peace or stir up hatred and violence. The peace impact of local religious institutions has been largely witnessed in India and Indonesia where conflicts are solved at the local level before developing into communal violence (De Juan, Pierskalla, & Vüllers, 2015 ).

While religion affects cultures (Beckford & Demerath, 2007 ), it itself is also affected by culture, as religion is an essential layer of culture. For example, the growth of individualism in the latter half of the 20th century has been coincident with the decline in the authority of Judeo-Christian institutions and the emergence of “parachurches” and more personal forms of prayer (Hoover & Lundby, 1997 ). However, this decline in the authority of the religious institutions in modernized society has not reduced the important role of religion and spirituality as one of the main sources of calm when facing painful experiences such as death, suffering, and loss.

When cultural specifications, such as individualism and collectivism, have been attributed to religion, the proposed definitions and functions of religion overlap with definitions of culture. For example, researchers often combine religious identification (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.) with cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1991 ) like individualism/collectivism to understand and compare cultural differences. Such combinations for comparison and analytical purposes demonstrate how religion and religious identification in particular are often relegated to a micro-level variable, when in fact the true relationship between an individual’s religion and culture is inseparable.

Religion as Part of Culture in Communication Studies

Religion as a part of culture has been linked to numerous communication traits and behaviors. Specifically, religion has been linked with media use and preferences (e.g., Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 ), health/medical decisions and communication about health-related issues (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), interpersonal communication (e.g., Croucher, Faulkner, Oommen, & Long, 2012b ), organizational behaviors (e.g., Garner & Wargo, 2009 ), and intercultural communication traits and behaviors (e.g., Croucher, Braziunaite, & Oommen, 2012a ). In media and religion scholarship, researchers have shown how religion as a cultural variable has powerful effects on media use, preferences, and gratifications. The research linking media and religion is vast (Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 ). This body of research has shown how “religious worldviews are created and sustained in ongoing social processes in which information is shared” (Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 , pp. 7–8). For example, religious Christians are more likely to read newspapers, while religious individuals are less likely to have a favorable opinion of the internet (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), and religious individuals (who typically attend religious services and are thus integrated into a religious community) are more likely to read media produced by the religious community (Davie, 2008 ).

Research into health/medical decisions and communication about health-related issues is also robust. Research shows how religion, specifically religiosity, promotes healthier living and better decision-making regarding health and wellbeing (Harris & Worley, 2012 ). For example, a religious (or spiritual) approach to cancer treatment can be more effective than a secular approach (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), religious attendance promotes healthier living, and people with HIV/AIDS often turn to religion for comfort as well. These studies suggest the significance of religion in health communication and in our health.

Research specifically examining the links between religion and interpersonal communication is not as vast as the research into media, health, and religion. However, this slowly growing body of research has explored areas such as rituals, self-disclosure (Croucher et al., 2012b ), and family dynamics (Davie, 2008 ), to name a few.

The role of religion in organizations is well studied. Overall, researchers have shown how religious identification and religiosity influence an individual’s organizational behavior. For example, research has shown that an individual’s religious identification affects levels of organizational dissent (Croucher et al., 2012a ). Garner and Wargo ( 2009 ) further showed that organizational dissent functions differently in churches than in nonreligious organizations. Kennedy and Lawton ( 1998 ) explored the relationships between religious beliefs and perceptions about business/corporate ethics and found that individuals with stronger religious beliefs have stricter ethical beliefs.

Researchers are increasingly looking at the relationships between religion and intercultural communication. Researchers have explored how religion affects numerous communication traits and behaviors and have shown how religious communities perceive and enact religious beliefs. Antony ( 2010 ), for example, analyzed the bindi in India and how the interplay between religion and culture affects people’s acceptance of it. Karniel and Lavie-Dinur ( 2011 ) showed how religion and culture influence how Palestinian Arabs are represented on Israeli television. Collectively, the intercultural work examining religion demonstrates the increasing importance of the intersection between religion and culture in communication studies.

Collectively, communication studies discourse about religion has focused on how religion is an integral part of an individual’s culture. Croucher et al. ( 2016 ), in a content analysis of communication journal coverage of religion and spirituality from 2002 to 2012 , argued that the discourse largely focuses on religion as a cultural variable by identifying religious groups as variables for comparative analysis, exploring “religious” or “spiritual” as adjectives to describe entities (religious organizations), and analyzing the relationships between religious groups in different contexts. Croucher and Harris ( 2012 ) asserted that the discourse about religion, culture, and communication is still in its infancy, though it continues to grow at a steady pace.

Future Lines of Inquiry

Research into the links among religion, culture, and communication has shown the vast complexities of these terms. With this in mind, there are various directions for future research/exploration that researchers could take to expand and benefit our practical understanding of these concepts and how they relate to one another. Work should continue to define these terms with a particular emphasis on mediation, closely consider these terms in a global context, focus on how intergroup dynamics influence this relationship, and expand research into non-Christian religious cultures.

Additional definitional work still needs to be done to clarify exactly what is meant by “religion,” “culture,” and “communication.” Our understanding of these terms and relationships can be further enhanced by analyzing how forms of mass communication mediate each other. Martin-Barbero ( 1993 ) asserted that there should be a shift from media to mediations as multiple opposing forces meet in communication. He defined mediation as “the articulations between communication practices and social movements and the articulation of different tempos of development with the plurality of cultural matrices” (p. 187). Religions have relied on mediations through various media to communicate their messages (oral stories, print media, radio, television, internet, etc.). These media share religious messages, shape the messages and religious communities, and are constantly changing. What we find is that, as media sophistication develops, a culture’s understandings of mediated messages changes (Martin-Barbero, 1993 ). Thus, the very meanings of religion, culture, and communication are transitioning as societies morph into more digitally mediated societies. Research should continue to explore the effects of digital mediation on our conceptualizations of religion, culture, and communication.

Closely linked to mediation is the need to continue extending our focus on the influence of globalization on religion, culture, and communication. It is essential to study the relationships among culture, religion, and communication in the context of globalization. In addition to trading goods and services, people are increasingly sharing ideas, values, and beliefs in the modern world. Thus, globalization not only leads to technological and socioeconomic changes, but also shapes individuals’ ways of communicating and their perceptions and beliefs about religion and culture. While religion represents an old way of life, globalization challenges traditional meaning systems and is often perceived as a threat to religion. For instance, Marx and Weber both asserted that modernization was incompatible with tradition. But, in contrast, globalization could facilitate religious freedom by spreading the idea of freedom worldwide. Thus, future work needs to consider the influence of globalization to fully grasp the interrelationships among religion, culture, and communication in the world.

A review of the present definitions of religion in communication research reveals that communication scholars approach religion as a holistic, total, and unique institution or notion, studied from the viewpoint of different communication fields such as health, intercultural, interpersonal, organizational communication, and so on. However, this approach to communication undermines the function of a religion as a culture and also does not consider the possible differences between religious cultures. For example, religious cultures differ in their levels of individualism and collectivism. There are also differences in how religious cultures interact to compete for more followers and territory (Klock, Novoa, & Mogaddam, 2010 ). Thus, localization is one area of further research for religion communication studies. This line of study best fits in the domain of intergroup communication. Such an approach will provide researchers with the opportunity to think about the roles that interreligious communication can play in areas such as peacemaking processes (Klock et al., 2010 ).

Academic discourse about religion has focused largely on Christian denominations. In a content analysis of communication journal discourse on religion and spirituality, Croucher et al. ( 2016 ) found that the terms “Christian” or “Christianity” appeared in 9.56% of all articles, and combined with other Christian denominations (Catholicism, Evangelism, Baptist, Protestantism, and Mormonism, for example), appeared in 18.41% of all articles. Other religious cultures (denominations) made up a relatively small part of the overall academic discourse: Islam appeared in 6.8%, Judaism in 4.27%, and Hinduism in only 0.96%. Despite the presence of various faiths in the data, the dominance of Christianity and its various denominations is incontestable. Having religions unevenly represented in the academic discourse is problematic. This highly unbalanced representation presents a biased picture of religious practices. It also represents one faith as being the dominant faith and others as being minority religions in all contexts.

Ultimately, the present overview, with its focus on religion, culture, and communication points to the undeniable connections among these concepts. Religion and culture are essential elements of humanity, and it is through communication, that these elements of humanity are mediated. Whether exploring these terms in health, interpersonal, intercultural, intergroup, mass, or other communication contexts, it is evident that understanding the intersection(s) among religion, culture, and communication offers vast opportunities for researchers and practitioners.

Pluralism Project Archive

Native american religious and cultural freedom: an introductory essay (2005).

I. No Word for Religion: The Distinctive Contours of Native American Religions

A. Fundamental Diversity We often refer to Native American religion or spirituality in the singular, but there is a fundamental diversity concerning Native American religious traditions. In the United States, there are more than five hundred recognized different tribes , speaking more than two hundred different indigenous languages, party to nearly four hundred different treaties , and courted by missionaries of each branch of Christianity. With traditional ways of life lived on a variety of landscapes, riverscapes, and seascapes, stereotypical images of buffalo-chasing nomads of the Plains cannot suffice to represent the people of Acoma, still raising corn and still occupying their mesa-top pueblo in what only relatively recently has come to be called New Mexico, for more than a thousand years; or the Tlingit people of what is now Southeast Alaska whose world was transformed by Raven, and whose lives revolve around the sea and the salmon. Perhaps it is ironic that it is their shared history of dispossession, colonization, and Christian missions that is most obviously common among different Native peoples. If “Indian” was a misnomer owing to European explorers’ geographical wishful thinking, so too in a sense is “Native American,”a term that elides the differences among peoples of “North America” into an identity apparently shared by none at the time the continents they shared were named for a European explorer. But the labels deployed by explorers and colonizers became an organizing tool for the resistance of the colonized. As distinctive Native people came to see their stock rise and fall together under “Indian Policy,” they resourcefully added that Native or Indian identity, including many of its symbolic and religious emblems, to their own tribal identities. A number of prophets arose with compelling visions through which the sacred called peoples practicing different religions and speaking different languages into new identities at once religious and civil. Prophetic new religious movements, adoption and adaptation of Christian affiliation, and revitalized commitments to tribal specific ceremonial complexes and belief systems alike marked religious responses to colonialism and Christian missions. And religion was at the heart of negotiating these changes. “More than colonialism pushed,” Joel Martin has memorably written, “the sacred pulled Native people into new religious worlds.”(Martin) Despite centuries of hostile and assimilative policies often designed to dismantle the structures of indigenous communities, language, and belief systems, the late twentieth century marked a period of remarkable revitalization and renewal of Native traditions. Built on centuries of resistance as well as strategic accommodations, Native communities from the 1960s on have vigorously pressed their claims to religious self-determination.

B. "Way of Life, not Religion" In all their diversity, people from different Native nations hasten to point out that their respective languages include no word for “religion”, and maintain an emphatic distinction between ways of life in which economy, politics, medicine, art, agriculture, etc., are ideally integrated into a spiritually-informed whole. As Native communities try to continue their traditions in the context of a modern American society that conceives of these as discrete segments of human thought and activity, it has not been easy for Native communities to accomplish this kind of integration. Nor has it been easy to to persuade others of, for example, the spiritual importance of what could be construed as an economic activity, such as fishing or whaling.

C. Oral Tradition and Indigenous Languages Traversing the diversity of Native North American peoples, too, is the primacy of oral tradition. Although a range of writing systems obtained existed prior to contact with Europeans, and although a variety of writing systems emerged from the crucible of that contact, notably the Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah and, later, the phonetic transcription of indigenous languages by linguists, Native communities have maintained living traditions with remarkable care through orality. At first glance, from the point of view of a profoundly literate tradition, this might seem little to brag about, but the structure of orality enables a kind of fluidity of continuity and change that has clearly enabled Native traditions to sustain, and even enlarge, themselves in spite of European American efforts to eradicate their languages, cultures, and traditions. In this colonizing context, because oral traditions can function to ensure that knowledge is shared with those deemed worthy of it, orality has proved to be a particular resource to Native elders and their communities, especially with regard to maintaining proper protocols around sacred knowledge. So a commitment to orality can be said to have underwritten artful survival amid the pressures of colonization. It has also rendered Native traditions particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Although Native communities continue to privilege the kinds of knowledge kept in lineages of oral tradition, courts have only haltingly recognized the evidentiary value of oral traditions. Because the communal knowledge of oral traditions is not well served by the protections of intellectual property in western law, corporations and their shareholders have profited from indigenous knowledge, especially ethnobotanical and pharmacological knowledge with few encumbrances or legal contracts. Orality has also rendered Native traditions vulnerable to erosion. Today, in a trend that linguists point out is global, Native American languages in particular are to an alarming degree endangered languages. In danger of being lost are entire ways of perceiving the world, from which we can learn to live more sustainable, balanced, lives in an ecocidal age.

D. "Religious" Regard for the Land In this latter respect of being not only economically land-based but culturally land-oriented, Native religious traditions also demonstrate a consistency across their fundamental diversity. In God is Red ,Vine Deloria, Jr. famously argued that Native religious traditions are oriented fundamentally in space, and thus difficult to understand in religious terms belonging properly tothe time-oriented traditions of Christianity and Judaism. Such a worldview is ensconced in the idioms, if not structures, of many spoken Native languages, but living well on particular landscapes has not come naturally to Native peoples, as romanticized images of noble savages born to move silently through the woods would suggest. For Native peoples, living in balance with particular landscapes has been the fruit of hard work as well as a product of worldview, a matter of ethical living in worlds where non human life has moral standing and disciplined attention to ritual protocol. Still, even though certain places on landscapes have been sacred in the customary sense of being wholly distinct from the profane and its activity, many places sacred to Native peoples have been sources of material as well as spiritual sustenance. As with sacred places, so too with many sacred practices of living on landscapes. In the reckoning of Native peoples, pursuits like harvesting wild rice, spearing fish or hunting certain animals can be at once religious and economic in ways that have been difficult for Western courts to acknowledge. Places and practices have often had both sacred and instrumental value. Thus, certain cultural freedoms are to be seen in the same manner as religious freedoms. And thus, it has not been easy for Native peoples who have no word for “religion” to find comparable protections for religious freedom, and it is to that troubled history we now turn.

II. History of Native American Religious and Cultural Freedom

A. Overview That sacred Native lifeways have only partly corresponded to the modern Western language of “religion,” the free exercise of which is ostensibly protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution , has not stopped Native communities from seeking protection of their freedom to exercise and benefit from those lifeways. In the days of treaty making, formally closed by Congress in 1871, and in subsequent years of negotiated agreements, Native communities often stipulated protections of certain places and practices, as did Lakota leaders in the Fort Laramie Treaty when they specifically exempted the Paha Sapa, subsequently called the Black Hills from land cessions, or by Ojibwe leaders in the 1837 treaty, when they expressly retained “usufruct” rights to hunt, fish, and gather on lands otherwise ceded to the U.S. in the treaty. But these and other treaty agreements have been honored neither by American citizens nor the United States government. Native communities have struggled to secure their rights and interests within the legal and political system of the United States despite working in an English language and in a legal language that does not easily give voice to Native regard for sacred places, practices, and lifeways. Although certain Native people have appealed to international courts and communities for recourse, much of the material considered in this website concerns Native communities’ efforts in the twentieth and twenty-first century to protect such interests and freedoms within the legal and political universe of the United States.

B. Timeline 1871 End of Treaty Making Congress legislates that no more treaties are to be made with tribes and claims “plenary power” over Indians as wards of U.S. government. 1887-1934 Formal U.S. Indian policy of assimilation dissolves communal property, promotes English only boarding school education, and includes informal and formalized regulation and prohibition of Native American ceremonies. At the same time, concern with “vanishing Indians” and their cultures drives a large scale effort to collect Native material culture for museum preservation and display. 1906 American Antiquities Act Ostensibly protects “national” treasures on public lands from pilfering, but construes Native American artifacts and human remains on federal land as “archeological resources,” federal property useful for science. 1921 Bureau of Indian Affairs Continuing an administrative trajectory begun in the 1880's, the Indian Bureau authorized its field agents to use force and imprisonment to halt religious practices deemed inimical to assimilation. 1923 Bureau of Indian Affairs The federal government tries to promote assimilation by instructing superintendents and Indian agents to supress Native dances, prohibiting some and limiting others to specified times. 1924 Pueblos make appeal for religious freedom protection The Council of All the New Mexico Pueblos appeals to the public for First Amendment protection from Indian policies suppressing ceremonial dances. 1924 Indian Citizenship Act Although uneven policies had recognized certain Indian individuals as citizens, all Native Americans are declared citizens by Congressional legislation. 1928 Meriam Report Declares federal assimilation policy a failure 1934 Indian Reorganization Act Officially reaffirms legality and importance of Native communities’ religious, cultural, and linguistic traditions. 1946 Indian Claims Commission Federal Commission created to put to rest the host of Native treaty land claims against the United States with monetary settlements. 1970 Return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo After a long struggle to win support by President Nixon and Congress, New Mexico’s Taos Pueblo secures the return of a sacred lake, and sets a precedent that threatened many federal lands with similar claims, though regulations are tightened. Taos Pueblo still struggles to safeguard airspace over the lake. 1972 Portions of Mount Adams returned to Yakama Nation Portions of Washington State’s Mount Adams, sacred to the Yakama people, was returned to that tribe by congressional legislation and executive decision. 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act Specifies Native American Church, and other native American religious practices as fitting within religious freedom. Government agencies to take into account adverse impacts on native religious freedom resulting from decisions made, but with no enforcement mechanism, tribes were left with little recourse. 1988 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association Three Calif. Tribes try to block logging road in federal lands near sacred Mt. Shasta Supreme Court sides w/Lyng, against tribes. Court also finds that AIRFA contains no legal teeth for enforcement. 1990 Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith Oregon fires two native chemical dependency counselors for Peyote use. They are denied unemployment compensation. They sue. Supreme Court 6-3 sides w/Oregon in a major shift in approach to religious freedom. Scalia, for majority: Laws made that are neutral to religion, even if they result in a burden on religious exercise, are not unconstitutional. Dissent identifies this more precisely as a violation of specific congressional intent to clarify and protect Native American religious freedoms 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Mandates return of human remains, associated burial items, ceremonial objects, and "cultural patrimony” from museum collections receiving federal money to identifiable source tribes. Requires archeologists to secure approval from tribes before digging. 1990 “Traditional Cultural Properties” Designation created under Historic Preservation Act enables Native communities to seek protection of significant places and landscapes under the National Historic Preservation Act. 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act Concerning Free Exercise Claims, the burden should be upon the government to prove “compelling state interest” in laws 1994 Amendments to A.I.R.F.A Identifies Peyote use as sacramental and protected by U.S., despite state issues (all regs must be made in consultation with reps of traditional Indian religions. 1996 President Clinton's Executive Order (13006/7) on Native American Sacred Sites Clarifies Native American Sacred Sites to be taken seriously by government officials. 1997 City of Bourne v. Flores Supreme Court declares Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional 2000 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) Protects religious institutions' rights to make full use of their lands and properties "to fulfill their missions." Also designed to protect the rights of inmates to practice religious traditions. RLUIPA has notably been used in a number of hair-length and free-practice cases for Native inmates, a number of which are ongoing (see: Greybuffalo v. Frank).

III. Contemporary Attempts to Seek Protection Against the backdrop, Native concerns of religious and cultural freedoms can be distinguished in at least the following ways.

Issues of access to, control over, and integrity of sacred lands
Free exercise of religion in public correctional and educational institutions
Free Exercise of “religious” and cultural practices prohibited by other realms of law: Controlled Substance Law, Endangered Species Law, Fish and Wildlife Law
Repatriation of Human Remains held in museums and scientific institutions
Repatriation of Sacred Objects/Cultural Patrimony in museums and scientific institutions
Protection of Sacred and Other Cultural Knowledge from exploitation and unilateral appropriation (see Lakota Elder’s declaration).

In their attempts to press claims for religious and cultural self-determination and for the integrity of sacred lands and species, Native communities have identified a number of arenas for seeking protection in the courts, in legislatures, in administrative and regulatory decision-making, and through private market transactions and negotiated agreements. And, although appeals to international law and human rights protocols have had few results, Native communities bring their cases to the court of world opinion as well. It should be noted that Native communities frequently pursue their religious and cultural interests on a number of fronts simultaneously. Because Native traditions do not fit neatly into the category of “religion” as it has come to be demarcated in legal and political languages, their attempts have been various to promote those interests in those languages of power, and sometimes involve difficult strategic decisions that often involve as many costs as benefits. For example, seeking protection of a sacred site through historic preservation regulations does not mean to establish Native American rights over access to and control of sacred places, but it can be appealing in light of the courts’ recently narrowing interpretation of constitutional claims to the free exercise of religion. Even in the relative heyday of constitutional protection of the religious freedom of minority traditions, many Native elders and others were understandably hesitant to relinquish sacred knowledge to the public record in an effort to protect religious and cultural freedoms, much less reduce Native lifeways to the modern Western terms of religion. Vine Deloria, Jr. has argued that given the courts’ decisions in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the Lyng and Smith cases, efforts by Native people to protect religious and cultural interests under the First Amendment did as much harm as good to those interests by fixing them in written documents and subjecting them to public, often hostile, scrutiny.

A. First Amendment Since the 1790s, the First Amendment to the Constitution has held that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The former of the amendment’s two clauses, referred to as the “establishment clause” guards against government sponsorship of particular religious positions. The latter, known as the “free exercise” clause, protects the rights of religious minorites from government interference. But just what these clauses have been understood to mean, and how much they are to be weighed against other rights and protections, such as that of private property, has been the subject of considerable debate in constitutional law over the years. Ironically, apart from matters of church property disposition, it was not until the 1940s that the Supreme Court began to offer its clarification of these constitutional protections. As concerns free exercise jurisprudence, under Chief Justices Warren and Burger in the 1960s and 1970s, the Supreme Court had expanded free exercise protection and its accommodations considerably, though in retrospect too few Native communities were sufficiently organized or capitalized, or perhaps even motivated, given their chastened experience of the narrow possibilities of protection under U.S. law, to press their claims before the courts. Those communities who did pursue such interests experienced first hand the difficulty of trying to squeeze communal Native traditions, construals of sacred land, and practices at once economic and sacred into the conceptual box of religion and an individual’s right to its free exercise. By the time more Native communities pursued their claims under the free exercise clause in the 1980s and 1990s, however, the political and judicial climate around such matters had changed considerably. One can argue it has been no coincidence that the two, arguably three, landmark Supreme Court cases restricting the scope of free exercise protection under the Rehnquist Court were cases involving Native American traditions. This may be because the Court agrees to hear only a fraction of the cases referred to it. In Bowen v. Roy 476 U.S. 693 (1986) , the High Court held against a Native person refusing on religious grounds to a social security number necessary for food stamp eligibility. With even greater consequence for subsequent protections of sacred lands under the constitution, in Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association 485 U.S. 439 (1988) , the High Court reversed lower court rulings which had blocked the construction of a timber road through high country sacred to California’s Yurok, Karok and Tolowa communities. In a scathing dissent, Harry Blackmun argued that the majority had fundamentally misunderstood the idioms of Native religions and the centrality of sacred lands. Writing for the majority, though, Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion recognized the sincerity of Native religious claims to sacred lands while devaluing those claims vis a vis other competing goods, especially in this case, the state’s rights to administer “what is, after all, its land.” The decision also codified an interpretation of Congress’s legislative protections in the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act as only advisory in nature. As of course happens in the U.S. judical system, such decisions of the High Court set new precedents that not only shape the decisions of lower courts, but that have a chilling effect on the number of costly suits brought into the system by Native communities. What the Lyng decision began to do with respect to sacred land protection, was finished off with respect to restricting free exercise more broadly in the Rehnquist Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith 484 U.S. 872 (1990) . Despite nearly a century of specific protections of Peyotism, in an unemployment compensation case involving two Oregon substance abuse counselors who had been fired because they had been found to be Peyote ingesting members of the Native American Church , a religious organization founded to secure first amendment protection in the first place, the court found that the state’s right to enforce its controlled substance laws outweighed the free exercise rights of Peyotists. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia’s opinion reframed the entire structure of free exercise jurisprudence, holding as constitutional laws that do not intentionally and expressly deny free exercise rights even if they have the effect of the same. A host of minority religious communities, civil liberties organizations, and liberal Christian groups were alarmed at the precedent set in Smith. A subsequent legislative attempt to override the Supreme Court, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act , passed by Congress and signed into law in 1993 by President Clinton was found unconstitutional in City of Bourne v. Flores (1997) , as the High Court claimed its constitutional primacy as interpreter of the constitution.

i. Sacred Lands In light of the ruling in Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association (1988) discussed immediately above, there have been few subsequent attempts to seek comparable protection of sacred lands, whether that be access to, control of, or integrity of sacred places. That said, three cases leading up to the 1988 Supreme Court decision were heard at the level of federal circuit courts of appeal, and are worthy of note for the judicial history of appeals to First Amendment protection for sacred lands. In Sequoyah v. Tennessee Valley Authority , 19800 620 F.2d 1159 (6th Cir. 1980) , the court remained unconvinced by claims that a proposed dam's flooding of non-reservation lands sacred to the Cherokee violate the free excersice clause. That same year, in Badoni v. Higginson , 638 F. 2d 172 (10th Cir. 1980) , a different Circuit Court held against Navajo claims about unconstitutional federal management of water levels at a am desecrating Rainbow Arch in Utah. Three years later, in Fools Crow v. Gullet , 760 F. 2d 856 (8th Cir. 1983), cert. Denied, 464 U.S.977 (1983) , the Eighth Circuit found unconvincing Lakota claims to constitutional protections to a vision quest site against measures involving a South Dakota state park on the site.

ii. Free Exercise Because few policies and laws that have the effect of infringing on Native American religious and cultural freedoms are expressly intended to undermine those freedoms, the High Court’s Smith decision discouraged the number of suits brought forward by Native communities under constitutional free exercise protection since 1990, but a number of noteworthy cases predated the 1990 Smith decision, and a number of subsequent free exercise claims have plied the terrain of free exercise in correctional institutions. Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith (1990)

Prison:Sweatlodge Case Study
Eagle Feathers: U.S. v. Dion
Hunting for Ceremonial Purposes: Frank v. Alaska

iii. No Establishment As the history of First Amendment jurisprudence generaly shows (Flowers), free exercise protections bump up against establishment clause jurisprudence that protects the public from government endorsement of particular traditions. Still, it is perhaps ironic that modest protections of religious freedoms of tiny minorities of Native communities have undergone constitutional challenges as violating the establishment clause. At issue is the arguable line between what has been understood in jurisprudence as governmental accommodations enabling the free exercise of minority religions and government endorsement of those traditions. The issue has emerged in a number of challenges to federal administrative policies by the National Park Service and National Forest Service such as the voluntary ban on climbing during the ceremonially significant month of June on what the Lakota and others consider Bear Lodge at Devil’s Tower National Monument . It should be noted that the Mountain States Legal Foundation is funded in part by mining, timbering, and recreational industries with significant money interests in the disposition of federal lands in the west. In light of courts' findings on these Native claims to constitutional protection under the First Amendment, Native communities have taken steps in a number of other strategic directions to secure their religious and cultural freedoms.

B. Treaty Rights In addition to constitutional protections of religious free exercise, 370 distinct treaty agreements signed prior to 1871, and a number of subsequent “agreements” are in play as possible umbrellas of protection of Native American religious and cultural freedoms. In light of the narrowing of free exercise protections in Lyng and Smith , and in light of the Court’s general broadening of treaty right protections in the mid to late twentieth century, treaty rights have been identified as preferable, if not wholly reliable, protections of religious and cultural freedoms. Makah Whaling Mille Lacs Case

C. Intellectual Property Law Native communities have occasionally sought protection of and control over indigenous medicinal, botanical, ceremonial and other kinds of cultural knowledge under legal structures designed to protect intellectual property and trademark. Although some scholars as committed to guarding the public commons of ideas against privatizing corporate interests as they are to working against the exploitation of indigenous knowledge have warned about the consequences of litigation under Western intellectual property standards (Brown), the challenges of such exploitation are many and varied, from concerns about corporate patenting claims to medicinal and agricultural knowledge obtained from Native elders and teachers to protecting sacred species like wild rice from anticipated devastation by genetically modified related plants (see White Earth Land Recovery Project for an example of this protection of wild rice to logos ( Washington Redskins controversy ) and images involving the sacred Zia pueblo sun symbol and Southwest Airlines to challenges to corporate profit-making from derogatory representations of Indians ( Crazy Horse Liquor case ).

D. Other Statutory Law A variety of legislative efforts have had either the express purpose or general effect of providing protections of Native American religious and cultural freedoms. Some, like the Taos Pueblo Blue Lake legislation, initiated protection of sacred lands and practices of particular communities through very specific legislative recourse. Others, like the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act , enacted broad protections of Native American religious and cultural freedom [link to Troost case]. Culminating many years of activism, if not without controversy even in Native communities, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act , signed into law in 1978 and amended in 1993, in order to recognize the often difficult fit between Native traditions and constitutional protections of the freedom of “religion” and ostensibly to safeguard such interests from state interference. Though much heralded for its symbolic value, the act was determined by the courts (most notably in the Lyng decision upon review of the congressional record to be only advisory in nature, lacking a specific “cause for action” that would give it legal teeth. To answer the Supreme Court's narrowing of the scope of free exercise protections in Lyng and in the 1990 Smith decision, Congress passed in 2000 the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) restoring to governments the substantial burden of showing a "compelling interest" in land use decisions or administrative policies that exacted a burden on the free exercise of religion and requiring them to show that they had exhausted other possibilities that would be less burdensome on the free exercise of religion. Two other notable legislative initiatives that have created statutory protections for a range of Native community religious and cultural interests are the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act and the Native American Language Act legislation beginning to recognize the significance and urgency of the protection and promotion of indigenous languages, if not supporting such initiatives with significant appropriations. AIRFA 1978 NAGPRA 1990 [see item h. below] Native American Language Act Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) 2000 National Historic Preservation Act [see item g below]

E. Administrative and Regulatory Policy and Law As implied in a number of instances above, many governmental decisions affecting Native American religious and cultural freedom occur at the level of regulation and the administrative policy of local, state, and federal governments, and as a consequence are less visible to those not locally or immediately affected.

F. Federal Recognition The United States officially recognizes over 500 distinct Native communities, but there remain numerous Native communities who know clearly who they are but who remain formally unrecognized by the United States, even when they receive recognition by states or localities. In the 1930s, when Congress created the structure of tribal governments under the Indian Reorganization Act, many Native communities, including treaty signatories, chose not to enroll themselves in the recognition process, often because their experience with the United States was characterized more by unwanted intervention than by clear benefits. But the capacity and charge of officially recognized tribal governments grew with the Great Society programs in the 1960s and in particular with an official U.S. policy of Indian self-determination enacted through such laws as the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Education Act , which enabled tribal governments to act as contractors for government educational and social service programs. Decades later, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act formally recognized the authority of recognized tribal governments to engage in casino gaming in cooperation with the states. Currently, Native communities that remain unrecognized are not authorized to benefit from such programs and policies, and as a consequence numerous Native communities have stepped forward to apply for federal recognition in a lengthy, laborious, and highly-charged political process overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Federal Acknowledgment . Some communities, like Michigan’s Little Traverse Band of Odawa have pursued recognition directly through congressional legislation. As it relates to concerns of Native American religious and cultural freedom, more is at stake than the possibility to negotiate with states for the opening of casinos. Federal recognition gives Native communities a kind of legal standing to pursue other interests with more legal and political resources at their disposal. Communities lacking this standing, for example, are not formally included in the considerations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (item H. below).

G. Historic Preservation Because protections under the National Historic Preservation Act have begun to serve as a remedy for protection of lands of religious and cultural significance to Native communities, in light of first amendment jurisprudence since Lyng , it bears further mention here. Native communities seeking protections through Historic Preservation determinations are not expressly protecting Native religious freedom, nor recognizing exclusive access to, or control of sacred places, since the legislation rests on the importance to the American public at large of sites of historic and cultural value, but in light of free exercise jurisprudence since Lyng , historic preservation has offered relatively generous, if not exclusive, protection. The National Historic Preservation Act as such offered protection on the National Register of Historic Places, for the scholarly, especially archeological, value of certain Native sites, but in 1990, a new designation of “traditional cultural properties” enabled Native communities and others to seek historic preservation protections for properties associated “wit cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community.” The designation could include most communities, but were implicitly geared to enable communities outside the American mainstream, perhaps especially Native American communities, to seek protection of culturally important and sacred sites without expressly making overt appeals to religious freedom. (King 6) This enabled those seeking recognition on the National Register to skirt a previous regulatory “religious exclusion” that discouraged inclusion of “properties owned by religious institutions or used for religious purposes” by expressly recognizing that Native communities don’t distinguish rigidly between “religion and the rest of culture” (King 260). As a consequence, this venue of cultural resource management has served Native interests in sacred lands better than others, but it remains subject to review and change. Further it does not guarantee protection; it only creates a designation within the arduous process of making application to the National Register of Historic Places. Pilot Knob Nine Mile Canyon

H. Repatriation/Protection of Human Remains, Burial Items, and Sacred Objects Culminating centuries of struggle to protect the integrity of the dead and material items of religious and cultural significance, Native communities witnessed the creation of an important process for protection under the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act . The act required museums and other institutions in the United States receiving federal monies to share with relevant Native tribes inventories of their collections of Native human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of “cultural patrimony” (that is objects that were acquired from individuals, but which had belonged not to individuals, but entire communities), and to return them on request to lineal descendants or federally recognized tribes (or Native Hawaiian organizations) in those cases where museums can determine cultural affiliation, or as often happens, in the absence of sufficiently detailed museum data, to a tribe that can prove its cultural affiliation. The law also specifies that affiliated tribes own these items if they are discovered in the future on federal or tribal lands. Finally, the law also prohibits almost every sort of trafficking in Native American human remains, burial objects, sacred objects, and items of cultural patrimony. Thus established, the process has given rise to a number of ambiguities. For example, the law’s definition of terms gives rise to some difficulties. For example, “sacred objects” pertain to objects “needed for traditional Native American religions by their present day adherents.” Even if they are needed for the renewal of old ceremonies, there must be present day adherents. (Trope and Echo Hawk, 143). What constitutes “Cultural affiliation” has also given rise to ambiguity and conflict, especially given conflicting worldviews. As has been seen in the case of Kennewick Man the “relationship of shared group identity” determined scientifically by an archeologist may or may not correspond to a Native community’s understanding of its relation to the dead on its land. Even what constitutes a “real” can be at issue, as was seen in the case of Zuni Pueblo’s concern for the return of “replicas” of sacred Ahayu:da figures made by boy scouts. To the Zuni, these contained sacred information that was itself proprietary (Ferguson, Anyon, and Lad, 253). Disputes have arisen, even between different Native communities claiming cultural affiliation, and they are adjudicated through a NAGPRA Review Committee , convened of three representatives from Native communities, three from museum and scientific organizations, and one person appointed from a list jointly submitted by the other six.

I. International Law and Human Rights Agreements At least since 1923, when Haudenosaunee Iroqois leader Deskaneh made an appeal to the League of Nations in Geneva, Native communities and organizations have registered claims and concerns about religious and cultural freedoms with the international community and institutions representing it in a variety of ways. Making reference to their status as sovereign nations whose treaties with the U.S. have not been honored, frustrated with previous efforts to seek remedies under U.S. law, concerned with the capacity for constitutional protection of what are typically “group” and not individual rights, and sometimes spurned by questions about the rightful jurisdiction of the U.S., Native organizations have sought consideration of their claims before the United Nations and engaged in its consultations on indigenous rights. After years of such appeals and efforts, a nearly unanimous United Nations General Assembly passed the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples The 1996 Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples includes reference [article 12] to the “right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of ceremonial objects,; and the right to the repatriation of human remains.” Importantly, the Declaration does not exclude those communities whose traditions have been interrupted by colonization. Indigenous peoples are recognized as having “the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures as well as the right to the restitution of cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.” Also specified are their rights to their languages. An offshoot of the American Indian Movement, the International Indian Treaty Council is one such organization that has shifted its attention to the international arena for protections of indigenous rights, including those of religious and cultural freedom.]]

J. Negotiated Agreements and Private Transactions Many if not most Native claims and concerns related to religious and cultural freedoms have been and will continue to be raised and negotiated outside the formal legal and regulatory structures outlined above, and thus will seldom register in public view. In light of the career of Native religious and cultural freedoms in legislative and legal arenas, Vine Deloria, Jr., has suggested the possibilities of such agreements to reach Native goals without subjecting Native communities to the difficulties of governmental interference or public scrutiny of discreet traditions (Deloria 1992a). Still, the possibilities for Native communities to reach acceptable negotiated agreements often owe to the legal and political structures to which they have recourse if negotiations fail. The possibilities of such negotiated agreements also can be shaped by the pressures of public opinion on corporate or governmental interests. Kituwah Mound Valley of the Shields/Weatherman’s Draw

IV. Selected Past Native American Religious and Cultural Freedom Court Cases

A. Land Sequoyah v. Tennessee Valley Authority 620 F. 2d 1159 (6th Cir. 1980) . Dam’s Destruction of Sacred River/Land Badoni v. Higginson 638 F 2d 172 (10th Cir. 1980) . Desecration of Rainbow Arch, Navajo Sacred Spot in Utah Fools Crow v. Gullet 706 F. 2d. 856 (8th Cir. 1983), cert. Denied, 464 U.S. 977 (1983) . State Park on top of Vision Quest site in S. Dakota Wilson v. Block 708F. 2d 735 (D.C. Cir. 1983) ; Hopi Indian Tribe v. Block; Navajo Medicine Men Assn’ v. Block Expansion of Ski Area in San Francisco Peaks, sacred to Navaho and Hopi Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association 485 U.S. 439 (1988) Logging Road in lands sacred to Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa

B. Free Exercise Bowen v. Roy 476 U.S. 693 (1986) Native refusal of Social Security Number U.S. v. Dion 476 U.S. 734 Sacramental Eagle Hunt contra Endangered Species Act Frank v. State 604 P. 2d 1068 (Alaska 1979) Taking moose out of season for potlatch *Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council 272 F 2d 131 (10th Cir. 1959) Peyotists vs. Tribal Gov’t Prohibiting Peyotism People v. Woody 61 Cal.2d 716, 394 P.2d 813, 40 Cal. Rptr. 69 (1964) Groundbreaking recognition of Free Exercise exemption from State Ban. Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith 484 U.S. 872 (1990) Denial of Peyotist’s unemployment compensation held constitutional

C. Prison cases involving hair *Standing Deer v. Carlson 831 F. 2d 1525 (9th Cir. 1987). *Teterud v. Gilman 385 F. Supp. 153 (S. D. Iowa 1974) & New Rider v. Board of Education 480 F. 2d 693 (10th Cir. 1973) , cert. denied 414 U.S. 1097, reh. Denied 415 U.S. 939 *Indian Inmates of Nebraska Penitentiary v. Grammar 649 F. Supp. 1374 (D. Neb. 1986)

D. Human Remains/Repatriation *Wana the Bear v. Community Construction, Inc. 180 Cal Rptr. 423 (Ct. App. 1982). Historic Indian cemetery not a “cemetery.” *State v. Glass 273 N.E. 2d 893 (Ohio Ct. App. 1971). Ancient human remains not “human” for purposes of Ohio grave robbing statute

E. Treaty Rights Pertaining to Traditional/Sacred Practices *U.S. v. Washington 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974) aff’d 520 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1086 (1976). Boldt Decision on Salmon Fishing *Lac Court Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Voight, 700 F. 2d 341 (7th Cir.) Cert. denied, 464 U.S. 805 (1983) 653 F. Supp. 1420; Fishing/Ricing/Gathering on Ceded Lands Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians 124 F 3d 904 affirmed. (1999) Fishing/Ricing/Gathering on Ceded Lands

V. References & Resources

Brown, Michael, Who Owns Native Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003). Burton, Lloyd Worship and Wilderness: Culture, Religion, and Law in the Management of Public Lands and Resources (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).

Deloria, Vine, Jr., “Secularism, Civil Religion, and the Religious Freedom of American Indians,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 16:9-20 (1992).

[a] Deloria, Vine, Jr., “Trouble in High Places: Erosion of American Indian Rights to Religious Freedom in the United States,”in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance , ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992).

[b] Echo Hawk, Walter, In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided ( Fulcrum Publications , 2010) . Fine-Dare, Kathleen, Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

Ferguson, T.J., Roger Anyon, and Edmund J. Ladd, “Repatriation at the Pueblo of Zuni: Diverse Solutions to Complex Problems,” in Repatriation Reader , ed. Devon Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) pp. 239-265.

Gordon-McCutchan, R.C., The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books, 1991).

Gulliford, Andrew, Sacred Objets and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000).

Johnson, Greg, Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007).

King, Thomas F., Places that Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource Management (Walnut Creek, Calif: Altamira Press, 2003).

Long, Carolyn, Religious Freedom and Indian Rights: The Case of Oregon v. Smith (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001).

Maroukis, Thomas A., Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010)

Martin, Joel, The Land Looks After Us: A History of Native American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

McLeod, Christopher (Producer/Director), In Light of Reverence , Sacred Lands Film Project, (Earth Image Films, La Honda Calif. 2000).

McNally, Michael D., "Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment," in After Pluralism ed. Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

Mihesuah, Devon A., ed., Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

Nabokov, Peter, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Sullivan, Robert, A Whale Hunt (New York: Scribner, 2000).

Trope, Jack F., and Walter Echo-Hawk, “The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: Background and Legislative History,” in Repatriation Reader , ed. Devon Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pp. 123-168.

Wenger, Tisa, We Have a Religion : The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

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4 Culture(s) and Belief Systems

Published: March 1998
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Culture exerts a profound influence on the way in which people think and what they think. The impression of culture on beliefs and mythology, traditions and rituals, institutions and doctrines, has individual and social implications. Culture is a medium of domination and subordination. The beliefs, ideas, and values of society at large not only reflect the dominant culture, they help to reproduce it. Beliefs and the attitudes they spawn are not solely determined by religious convictions or education or class or words, symbols, and expressions, or even the mass media. They are informed by the interplay of all these. Beliefs and attitudes about disability are individually experienced but socially constituted. They are, with few exceptions, pejorative. They are paternalistic and often sadistic and hypocritical. When blatantly pejorative attitudes are not held, people with disabilities often experience a paradoxical set of “sympathetic” notions like the courageous or noble individual.

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3.1 What Is Culture?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Differentiate between culture and society
Explain material versus nonmaterial culture
Discuss the concept of cultural universals as it relates to society
Compare and contrast ethnocentrism and xenocentrism

Humans are social creatures. According to Smithsonian Institution research, humans have been forming groups for almost 3 million years in order to survive. Living together, people formed common habits and behaviors, from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food.

Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage, is learned. In the U.S., marriage is generally seen as an individual choice made by two adults, based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families. In Papua New Guinea, almost 30 percent of women marry before the age of 18, and 8 percent of men have more than one wife (National Statistical Office, 2019). To people who are not from such a culture, arranged marriages may seem to have risks of incompatibility or the absence of romantic love. But many people from cultures where marriages are arranged, which includes a number of highly populated and modern countries, often prefer the approach because it reduces stress and increases stability (Jankowiak 2021).

Being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and at ease. Knowing to look left instead of right for oncoming traffic while crossing the street can help avoid serious injury and even death. Knowing unwritten rules is also fundamental in understanding humor in different cultures. Humor is common to all societies, but what makes something funny is not. Americans may laugh at a scene in which an actor falls; in other cultures, falling is never funny. Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety, that is, there are a lot of expected behaviors. And many interpretations of them.

Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether people are commuting in Egypt, Ireland, India, Japan, and the U.S., many behaviors will be the same and may reveal patterns. Others will be different. In many societies that enjoy public transportation, a passenger will find a marked bus stop or station, wait for the bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, Egypt, passengers might board while the bus is moving, because buses often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. In Dublin, Ireland, bus riders would be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, India, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behavior might be considered rude in other societies, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.

Culture can be material or nonmaterial. Metro passes and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are the buses, subway cars, and the physical structures of the bus stop. Think of material culture as items you can touch-they are tangible . Nonmaterial culture , in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. These are things you cannot touch. They are intangible . You may believe that a line should be formed to enter the subway car or that other passengers should not stand so close to you. Those beliefs are intangible because they do not have physical properties and can be touched.

Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture, namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture symbolizing education, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.

As people travel from different regions to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between others and our own. If we keep our sociological imagination awake, we can begin to understand and accept the differences. Body language and hand gestures vary around the world, but some body language seems to be shared across cultures: When someone arrives home later than permitted, a parent or guardian meeting them at the door with crossed arms and a frown on their face means the same in Russia as it does in the U.S. as it does in Ghana.

Cultural Universals

Although cultures vary, they also share common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. One example of a cultural universal is the family unit: every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and the care of children. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In the U.S., by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit that consists of parents and their offspring. Other cultural universals include customs like funeral rites, weddings, and celebrations of births. However, each culture may view and conduct the ceremonies quite differently.

Anthropologist George Murdock first investigated the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter, or around shared human experiences, such as birth and death or illness and healing. Through his research, Murdock identified other universals including language, the concept of personal names, and, interestingly, jokes. Humor seems to be a universal way to release tensions and create a sense of unity among people (Murdock, 1949). Sociologists consider humor necessary to human interaction because it helps individuals navigate otherwise tense situations.

Sociological Research

Is music a cultural universal.

Imagine that you are sitting in a theater, watching a film. The movie opens with the protagonist sitting on a park bench with a grim expression on their face. The music starts to come in. The first slow and mournful notes play in a minor key. As the melody continues, the heroine turns her head and sees a man walking toward her. The music gets louder, and the sounds don’t seem to go together – as if the orchestra is intentionally playing the wrong notes. You tense up as you watch, almost hoping to stop. The character is clearly in danger.

Now imagine that you are watching the same movie – the exact same footage – but with a different soundtrack. As the scene opens, the music is soft and soothing, with a hint of sadness. You see the protagonist sitting on the park bench with a grim expression. Suddenly, the music swells. The woman looks up and sees a man walking toward her. The notes are high and bright, and the pace is bouncy. You feel your heart rise in your chest. This is a happy moment.

Music has the ability to evoke emotional responses. In television shows, movies, commercials, and even the background music in a store, music has a message and seems to easily draw a response from those who hear it – joy, sadness, fear, victory. Are these types of musical cues cultural universals?

In 2009, a team of psychologists, led by Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, studied people’s reactions to music that they’d never heard (Fritz et al., 2009). The research team traveled to Cameroon, Africa, and asked Mafa tribal members to listen to Western music. The tribe, isolated from Western culture, had never been exposed to Western culture and had no context or experience within which to interpret its music. Even so, as the tribal members listened to a Western piano piece, they were able to recognize three basic emotions: happiness, sadness, and fear. Music, the study suggested, is a sort of universal language.

Researchers also found that music can foster a sense of wholeness within a group. In fact, scientists who study the evolution of language have concluded that originally language (an established component of group identity) and music were one (Darwin, 1871). Additionally, since music is largely nonverbal, the sounds of music can cross societal boundaries more easily than words. Music allows people to make connections, where language might be a more difficult barricade. As Fritz and his team found, music and the emotions it conveys are cultural universals.

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Although human societies have much in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of conversational etiquette reveals tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. Americans keep more distance and maintain a large “personal space.” Additionally, behaviors as simple as eating and drinking vary greatly from culture to culture. Some cultures use tools to put the food in the mouth while others use their fingers. If your professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume they are drinking? In the U.S., it’s most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.

Some travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like the late celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain (1956-2017). Often, however, people express disgust at another culture's cuisine. They might think that it’s gross to eat raw meat from a donkey or parts of a rodent, while they don’t question their own habit of eating cows or pigs.

Such attitudes are examples of ethnocentrism , which means to evaluate and judge another culture based on one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism is believing your group is the correct measuring standard and if other cultures do not measure up to it, they are wrong. As sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, it is a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric.

A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy. A shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike of other cultures and could cause misunderstanding, stereotyping, and conflict. Individuals, government, non-government, private, and religious institutions with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as uneducated, backward, or even inferior. Cultural imperialism is the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture.

Colonial expansion by Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, and England grew quickly in the fifteenth century was accompanied by severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in these new lands as uncultured savages who needed to adopt Catholic governance, Christianity, European dress, and other cultural practices.

A modern example of cultural imperialism may include the work of international aid agencies who introduce agricultural methods and plant species from developed countries into areas that are better served by indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches to the particular region. Another example would be the deforestation of the Amazon Basin as indigenous cultures lose land to timber corporations.

When people find themselves in a new culture, they may experience disorientation and frustration. In sociology, we call this culture shock . In addition to the traveler’s biological clock being ‘off’, a traveler from Chicago might find the nightly silence of rural Montana unsettling, not peaceful. Now, imagine that the ‘difference’ is cultural. An exchange student from China to the U.S. might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other students ask questions—a practice that is considered rude in China. Perhaps the Chicago traveler was initially captivated with Montana’s quiet beauty and the Chinese student was originally excited to see a U.S.- style classroom firsthand. But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, they may experience ethnocentrism as their excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave appropriately in the new situation. According to many authors, international students studying in the U.S. report that there are personality traits and behaviors expected of them. Black African students report having to learn to ‘be Black in the U.S.’ and Chinese students report that they are naturally expected to be good at math. In African countries, people are identified by country or kin, not color. Eventually, as people learn more about a culture, they adapt to the new culture for a variety of reasons.

Culture shock may appear because people aren’t always expecting cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when he conducted a participatory observation in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to join a local snowshoe race. He knew he would never hold his own against these experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own culture, he had learned to value victory. To the Inuit people, winning was enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their environment: how hard someone tried could mean the difference between life and death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts, learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working together, two nonmaterial values, were indeed much more important than winning.

During his time with the Inuit tribe, Barger learned to engage in cultural relativism . Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. Practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values, norms, and practices.

However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies—ones in which women have political rights and control over their own bodies—question whether the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted as a part of cultural tradition. Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural relativism, then, may struggle to reconcile aspects of their own culture with aspects of a culture that they are studying. Sociologists may take issue with the practices of female genital mutilation in many countries to ensure virginity at marriage just as some male sociologists might take issue with scarring of the flesh to show membership. Sociologists work diligently to keep personal biases out of research analysis.

Sometimes when people attempt to address feelings of ethnocentrism and develop cultural relativism, they swing too far to the other end of the spectrum. Xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own. (The Greek root word xeno-, pronounced “ZEE-no,” means “stranger” or “foreign guest.”) An exchange student who goes home after a semester abroad or a sociologist who returns from the field may find it difficult to associate with the values of their own culture after having experienced what they deem a more upright or nobler way of living. An opposite reaction is xenophobia, an irrational fear or hatred of different cultures.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for sociologists studying different cultures is the matter of keeping a perspective. It is impossible for anyone to overcome all cultural biases. The best we can do is strive to be aware of them. Pride in one’s own culture doesn’t have to lead to imposing its values or ideas on others. And an appreciation for another culture shouldn’t preclude individuals from studying it with a critical eye. This practice is perhaps the most difficult for all social scientists.

Sociology in the Real World

Overcoming culture shock.

During her summer vacation, Caitlin flew from Chicago, Illinois to Madrid, Spain to visit Maria, the exchange student she had befriended the previous semester. In the airport, she heard rapid, musical Spanish being spoken all around her.

Exciting as it was, she felt isolated and disconnected. Maria’s mother kissed Caitlin on both cheeks when she greeted her. Her imposing father kept his distance. Caitlin was half asleep by the time supper was served—at 10 p.m. Maria’s family sat at the table for hours, speaking loudly, gesturing, and arguing about politics, a taboo dinner subject in Caitlin’s house. They served wine and toasted their honored guest. Caitlin had trouble interpreting her hosts’ facial expressions, and did not realize she should make the next toast. That night, Caitlin crawled into a strange bed, wishing she had not come. She missed her home and felt overwhelmed by the new customs, language, and surroundings. She’d studied Spanish in school for years—why hadn’t it prepared her for this?

What Caitlin did not realize was that people depend not only on spoken words but also on body language, like gestures and facial expressions, to communicate. Cultural norms and practices accompany even the smallest nonverbal signals (DuBois, 1951). They help people know when to shake hands, where to sit, how to converse, and even when to laugh. We relate to others through a shared set of cultural norms, and ordinarily, we take them for granted.

For this reason, culture shock is often associated with traveling abroad, although it can happen in one’s own country, state, or even hometown. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960) is credited with first coining the term “culture shock.” In his studies, Oberg found that most people are excited at first to encounter a new culture. But bit by bit, they become stressed by interacting with people from a different culture who speak another language and use different regional expressions. There is new food to digest, new daily schedules to follow, and new rules of etiquette to learn. Living with this constant stress can make people feel incompetent and insecure. People react to frustration in a new culture, Oberg found, by initially rejecting it and glorifying one’s own culture. An American visiting Italy might long for a “real” pizza or complain about the unsafe driving habits of Italians.

It helps to remember that culture is learned. Everyone is ethnocentric to an extent, and identifying with one’s own country is natural. Caitlin’s shock was minor compared to that of her friends Dayar and Mahlika, a Turkish couple living in married student housing on campus. And it was nothing like that of her classmate Sanai. Sanai had been forced to flee war-torn Bosnia with her family when she was fifteen. After two weeks in Spain, Caitlin had developed more compassion and understanding for what those people had gone through. She understood that adjusting to a new culture takes time. It can take weeks or months to recover from culture shock, and it can take years to fully adjust to living in a new culture.

By the end of Caitlin’s trip, she had made new lifelong friends. Caitlin stepped out of her comfort zone. She had learned a lot about Spain, but discovered a lot about herself and her own culture.

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School Education /

Essay on Indian Culture in 500 Words

Updated on
Dec 5, 2023

Did you know that Indian culture is one of the oldest and richest cultures in the world? Mark Twain once said, ‘India is the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.’ Indian culture is known for its rich beauty, traditional values, ethics, and social norms.

Paragraph on Indian Culture

Ans: Indian culture is one of the most oldest and popular cultures in the world. Our culture is known for its rich diversity, traditional values, ethics, and social norms. We should proudly follow our cultural and traditional values, as they connect us to our age-old customs and what our culture means to us. India’s ethno-linguistically diverse culture has always been successful in catching global attention. Popular festivals like Diwali, Holi, Navratri, etc. are not only celebrated in India but also in other parts of the world.

Ans: Indian culture is one of the oldest cultures in the world; Zero (0) and decimal systems were first used in Indian culture; Indian culture was the first one to follow the practice of Ayurveda, one of the oldest healing systems; world’s oldest legends, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, were recorded in India; and the name India is derived from a Greek word ‘Indica.’

Ans: India was ruled by various Muslim dynasties during the Medival period. They gave this land the name Hindustan, which is derived from the Persian word Hindu from the Sanskrit word Sindhu.

For more information on such interesting topics for your school, visit our essay writing page and make sure to follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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How Cultural Beliefs Affect Health Care: Working with Diverse Patients

by Joseph Mcleod
2 November 2023 20 December 2023

Introduction:

Cultural beliefs play an important role in shaping our attitudes and behaviors, including how we approach health care. In health care, cultural beliefs influence how patients perceive health, illness, and the role of health care providers. Cultural diversity is becoming increasingly prevalent in health care settings, and understanding how different cultural beliefs impact health care is crucial for delivering effective care. In this blog, we will explore how cultural beliefs affect health care and strategies for working with diverse patients.

Impact of Cultural Beliefs on Health Care:

Cultural beliefs shape our perceptions of health, illness, and the role of health care providers. For instance, some cultures view health as a state of balance between the body, mind, and spirit, while others see it as the absence of disease. In some cultures, illness is seen as a punishment or a result of a supernatural force, while in others, it is viewed as a natural part of life. These beliefs can impact how patients seek and receive health care.

For example, patients from certain cultures may prefer to seek treatment from traditional healers before seeking medical care. They may use herbal remedies or other alternative therapies to treat illnesses. These patients may be hesitant to use conventional medical treatments or may not fully understand the benefits of Western medicine.

Cultural beliefs can also impact how patients interact with health care providers. Some cultures may view health care providers as authority figures and may be less likely to ask questions or express their opinions. In other cultures, patients may expect health care providers to be more involved in decision-making and may expect to be consulted about their care.

Strategies for Working with Diverse Patients:

Understanding cultural beliefs is essential for delivering effective health care to diverse patient populations. Here are some strategies for working with diverse patients:

Culturally Competent Care: Health care providers should be trained in cultural competency and should understand how to provide care that is respectful of patients’ cultural beliefs. Providers should also be aware of their own cultural biases and work to overcome them.
Effective Communication: Communication is essential for building trust with patients from diverse backgrounds. Health care providers should use clear and simple language, and should listen actively to patients’ concerns. Providers should also be sensitive to non-verbal cues and body language.
Respect for Patients’ Beliefs: Health care providers should respect patients’ beliefs and be open to alternative approaches to care. Providers should also be aware of cultural taboos and be sensitive to patients’ modesty and privacy concerns.
Collaboration with Interpreters: For patients who do not speak English, interpreters should be used to facilitate communication. Providers should work collaboratively with interpreters and provide training to interpreters on how to interpret medical terminology.
Culturally Sensitive Materials: Health care providers should provide educational materials that are culturally sensitive and appropriate for diverse patient populations.

Barriers to Providing Culturally Competent Care:

Despite the importance of cultural competence in health care, there are still barriers that can make it difficult for providers to provide culturally competent care. Some of the most common barriers include:

Language barriers: Patients who do not speak English may struggle to communicate with their providers, which can lead to misunderstandings and a lack of trust.
Lack of cultural knowledge: Providers may not be familiar with the cultural beliefs and practices of their patients, which can lead to misunderstandings and inappropriate care.
Cultural biases: Providers may hold cultural biases that can impact the care they provide to patients from different backgrounds.
Time constraints: Providers may not have enough time to spend with each patient to fully understand their cultural background and beliefs.

Strategies for Overcoming Barriers:

Despite these barriers, there are strategies that providers can use to overcome them and provide culturally competent care:

Language services: Providers should offer language services, such as interpretation and translation services, to ensure that patients who do not speak English can communicate effectively with their providers.
Cultural competence training: Providers should undergo cultural competence training to help them understand the cultural beliefs and practices of their patients.
Cultural humility: Providers should adopt a cultural humility approach, which involves acknowledging their own cultural biases and being open to learning from their patients.
Extended appointment times: Providers should consider extending appointment times to allow for more in-depth discussions with patients and to ensure that patients have enough time to express their concerns.
Use of cultural brokers: Providers can work with cultural brokers, who are individuals from the same cultural background as the patient, to help bridge the cultural gap and facilitate communication.

Conclusion:

Cultural beliefs play an important role in shaping how patients seek and receive health care. Health care providers who understand cultural beliefs can provide care that is respectful and effective for diverse patient populations. However, there are still barriers that can make it difficult for providers to provide culturally competent care. By offering language services, cultural competence training, adopting a cultural humility approach, extending appointment times, and working with cultural brokers, providers can overcome these barriers and provide high-quality care to patients from diverse backgrounds.

Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

World Religions Overview Essay

The Movement of Religion and Ecology: Emerging Field and Dynamic Force

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale University

Originally published in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology

As many United Nations reports attest, we humans are destroying the life-support systems of the Earth at an alarming rate. Ecosystems are being degraded by rapid industrialization and relentless development. The data keeps pouring in that we are altering the climate and toxifying the air, water, and soil of the planet so that the health of humans and other species is at risk. Indeed, the Swedish scientist, Johan Rockstrom, and his colleagues, are examining which planetary boundaries are being exceeded. (Rockstrom and Klum, 2015)

The explosion of population from 3 billion in 1960 to more then 7 billion currently and the subsequent demands on the natural world seem to be on an unsustainable course. The demands include meeting basic human needs of a majority of the world’s people, but also feeding the insatiable desire for goods and comfort spread by the allure of materialism. The first is often called sustainable development; the second is unsustainable consumption. The challenge of rapid economic growth and consumption has brought on destabilizing climate change. This is coming into full focus in alarming ways including increased floods and hurricanes, droughts and famine, rising seas and warming oceans.

Can we turn our course to avert disaster? There are several indications that this may still be possible. On September 25, 2015 after the Pope addressed the UN General Assembly, 195 member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On December 12, 2015 these same members states endorsed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Both of these are important indications of potential reversal. The Climate Agreement emerged from the dedicated work of governments and civil society along with business partners. The leadership of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and many others was indispensable.

One of the inspirations for the Climate Agreement and for the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals was the release of the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si’ in June 2015. The encyclical encouraged the moral forces of concern for both the environment and people to be joined in “integral ecology”. “The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” are now linked as was not fully visible before. (Boff, 1997 and in the encyclical) Many religious and environmental communities are embracing this integrated perspective and will, no doubt, foster it going forward. The question is how can the world religions contribute more effectively to this renewed ethical momentum for change. For example, what will be their long-term response to population growth? As this is addressed in the article by Robert Wyman and Guigui Yao, we will not take it up here. Instead, we will consider some of the challenges and possibilities amid the dream of progress and the lure of consumption.

Challenges: The Dream of Progress and the Religion of Consumption

Consumption appears to have become an ideology or quasi-religion, not only in the West but also around the world. Faith in economic growth drives both producers and consumers. The dream of progress is becoming a distorted one. This convergence of our unlimited demands with an unquestioned faith in economic progress raises questions about the roles of religions in encouraging, discouraging, or ignoring our dominant drive toward appropriately satisfying material needs or inappropriately indulging material desires. Integral ecology supports the former and critiques the latter.

Moreover, a consumerist ideology depends upon and simultaneously contributes to a worldview based on the instrumental rationality of the human. That is, the assumption for decision-making is that all choices are equally clear and measurable. Market based metrics such as price, utility, or efficiency are dominant. This can result in utilitarian views of a forest as so much board feet or simply as a mechanistic complex of ecosystems that provide services to the human.

One long-term effect of this is that the individual human decision-maker is further distanced from nature because nature is reduced to measurable entities for profit or use. From this perspective we humans may be isolated in our perceived uniqueness as something apart from the biological web of life. In this context, humans do not seek identity and meaning in the numinous beauty of the world, nor do they experience themselves as dependent on a complex of life-supporting interactions of air, water, and soil. Rather, this logic sees humans as independent, rational decision-makers who find their meaning and identity in systems of management that now attempt to co-opt the language of conservation and environmental concern. Happiness is derived from simply creating and having more material goods. This perspective reflects a reading of our current geological period as human induced by our growth as a species that is now controlling the planet. This current era is being called the “Anthropocene” because of our effect on the planet in contrast to the prior 12,000 year epoch known as the Holocene.

This human capacity to imagine and implement a utilitarian-based worldview regarding nature has undermined many of the ancient insights of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. For example, some religions, attracted by the individualistic orientations of market rationalism and short-term benefits of social improvement, seized upon material accumulation as containing divine sanction. Thus, Max Weber identified the rise of Protestantism with an ethos of inspirited work and accumulated capital.

Weber also identified the growing disenchantment from the world of nature with the rise of global capitalism. Karl Marx recognized the “metabolic rift” in which human labor and nature become alienated from cycles of renewal. The earlier mystique of creation was lost. Wonder, beauty, and imagination as ways of knowing were gradually superseded by the analytical reductionism of modernity such that technological and economic entrancement have become key inspirations of progress.

Challenges: Religions Fostering Anthropocentrism

This modern, instrumental view of matter as primarily for human use arises in part from a dualistic Western philosophical view of mind and matter. Adapted into Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious perspectives, this dualism associates mind with the soul as a transcendent spiritual entity given sovereignty and dominion over matter. Mind is often valued primarily for its rationality in contrast to a lifeless world. At the same time we ensure our radical discontinuity from it.

Interestingly, views of the uniqueness of the human bring many traditional religious perspectives into sync with modern instrumental rationalism. In Western religious traditions, for example, the human is seen as an exclusively gifted creature with a transcendent soul that manifests the divine image and likeness. Consequently, this soul should be liberated from the material world. In many contemporary reductionist perspectives (philosophical and scientific) the human with rational mind and technical prowess stands as the pinnacle of evolution. Ironically, religions emphasizing the uniqueness of the human as the image of God meet market-driven applied science and technology precisely at this point of the special nature of the human to justify exploitation of the natural world. Anthropocentrism in various forms, religious, philosophical, scientific, and economic, has led, perhaps inadvertently, to the dominance of humans in this modern period, now called the Anthropocene. (It can be said that certain strands of the South Asian religions have emphasized the importance of humans escaping from nature into transcendent liberation. However, such forms of radical dualism are not central to the East Asian traditions or indigenous traditions.)

From the standpoint of rational analysis, many values embedded in religions, such as a sense of the sacred, the intrinsic value of place, the spiritual dimension of the human, moral concern for nature, and care for future generations, are incommensurate with an objectified monetized worldview as they not quantifiable. Thus, they are often ignored as externalities, or overridden by more pragmatic profit-driven considerations. Contemporary nation-states in league with transnational corporations have seized upon this individualistic, property-based, use-analysis to promote national sovereignty, security, and development exclusively for humans.

Possibilities: Systems Science

Yet, even within the realm of so-called scientific, rational thought, there is not a uniform approach. Resistance to the easy marriage of reductionist science and instrumental rationality comes from what is called systems science and new ecoogy. By this we refer to a movement within empirical, experimental science of exploring the interaction of nature and society as complex dynamic systems. This approach stresses both analysis and synthesis – the empirical act of observation, as well as placement of the focus of study within the context of a larger whole. Systems science resists the temptation to take the micro, empirical, reductive act as the complete description of a thing, but opens analysis to the large interactive web of life to which we belong, from ecosystems to the biosphere. There are numerous examples of this holistic perspective in various branches of ecology. And this includes overcoming the nature-human divide. (Schmitz 2016) Aldo Leopold understood this holistic interconnection well when he wrote: “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” (Leopold, 1966)

Collaboration of Science and Religion

Within this inclusive framework, scientists have been moving for some time beyond simply distanced observations to engaged concern. The Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si , has elevated the level of visibility and efficacy of this conversation between science and religion as perhaps never before on a global level. Similarly, many other statements from the world religions are linking the wellbeing of people and the planet for a flourishing future. For example, the World Council of Churches has been working for four decades to join humans and nature in their program on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation.

Many scientists such as Thomas Lovejoy, E.O. Wilson, Jane Lubchenco, Peter Raven, and Ursula Goodenough recognize the importance of religious and cultural values when discussing solutions to environmental challenges. Other scientists such as Paul Ehrlich and Donald Kennedy have called for major studies of human behavior and values in relation to environmental issues. ( Science , July 2005) This has morphed into the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere. (mahb.standford.edu). Since 2009 the Ecological Society of America has established an Earth Stewardship Initiative with yearly panels and publications. Many environmental studies programs are now seeking to incorporate these broader ethical and behavioral approaches into the curriculum.

Possibilities: Extinction and Religious Response

The stakes are high, however, and the path toward limiting ourselves within planetary boundaries is not smooth. Scientists are now reporting that because of the population explosion, our consuming habits, and our market drive for resources, we are living in the midst of a mass extinction period. This period represents the largest loss of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when the Cenozoic period began. In other words, we are shutting down life systems on the planet and causing the end of this large-scale geological era with little awareness of what we are doing or its consequences.

As the cultural historian Thomas Berry observed some years ago, we are making macrophase changes on the planet with microphase wisdom. Indeed, some people worry that these rapid changes have outstripped the capacity of our religions, ethics, and spiritualities to meet the complex challenges we are facing.

The question arises whether the wisdom traditions of the human community, embedded in institutional religions and beyond, can embrace integral ecology at the level needed? Can the religions provide leadership into a synergistic era of human-Earth relations characterized by empathy, regeneration, and resilience? Or are religions themselves the wellspring of those exclusivist perspectives in which human societies disconnect themselves from other groups and from the natural world? Are religions caught in their own meditative promises of transcendent peace and redemptive bliss in paradisal abandon? Or does their drive for exclusive salvation or truth claims cause them to try to overcome or convert the Other?

Authors in this volume are exploring these issues within religious and spiritual communities regarding the appropriate responses of the human to our multiple environmental and social challenges. What forms of symbolic visioning and ethical imagining can call forth a transformation of consciousness and conscience for our Earth community? Can religions and spiritualites provide vision and inspiration for grounding and guiding mutually enhancing human-Earth relations? Have we arrived at a point where we realize that more scientific statistics on environmental problems, more legislation, policy or regulation, and more economic analysis, while necessary, are no longer sufficient for the large-scale social transformations needed? This is where the world religions, despite their limitations, surely have something to contribute.

Such a perspective includes ethics, practices, and spiritualities from the world’s cultures that may or may not be connected with institutional forms of religion. Thus spiritual ecology and nature religions are an important part of the discussions and are represented in this volume. Our own efforts have focused on the world religions and indigenous traditions. Our decade long training in graduate school and our years of living and traveling throughout Asia and the West gave us an early appreciation for religions as dynamic, diverse, living traditions. We are keenly aware of the multiple forms of syncretism and hybridization in the world religions and spiritualties. We have witnessed how they are far from monolithic or impervious to change in our travels to more than 60 countries.

Problems and Promise of Religions

Several qualifications regarding the various roles of religion should thus be noted. First, we do not wish to suggest here that any one religious tradition has a privileged ecological perspective. Rather, multiple interreligious perspectives may be the most helpful in identifying the contributions of the world religions to the flourishing of life.

We also acknowledge that there is frequently a disjunction between principles and practices: ecologically sensitive ideas in religions are not always evident in environmental practices in particular civilizations. Many civilizations have overused their environments, with or without religious sanction.

Finally, we are keenly aware that religions have all too frequently contributed to tensions and conflict among various groups, both historically and at present. Dogmatic rigidity, inflexible claims of truth, and misuse of institutional and communal power by religions have led to tragic consequences in many parts of the globe.

Nonetheless, while religions have often preserved traditional ways, they have also provoked social change. They can be limiting but also liberating in their outlooks. In the twentieth century, for example, religious leaders and theologians helped to give birth to progressive movements such as civil rights for minorities, social justice for the poor, and liberation for women. Although the world religions have been slow to respond to our current environmental crises, their moral authority and their institutional power may help effect a change in attitudes, practices, and public policies. Now the challenge is a broadening of their ethical perspectives.

Traditionally the religions developed ethics for homicide, suicide, and genocide. Currently they need to respond to biocide, ecocide, and geocide. (Berry, 2009)

Retrieval, Reevaluation, Reconstruction

There is an inevitable disjunction between the examination of historical religious traditions in all of their diversity and complexity and the application of teachings, ethics, or practices to contemporary situations. While religions have always been involved in meeting contemporary challenges over the centuries, it is clear that the global environmental crisis is larger and more complex than anything in recorded human history. Thus, a simple application of traditional ideas to contemporary problems is unlikely to be either possible or adequate. In order to address ecological problems properly, religious and spiritual leaders, laypersons and academics have to be in dialogue with scientists, environmentalists, economists, businesspeople, politicians, and educators. Hence the articles in this volume are from various key sectors.

With these qualifications in mind we can then identify three methodological approaches that appear in the still emerging study of religion and ecology. These are retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction. Retrieval involves the scholarly investigation of scriptural and commentarial sources in order to clarify religious perspectives regarding human-Earth relations. This requires that historical and textual studies uncover resources latent within the tradition. In addition, retrieval can identify ethical codes and ritual customs of the tradition in order to discover how these teachings were put into practice. Traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) is an important part of this for all the world religions, especially indigenous traditions.

With reevaluation, traditional teachings are evaluated with regard to their relevance to contemporary circumstances. Are the ideas, teachings, or ethics present in these traditions appropriate for shaping more ecologically sensitive attitudes and sustainable practices? Reevaluation also questions ideas that may lead to inappropriate environmental practices. For example, are certain religious tendencies reflective of otherworldly or world-denying orientations that are not helpful in relation to pressing ecological issues? It asks as well whether the material world of nature has been devalued by a particular religion and whether a model of ethics focusing solely on human interactions is adequate to address environmental problems.

Finally, reconstruction suggests ways that religious traditions might adapt their teachings to current circumstances in new and creative ways. These may result in new syntheses or in creative modifications of traditional ideas and practices to suit modern modes of expression. This is the most challenging aspect of the emerging field of religion and ecology and requires sensitivity to who is speaking about a tradition in the process of reevaluation and reconstruction. Postcolonial critics have appropriately highlighted the complex issues surrounding the problem of who is representing or interpreting a religious tradition or even what constitutes that tradition. Nonetheless, practitioners and leaders of particular religions are finding grounds for creative dialogue with scholars of religions in these various phases of interpretation.

Religious Ecologies and Religious Cosmologies

As part of the retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction of religions we would identify “religious ecologies” and “religious cosmologies” as ways that religions have functioned in the past and can still function at present. Religious ecologies are ways of orienting and grounding whereby humans undertake specific practices of nurturing and transforming self and community in a particular cosmological context that regards nature as inherently valuable. Through cosmological stories humans narrate and experience the larger matrix of mystery in which life arises, unfolds, and flourishes. These are what we call religious cosmologies. These two, namely religious ecologies and religious cosmologies, can be distinguished but not separated. Together they provide a context for navigating life’s challenges and affirming the rich spiritual value of human-Earth relations.

Human communities until the modern period sensed themselves as grounded in and dependent on the natural world. Thus, even when the forces of nature were overwhelming, the regenerative capacity of the natural world opened a way forward. Humans experienced the processes of the natural world as interrelated, both practically and symbolically. These understandings were expressed in traditional environmental knowledge, namely, in hunting and agricultural practices such as the appropriate use of plants, animals, and land. Such knowledge was integrated in symbolic language and practical norms, such as prohibitions, taboos, and limitations on ecosystems’ usage. All this was based in an understanding of nature as the source of nurturance and kinship. The Lakota people still speak of “all my relations” as an expression of this kinship. Such perspectives will need to be incorporated into strategies to solve environmental problems. Humans are part of nature and their cultural and religious values are critical dimensions of the discussion.

Multidisciplinary approaches: Environmental Humanities

We are recognizing, then, that the environmental crisis is multifaceted and requires multidisciplinary approaches. As this book indicates, the insights of scientific modes of analytical and synthetic knowing are indispensable for understanding and responding to our contemporary environmental crisis. So also, we need new technologies such as industrial ecology, green chemistry, and renewable energy. Clearly ecological economics is critical along with green governance and legal policies as articles in this volume illustrate.

In this context it is important to recognize different ways of knowing that are manifest in the humanities, such as artistic expressions, historical perspectives, philosophical inquiry, and religious understandings. These honor emotional intelligence, affective insight, ethical valuing, and spiritual awakening.

Environmental humanities is a growing and diverse area of study within humanistic disciplines. In the last several decades, new academic courses and programs, research journals and monographs, have blossomed. This broad-based inquiry has sparked creative investigation into multiple ways, historically and at present, of understanding and interacting with nature, constructing cultures, developing communities, raising food, and exchanging goods.

It is helpful to see the field of religion and ecology as part of this larger emergence of environmental humanities. While it can be said that environmental history, literature, and philosophy are some four decades old, the field of religions and ecology began some two decades ago. It was preceded, however, by work among various scholars, particularly Christian theologians. Some eco-feminists theologians, such as Rosemary Ruether and Sallie McFague, Mary Daly, and Ivone Gebara led the way.

The Emerging Field of Religion and Ecology

An effort to identify and to map religiously diverse attitudes and practices toward nature was the focus of a three-year international conference series on world religions and ecology. Organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, ten conferences were held at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996-1998 that resulted in a ten volume book series (1997-2004). Over 800 scholars of religion and environmentalists participated. The director of the Center, Larry Sullivan, gave space and staff for the conferences. He chose to limit their scope to the world religions and indigenous religions rather than “nature religions”, such as wicca or paganism, which the organizers had hoped to include.

Culminating conferences were held in fall 1998 at Harvard and in New York at the United Nations and the American Museum of Natural History where 1000 people attended and Bill Moyers presided. At the UN conference Tucker and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology, which is now located at Yale. They organized a dozen more conferences and created an electronic newsletter that is now sent to over 12,000 people around the world. In addition, they developed a major website for research, education, and outreach in this area (fore.yale.edu). The conferences, books, website, and newsletter have assisted in the emergence of a new field of study in religion and ecology. Many people have helped in this process including Whitney Bauman and Sam Mickey who are now moving the field toward discussing the need for planetary ethics. A Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology was established in 2002, a European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment was formed in 2005, and a Forum on Religion and Ecology @ Monash in Australia in 2011.

Courses on this topic are now offered in numerous colleges and universities across North America and in other parts of the world. A Green Seminary Initiative has arisen to help educate seminarians. Within the American Academy of Religion there is a vibrant group focused on scholarship and teaching in this area. A peer-reviewed journal, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology , is celebrating its 25 th year of publication. Another journal has been publishing since 2007, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture . A two volume Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature edited by Bron Taylor has helped shape the discussions, as has the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture he founded. Clearly this broad field of study will continue to expand as the environmental crisis grows in complexity and requires increasingly creative interdisciplinary responses.

The work in religion and ecology rests in an intersection between the academic field within education and the dynamic force within society. This is why we see our work not so much as activist, but rather as “engaged scholarship” for the flourishing of our shared planetary life. This is part of a broader integration taking place to link concerns for both people and the planet. This has been fostered in part by the twenty-volume Ecology and Justice Series from Orbis Books and with the work of John Cobb, Larry Rasmussen, Dieter Hessel, Heather Eaton, Cynthia Moe-Loebeda, and others. The Papal Encyclical is now highlighting this linkage of eco-justice as indispensable for an integral ecology.

The Dynamic Force of Religious Environmentalism

All of these religious traditions, then, are groping to find the languages, symbols, rituals, and ethics for sustaining both ecosystems and humans. Clearly there are obstacles to religions moving into their ecological, eco-justice, and planetary phases. The religions are themselves challenged by their own bilingual languages, namely, their languages of transcendence, enlightenment, and salvation; and their languages of immanence, sacredness of Earth, and respect for nature. Yet, as the field of religion and ecology has developed within academia, so has the force of religious environmentalism emerged around the planet. Roger Gottlieb documents this in his book A Greener Faith . (Gottlieb 2006) The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew held international symposia on “Religion, Science and the Environment” focused on water issues (1995-2009) that we attended. He has made influential statements on this issue for 20 years. The Parliament of World Religions has included panels on this topic since 1998 and most expansively in 2015. Since 1995 the UK based Alliance of Religion and Conservation (ARC), led by Martin Palmer, has been doing significant work with religious communities around under the patronage of Prince Philip.

These efforts are recovering a sense of place, which is especially clear in the environmental resilience and regeneration practices of indigenous peoples. It is also evident in valuing the sacred pilgrimage places in the Abrahamic traditions (Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca) both historically and now ecologically. So also East Asia and South Asia attention to sacred mountains, caves, and other pilgrimage sites stands in marked contrast to massive pollution.

In many settings around the world religious practitioners are drawing together religious ways of respecting place, land, and life with understanding of environmental science and the needs of local communities. There have been official letters by Catholic Bishops in the Philippines and in Alberta, Canada alarmed by the oppressive social conditions and ecological disasters caused by extractive industries. Catholic nuns and laity in North America, Australia, England, and Ireland sponsor educational programs and conservation plans drawing on the eco-spiritual vision of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. Also inspired by Berry and Swimme, Paul Winter’s Solstice celebrations and Earth Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York Winter have been taking place for three decades.

Even in the industrial growth that grips China, there are calls from many in politics, academia, and NGOs to draw on Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist perspectives for environmental change. In 2008 we met with Pan Yue, the Deputy Minister of the Environment, who has studied these traditions and sees them as critical to Chinese environmental ethics. In India, Hinduism is faced with the challenge of clean up of sacred rivers, such as the Ganges and the Yamuna. To this end in 2010 with Hindu scholars, David Haberman and Christopher Chapple, we organized a conference of scientists and religious leaders in Delhi and Vrindavan to address the pollution of the Yamuna.

Many religious groups are focused on climate change and energy issues. For example, InterFaith Power and Light and GreenFaith are encouraging religious communities to reduce their carbon footprint. Earth Ministry in Seattle is leading protests against oil pipelines and terminals. The Evangelical Environmental Network and other denominations are emphasizing climate change as a moral issue that is disproportionately affecting the poor. In Canada and the US the Indigenous Environmental Network is speaking out regarding damage caused by resource extraction, pipelines, and dumping on First Peoples’ Reserves and beyond. All of the religions now have statements on climate change as a moral issue and they were strongly represented in the People’s Climate March in September 2015. Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published the first collection of articles on religion and climate change from two conferences we organized there. (Tucker & Grim, 2001)

Striking examples of religion and ecology have occurred in the Islamic world. In June 2001 and May 2005 the Islamic Republic of Iran led by President Khatami and the United Nations Environment Programme sponsored conferences in Tehran that we attended. They were focused on Islamic principles and practices for environmental protection. The Iranian Constitution identifies Islamic values for ecology and threatens legal sanctions. One of the earliest spokespersons for religion and ecology is the Iranian scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Fazlun Khalid in the UK founded the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science. In Indonesia in 2014 a fatwa was issued declaring that killing an endangered species is prohibited.

These examples illustrate ways in which an emerging alliance of religion and ecology is occurring around the planet. These traditional values within the religions now cause them to awaken to environmental crises in ways that are strikingly different from science or policy. But they may find interdisciplinary ground for dialogue in concerns for eco-justice, sustainability, and cultural motivations for transformation. The difficulty, of course, is that the religions are often preoccupied with narrow sectarian interests. However, many people, including the Pope, are calling on the religions to go beyond these interests and become a moral leaven for change.

Renewal Through Laudato Si’

Pope Francis is highlighting an integral ecology that brings together concern for humans and the Earth. He makes it clear that the environment can no longer be seen as only an issue for scientific experts, or environmental groups, or government agencies alone. Rather, he invites all people, programs and institutions to realize these are complicated environmental and social problems that require integrated solutions beyond a “technocratic paradigm” that values an easy fix. Within this integrated framework, he urges bold new solutions.

In this context Francis suggests that ecology, economics, and equity are intertwined. Healthy ecosystems depend on a just economy that results in equity. Endangering ecosystems with an exploitative economic system is causing immense human suffering and inequity. In particular, the poor and most vulnerable are threatened by climate change, although they are not the major cause of the climate problem. He acknowledges the need for believers and non-believers alike to help renew the vitality of Earth’s ecosystems and expand systemic efforts for equity.

In short, he is calling for “ecological conversion” from within all the world religions. He is making visible an emerging worldwide phenomenon of the force of religious environmentalism on the ground, as well as the field of religion and ecology in academia developing new ecotheologies and ecojustice ethics. This diverse movement is evoking a change of mind and heart, consciousness and conscience. Its expression will be seen more fully in the years to come.

The challenge of the contemporary call for ecological renewal cannot be ignored by the religions. Nor can it be answered simply from out of doctrine, dogma, scripture, devotion, ritual, belief, or prayer. It cannot be addressed by any of these well-trod paths of religious expression alone. Yet, like so much of our human cultures and institutions the religions are necessary for our way forward yet not sufficient in themselves for the transformation needed. The roles of the religions cannot be exported from outside their horizons. Thus, the individual religions must explain and transform themselves if they are willing to enter into this period of environmental engagement that is upon us. If the religions can participate in this creativity they may again empower humans to embrace values that sustain life and contribute to a vibrant Earth community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, Thomas. 2009. The Sacred Universe: Earth Spirituality and Religion in the 21st Century (New York: Columbia University Press).

Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).

Gottlieb, Roger. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planetary Future . (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Grim, John and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. 2014. Ecology and Religion. (Washington, DC: Island Press).

Leopold, Aldo. 1966. A Sand County Almanac . (Oxford University Press).

Rockstrom, Johan and Mattias Klum. 2015. Big World, Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries . (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Schmitz, Oswald. 2016. The New Ecology: Science for a Sustainable World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Taylor, Bron, ed. 2008. Encyclopedia of Religion, Nature, and Culture. (London: Bloomsbury).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2004. Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter their Ecological Phase . (Chicago: Open Court).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Grim, eds. 2001 Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? Daedalus Vol. 130, No.4.

Header photo: ARC procession to UN Faith in Future Meeting, Bristol, UK

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11 Death and Dying

Chapter 11 audio sections 11.1-11.12 and 11.20-11.22 can be accessed on Soundcloud . Instructor resources for those sections are available on Canvas Commons . The audio for sections 11.13-11.19 can be accessed separately on Soundcloud . Instructor resources for those sections are available on Canvas Commons.

Chapter 11 Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to:

Recognize and describe the impact of death in human societies.
Summarize roles of death rituals across cultures.
Describe the cultural meaning of cannibalistic practices across cultures.

11.1 Death from an Anthropological Perspective

Though it can be unpleasant to consider, death is a universal part of the human experience. Perhaps for this reason, cultural beliefs about the nature of death can have an important role in shaping our relationships, our ethical beliefs, and our very understanding of what it means to be human. This chapter explores the considerable variation that human cultures exhibit in the ways that we approach death, both in terms of how we understand its meaning, and also in terms of our behaviors and practices: what we do when a death occurs. To put it another way, this chapter does not so much aim to explore death as it aims to explore human life in light of death.

A funeral procession in a street, looking down on a car and people dressed in red.

11.2 Holism in the Anthropological Study of Death

As we investigate variation in human cultures’ approaches to death and dying, we use a holistic perspective (see Chapter 1), showing how beliefs and practices concerning death connect to economic, political, and moral life in different cultural settings. Our view as anthropologists, in other words, is that it would be pointless to study funeral practices and beliefs about death without also understanding how they fit into the broader cultural systems in which they exist.

11.3 Cultural Relativism in the Anthropological Study of Death

Death is, in many ways, an observable phenomenon. In contrast, if anything happens to a person after they die, this is not as easy to observe directly. Interpreting what happens to us after death is a cultural task, and cultural views on the relationship between a “person” and that person’s body after they die vary widely. As we will see, even basic definitions of death – “What are its causes?” “In what ways does dying change a person?” “At what point can we even say that death has happened to someone?” – are not consistent from one culture to the next.

Some of the questions listed above might seem to have answers so obvious that just asking them reflects incredible ignorance on the part of the person expressing curiosity. However, part of our task as anthropologists involves stepping outside of our own cultural beliefs and expectations and recognizing that they – like all cultural beliefs and expectations – are just that: cultural . While all cultures provide members with some interpretation of death and dying, cultural relativism dictates that precisely how any given culture interprets these phenomena is appropriate for that group.

In this chapter, we will also encounter functionalist perspectives, which view different cultures’ ideas about death as adaptations that help groups to meet their culturally-specific needs. Meanwhile, Marxist perspectives will explore the ways that beliefs about death affect power relations and the distribution of wealth within societies of all kinds.

Drawing of a person's body being lowered into a coffin, surrounded by sad people.

11.4 Death, Anxiety, and Religion

Among the anthropologists who study how people in different cultures grapple with the idea of death, some have gone so far as to suggest that our unease about dying may actually have led to the development of the first forms of religion. Religion, by this logic, is not simply a result of a human tendency to wonder about abstract themes like ‘the meaning of life’ or our ‘purpose.’ Instead, we can think of it as a sort of ‘tool’ that human cultures use to cope with a visible reality that has been part of human life in all places and at all times: the phenomenon of death and the anxieties and tough questions it raises for us.

Throughout his career during the early 20th century , Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), a foundational figure in the history of anthropology (see Chapters 1 and 3), outlined an argument that death is one of the universal sources of anxiety for humans, and that religion is a universal human response to this anxiety. For Malinowski, to understand death as the result of unseen supernatural forces was also to portray its causes as comprehensible . When we think we can comprehend or even reason with the supernatural forces that affect the parts of our lives we cannot otherwise explain, we are able to rationalize seemingly unfair and tragic occurrences like death (Malinowski 1955).

In this way, Malinowski argued that belief in the supernatural had a function within human societies.It created (and still creates) a sense of order, an underlying logic in a world that might otherwise seem just a bit scarier, just a bit more random, and maybe just a bit more unfair (note that this is an example of what we have called functionalism in the anthropological study of religion. See Chapter 3).

Malinowski was not alone in his idea that human beliefs in the supernatural result from our fear of death. Sigmund Freud (1859–1939) – a towering figure in the development of the field of psychology – similarly suggested that an awareness of death has always disturbed the human imagination. To Freud, religious belief systems in their simplest form could have served as a means by which people comforted themselves in the face of death’s disturbing inevitability. Freud suggested that by creating concepts of the soul and the afterlife, ancient humans were able to convince themselves that they and their loved ones would not be truly gone after death. In this view, religion allowed ancient humans to comfort themselves with the knowledge that the dead would instead continue to exist, but in a different form, after they were physically gone (Freud 1930).

Exercise 11A

Anthropologists closely examine the death rituals that exist in each society. Mummification is a death ritual that was practiced in Ancient Egypt (and in other societies). Interestingly, humans were not the only ones mummified in Ancient Egypt. Listen to NPR’s story titled, “ Archaeologists Discover Dozens Of Cat Mummies, 100 Cat Statues In Ancient Tomb .”

Then, see if you can answer the following questions:

Based on information from this report, how did people living in Ancient Egypt view their relationship with cats and beetles?
How did Ancient Egyptians understand divinity? Please discuss both cats and gods/goddesses in your response.

11.5 Gawan Families in the Late 20th Century

In order to illustrate the role that supernatural beliefs can play in helping people to cope with anxiety and grief surrounding death, let’s briefly consider an example. During the 1970s, American anthropologist Nancy Munn conducted ethnographic fieldwork on Gawa, an island located in eastern Papua New Guinea that was inhabited by just over 500 people at the time (Munn 1986). Munn’s research focused on Gawan systems of exchange (their economy), but it also demonstrated the importance of a holistic approach since this topic could not be understood without exploring Gawan beliefs about death, the supernatural, and especially the family.

The Gawan concept of ‘family’ differed significantly from the one that Munn had learned about in her own cultural surroundings while growing up in New York. Gawans identified specifically with their mothers’ families, believing that this is where a person gets their balouma , or spirit. Gawans saw their fathers – as well as their fathers’ brothers, sisters, and parents – as ‘non-relatives.’ In a similar category to fathers, Gawans also viewed a person’s spouse and the family of that person’s spouse as being non-relatives: members of someone else’s family.

This is not to say that a person had no relationship with their father’s family or with their spouse’s family, however. In fact, despite their status as non-relatives, the families of a Gawan’s father and their spouse both held extremely important places in any Gawan person’s life. And as Munn showed, these non-relatives also had unique and very important roles to play in a Gawan’s person’s death .

11.6 The Gawan Mourning Process

When a person died on Gawa, Munn observed that the families of their father and their spouse were expected to fulfill very special responsibilities, despite their status as “non-relatives” of the deceased. The families of a dead person’s spouse and father would gather and mourn loudly and publicly for up to a week before a funeral would eventually be held, all while wearing special clothes. These clothes tended to deteriorate during the mourning process, which Gawans associated with aging, and also with death. Mourners also shaved their heads and colored their bodies black using charred coconut husks, again recalling the process of dying and decomposition in symbols all Gawans understood. They also spent considerable time in the presence of the deceased person’s body, making amulets out of his or her hair and nails. The mourners (again, specifically the families of the dead person’s father and their spouse) would later wear these amulets during the funeral (and sometimes for a long time afterwards). Through these rituals, the families of the spouse and the father of a dead person actually came to represent that person during a funeral (Munn 1986, 164-171).

After a deceased person’s burial was complete, the dead person’s family collected valuable, elaborate, and rare objects that represented the relationships, successes, and deeds of their loved one, and then gave these objects away to the various “non-relatives” who had served as mourners during the funeral. Munn suggested that this act of gift-giving allowed Gawans to process their memories of their dead relative. Interacting with the mourners, who were symbolically performing the role of the deceased person, made it possible for family members to feel less alone. For Gawans, a deceased loved one could even be said to ‘live on’ in the objects that represented their deeds, and also in the people who were part of their life and who were honored in the gift-giving ritual (Munn 1986:170). In this sense, Munn argued that Gawan practices surrounding death and the symbolism involved in those practices both helped Gawan people to process the emotional weight of a loved one’s death by giving them a chance to continue to interact with the deceased person symbolically.

11.7 Death Creates a Social Dilemma

Now that we have considered how cultural beliefs and rituals surrounding death can affect how individuals process grief, let’s consider these themes at a broader scale. You have probably heard the term “social network” used to describe online social media platforms, but this term actually describes something much more fundamental to human lifeways – something that has existed since the birth of our species.

At its core, “ social network ” refers to a group of individuals who are connected to one another – some directly and some only indirectly – through interpersonal relationships. Most humans participate in social networks that connect us to people outside our immediate families, and that extend beyond the small groups we see on a day-to-day basis. Most of us also participate in social networks that put us into indirect contact with individuals we will never actually meet in person. Although the precise scope of social networks in human societies varies considerably, extended networks have likely always existed in some form or another. They have likely existed in societies of all sorts, even those we might at first glance imagine to be fairly “isolated.”

For example, although they spent most of the year living in small family groups that ranged in size from only six to about forty people, prehistoric and early historic Iñupiat inhabitants of northwest Alaska built social networks that connected them indirectly to people thousands of miles away. To do so, they conducted ritual events, including those known as “trade fairs.” People from all over northwest Alaska – and in some cases from more distant areas as well – came together at these events, where they made new friends, learned valuable information about neighboring groups, and even sought out potential husbands or wives (Burch 2005).

Attendees often left Alaskan trade fairs with new contacts or having rekindled relationships with old friends from neighboring areas. Contacts and friends in neighboring areas each had their own set of relationships with others living in areas near them , and could extend their networks by attending local ritual events and trade fairs elsewhere. As a result, even though an individual Iñupiat person might not directly get to know people all over the Northwest Coast of North America, social networks connected them indirectly .

11.8 Funerals, Mourning, and Connections

Day of the Dead Altar with photos of the dead, candles and other amulets

As it turns out, funeral rituals can play a particularly important role in creating and maintaining social connections too. In many societies, when a person dies, their extended social network often hangs in the balance, since the chain of relationships that make up that network is now broken. In this sense, death is not onlya source of stress and grief for us as individuals (discussed above). By threatening to unravel or dismantle existing social networks, death also affects relationships among the living. In many societies, funerals present an opportunity for people to repair or reinforce social networks, counteracting the “break in the chain of relationships” someone’s death can cause.

For example, 19th century Tlingit people in Alaska and the Canadian Northwest Coast provide an example of this “function” for funeral rituals. these groups conducted an elaborate series of funeral rituals, the final stage of which was called a ‘memorial potlatch .’ A deceased person’s distant relatives – and the extended families of those relatives as well – attended memorial potlatches and all attendees participated in a symbolic “renewal” of the relationships that existed between the family of the dead person and the funeral’s attendees (Kan 1989, 41-44). Out-of-town guests at these funerals included non-Tlingit people who came from considerable distances, particularly when wealthy or influential people died.

Like the Gawan funerals discussed above, the immediate family of a deceased Tlingit person – the hosts of the memorial potlatch – presented valuable gifts to most of the people in attendance, and in doing so, they recreated the relationships that had existed between the deceased person and the event’s guests, actually taking on the role that their deceased relative had played in these relationships. While Nancy Munn’s work on Gawa focused more on the way that Gawan gifts for mourners helped people to grieve, anthropologist Sergei Kan ’s examination of historic Tlingit potlatches emphasized the ways that these events helped to maintain existing social networks in the face of loss and death.

11.9 Death Opens up Political Opportunities

Painting of an interior building, with a long line of people seated.

Death also leaves a unique opportunity for ambitious people to pursue wealth and social status, and funerals often serve as the place where this pursuit is most visible. To illustrate this point, it will be useful to think holistically about the connection between religious beliefs, ritual activities, economics, and power in society.

Because rituals tend to bring together large groups of people, they present a unique kind of “stage” that a person can use to “show off” for a large audience, as discussed in Chapter 6. This is no less true of funerals.

Funeral rituals are often expensive in terms of the resources they require, particularly as they often involve large feasts (Hayden 2009). In many societies, getting ahold of enough of the right kind of food to conduct a funeral feast is not as simple as visiting a grocery store, and for this reason, hosting a sufficiently impressive funeral ritual can be challenging. A good host needs strong managerial skills, a network of people who can contribute food, and considerable resources of their own in order to finance the event.

To return to the example of the 19th century Tlingit memorial potlatch discussed above, attendees judged these events by their extravagance; hosts fed guests with huge quantities of meat, fish, and berries, and offered gifts of valuable animal skins (Kan 1989, 232). In fact, hosts tried to show off the wealth of their families by presenting so many skins and so much food that the skins were impossible to transport home and the food caused guests to vomit from overeating. According to Kan’s informants, if nobody vomited, at a funeral potlatch, it spoke badly about the food and reduced the hosts’ prestige (Kan 1989, 233).

Similarly, at funerals in the Trobriand Islands, valuable offerings were buried with the dead (particularly for chiefs and other important people), and hosts distributed yams to the events’ guests. Gathering and distributing yams was not simply a matter of feeding funeral attendees, it was also a way that hosts showed off the strength, cohesion, and organization of their family (Weiner 1987, 46).

In this sense, an impressive funeral feast is more than just a way of renewing the deceased person’s social network or grieving their loss. Throwing a successful feast is also a way for hosts to impress guests, to attract followers who can provide future political support, and to gain social standing.

11.10 Funerals and Wealth: Secondary Burials in Berawan Culture

While beliefs and practices surrounding death are connected to economic and political organization in many human societies, the precise nature of how funerals are conducted differs significantly. Ethnographic research that anthropologist Peter Metcalf conducted during the 1970s among the Berawan people in northern Borneo (an island in Indonesia) provides a particularly interesting example.

The Berawan of the 1970s were a group of roughly 1600 people living in four separate communities. Funerals were the largest and most costly rituals in Berawan culture, requiring enormous amounts of money, labor, and rice so that a host could throw a suitably impressive ceremony, hire entertainment, and construct a structure where the deceased person’s body would ultimately be buried. Berawan people viewed these parts of a funeral as ways to honor the wishes of a dead person’s spirit, and in part for this reason, funerals were critically important to them (Metcalf 1981).

One part of Berawan cultural practices that Metcalf studied intensively was a type of funeral ritual called a “ secondary burial. ” Secondary burial refers to the practice of disposing of the dead by conducting multiple funeral events so that a person’s body is moved or buried more than once. The Berawan would first hold a relatively small funeral immediately after a person’s death. They would later hold a much larger reburial event, and it was only then that a person’s remains would be deposited in their permanent burial place. These later reburial events sometimes occurred several years after a person died, and often after the body had been treated, processed, or changed in some intentional way.

Secondary burial practices had become less and less common in Berawan culture during the 20th century, and it was widely believed that they were disappearing due to globalization and contact with other cultures. Metcalf would examine the practice in considerable detail before eventually drawing a very different conclusion. Namely, he argued that – given the way the Berawan used funerals to display their wealth – there might be political and economic functions to these rituals (and political or economic explanations for their decline).

By demonstrating that they possessed the ability and the resources to host a truly gigantic ritual feast, Berawan funeral hosts could present themselves to guests as powerful and wealthy, thereby gaining public recognition and future political support. At the same time, conducting a funeral was expensive and time-consuming. By conducting secondary burials, ambitious Berawan individuals were able to save up resources to pay for a ritual event, and also to ‘spread out’ the work of amassing those resources and orchestrating the labor of political followers over a much longer, and therefore more manageable, period of time.

Cultures all over the world conduct burial practices that fit this “secondary burial” pattern, and during the 1970s, when Metcalf conducted his fieldwork, generations of anthropologists had examined them to glimpse the worldviews of the cultures who conducted them. Metcalf, however, observed that funerals were more than mere representations of Berawan beliefs (in this case, of ideas about the soul and the afterlife). Instead, he approached secondary burial rituals as a way Berawan people actively affected social life within their society. People used secondary burial practices to gain political opportunities that would not have been available if they needed to conduct funerals immediately upon the death of a loved one.

Why then were secondary burials disappearing if they were so important for Berawan people to gain recognition, prestige, and political support? Once, it had been necessary for most Berawan people to delay a funeral if they wished to make it sufficiently impressive. However, with the arrival of a credit-based economy in 20th century Borneo, Berawan families could now take out bank loans, and the need to conduct secondary burial rituals was reduced.

11.11 Death Raises “Legal” Issues

Dealing with a person’s stuff might not seem like a religious issue, and the term “legal” might also sound out of place in a chapter on religious approaches to death and dying. In most cultures, people do, however, have expectations about what a dead person is “owed” or what they “want” from the living. Social expectations about the needs of the dead and the debts they are owed can be said to function as laws in the sense that they serve as rules concerning property and ownership. These expectations often govern “inheritance” practices, dictating what the living can take from the dead, who can take it, and what the dead must keep if they are to remain on good terms with the living. Below, let us consider the outsized effect that religion’s “legal” role can play in determining how power is distributed within a society.

Human societies vary considerably in terms of power dynamics. Some societies – many, if you only consider contemporary societies – feature enormous differences between people in terms of wealth, power, and social status. Yet throughout the human past and present, many human societies have instead exhibited what anthropologists refer to as “egalitarian” social organization . In these societies, most adults possess relatively similar social standing within the group; there are no all-powerful emperors, no Silicon Valley tech billionaires, no subjugated masses, and no slaves.

Cultural outsiders often mistakenly interpret these groups as less advanced, lacking the technologies and social institutions that would allow for the accumulation of wealth and the consolidation of power. As it turns out, this view is largely incorrect, and reflects a deeply ethnocentric bias. We may think, “because social inequality exists in my culture, it must reflect ‘progress’ or a more evolved form of social organization.” In fact, egalitarian societies feature elaborate and highly evolved practices that serve as obstacles or “checks” against anyone interested in hoarding wealth or power.

For example, a variety of practices existed in historic and late prehistoric cultures of California that reinforced the relatively equal footing of all group members. When a particularly wealthy Wintu person died, their possessions were burned or buried, which left little or no physical property for offspring to inherit (Chase-Dunn and Hall, 127). Ohlone people of the southern San Francisco Bay area also destroyed or buried a deceased person’s property. According to their beliefs, failure to respect the dead in this way would make a person’s ghost enraged and cause it to enact severe punishments on the living (Margolin 1978, 56). Practices like these, which limit the transmission of wealth from one generation to the next, have been observed in many societies that also feature egalitarian tendencies.

Compare these practices to the ones you are familiar with in your own cultural surroundings that pertain to the transmission of wealth at death. In the United States, for example, the estate tax – a tax on money and other property that is inherited when someone dies – has long been a topic of considerable debate. Proponents of the estate tax argue that it helps to prevent the development of further social inequalities between the wealthy and the rest of American society – precisely the same function as the ritual practices that exist in egalitarian societies, discussed above.

None of this is meant to suggest that the estate tax should necessarily be seen as a “religious” custom, although many have made arguments for or against its implementation on the basis of the will of a supernatural being, a ‘God-given right,’ or a shared value that is greater than the needs of individual American citizens. What is noteworthy here is that religious practices surrounding death and burial serve the same functions or address the same social issues in many societies that legal institutions do in others.

11.12 Death in the Contemporary United States is Just as Strange as Anywhere Else

As we have repeatedly seen in this text, it can be easy to take your own cultural perspectives for granted – to believe that they are not actually “perspectives” at all, but objective truths . For many Americans, widespread practices surrounding death in this country are quite unremarkable; they seem to be based on science, and are unaffected by superstition. However, a brief examination of the ways that modern American (and English) burial customs have changed over several hundred years illuminates strange, irrational, and easily-taken-for-granted elements (Fowler 2004, 82-84).

Archaeologist Chris Fowler suggests that during the medieval period (roughly 1000 – 1500 AD), many cultures throughout Europe associated death with bodily decay, and explicitly displayed the process of decay in symbols on tombstones and in other works of art. Decay and decomposition was not viewed as an unsightly or grotesque problem to be solved in this cultural context. Instead, it was a part of what was seen as the “normal” or “ideal” way that death and its aftermath should proceed. Death was generally depicted in texts and artworks as a slow process, and following death, the supernatural component of a person (a spirit or soul) was believed to travel to the afterlife gradually, paralleling the gradual process of natural decay.

In contrast, Fowler describes what he sees as a 20th century obsession in some cultures of Britain and America with a need to control or even to prevent the process of decay, in the bodies of both the dead and even the living (see the case study on the Nacirema in Chapter 6 for related discussion). Fowler lists a variety of ritual practices relating to death that reinforce these values or obsessions in Britain and America. When an individual dies, he notes that specialists usually establish a specific “time of death,” which frames death as an instantaneous event rather than a prolonged process. After this, the body rarely remains with their surviving family members for long, as it does in other cultural settings. Instead, specialists (coroners and morticians) manipulate the body in private, using chemical and surgical techniques, in an attempt to make the deceased appear as healthy, youthful, clean, and as peaceful as possible (rather than leaving it unaltered).

When the living family encounter the body of their loved one again, they usually wish to see it “in one piece,” and treat it as if it remains unaltered, despite the fact that morticians have removed any organs to be donated and have replaced or modified parts of the body during the highly invasive embalming process. According to Peter Metcalf, when he described embalming practices to his Berawan informants, they were disgusted and confused by the strange behaviors of Americans:

“I became aware that a sudden silence had fallen over my audience. They asked a number of hesitant questions just to be sure that they had understood me correctly and drew away from me in disgust when they found that they had. So shocked were they that I had to backtrack rapidly and change my story. The topic was never broached again. (Metcalf 1978:7).”

Clearly, to the Berawan, American funeral practices are not unremarkable. In fact, they reflect specific cultural views and expectations about death and the body; views that have the potential to utterly disgust cultural outsiders with different worldviews!

While burial and cremation, the two most common ritual burial practices in the United States and Britain, differ in several key ways, both achieve the same effect: removing the body from visibility so that the living can continue to remember the deceased as “intact,” well-groomed, and untouched by any hint of natural decay. In contrast, for the Berawan people, decay and decomposition are seen as necessary parts of the process of dying; to prevent these processes from occurring is to fail in one’s moral obligations to the dead and to one’s family. This is because the visible decomposition of the body mirrors the invisible transformation of the person’s soul. The soul separates from a person’s body at death, but it lingers nearby, stuck in a liminal state as the body decomposes. As that decomposition occurs, the soul transforms into a spirit (see Chapter 6 for a discussion of the concept of “liminality”).

This liminal period of decomposition is also dangerous for the living, since evil spirits can reanimate a body and cause harm to the living until that body is fully decomposed. No wonder the Berawan were so horrified by Metcalf’s description of American funerary practices. From a Berawan perspective, they trap the soul in a prolonged state of misery and expose survivors to considerable danger!

Exercise 11B

How have American burial practices changed over time? How have they remained the same? Listen to NPR’s story, “ Bones In Church Ruins Likely The Remains Of Early Jamestown’s Elite .”

In addition to serving the living, what role did early colonial churches play for the dead?
How was the class system reinforced both in life and in death for early American colonists?

Image of a human skull against black background

11.13 Mourning, Cannibalism, and Kuru

Remember that the principle of cultural relativism is central to this course (see Chapter 1). Cultural relativism is the principle that we cannot judge or understand another culture’s beliefs or practices based on our own, culturally specific logic. Rather, we must examine other cultures based on their culturally specific logic and understanding of the world. While this isn’t always easy, close, holistic research can lead us to new ways of understanding those who appear to be different from us. Let’s practice this skill with the example of cannibalism.

In 1961, a team of anthropologists traveled to a remote region of Papua New Guinea to investigate the cause of a fatal disease called kuru (Lindenbaum 2015). They were able to connect the illness to the practice of cannibalism, but was cannibalism the cause of kuru? The answer is no. Eating human flesh does not cause disease. Eating diseased flesh does, however. Kuru spread among the Fore (pronounced “for-ay”) when a member of the community ate the diseased flesh of another member of the community. This disease functions similarly to Mad Cow Disease. Eating cow meat doesn’t automatically give you Mad Cow Disease, but eating the flesh of a cow who had Mad Cow Disease would then also give you the disease. What causes kuru is infectious prions (abnormally-shaped microscopic proteins) found in the brains of infected people. These proteins can infect other proteins they come into contact with, causing damage to the brain and nervous system, and even death. It is therefore those who ate the brains of the dead (usually women and children) who were then debilitated by this neurological disease (Lindenbaum 2015, 109).

Exercise 11C

The specific details of the Fore’s form of cannibalism are essential for anthropologists to understand. Read the article titled, “ Mortuary rites of the South Fore and kuru ” and take note on the worldview and ritual practices of the Fore.

How do the Fore view the soul and the afterlife?
Who performs the rituals necessary in this death ritual? Describe their responsibilities and consider how these duties correspond with their role in society.

11.14 Cannibalism as a Way of Managing Grief

We call the Fore endocannibalistic anthropophagers . This term refers to a community that eats their own dead (Stein and Stein 2017, 9). Please note that endocannibalistic anthropophagers do not kill people to eat and they do not eat the dead of other communities. They do not hunt down humans or farm humans for consumption. This type of cannibalism refers specifically to communities whose members only eat already dead members of their own community.

A grieving woman with her face resting on her hand

In another example, we may note that in some Jewish communities, the mourning period is considered to last for a full year, and individuals are expected to avoid certain activities during this time. For example, some Jewish people in mourning will not listen to or play music for the full year after a close family member has died.

The death rituals of our communities may be restricting, they may be empowering, or they may be both at the same time. Consider this example: one of the reasons why the Ebola outbreak of 2013-2016 in West Africa was so difficult to control was because some of the sacred mourning and death rituals in the region allow (or even require) mourners to touch, wash, dress, and cry over the bodies of their lost deceased loved ones (Manguvo and Mafuadze 2015). It is believed that connecting physically to a loved one’s body connects the living to ancestral spirits in the afterlife, and giving up this mourning practice would impact eternal life.

Unfortunately, Ebola is highly contagious immediately after a person has died; the virus is present in the bodily fluids of the corpse. It’s estimated that 60% of infected individuals contracted Ebola during a mourning ritual (ibid). People may resist public health directives that come from people they don’t know or trust (like government health officials), especially when those directives prohibit culturally required practices of mourning, including handling the bodies of loved ones who have passed away. It’s important for health officials to form relationships with local religious leaders in order to mitigate the impact that mourning rituals can have on people’s health. These leaders are in a position to modify cultural practices of mourning to the point that they are still meaningful, but no longer present a risk to the health of the mourners (ibid).

This West African mourning practice is empowering because it allows mourners special rights to express their grief. It is also restrictive because it has the potential to impact the mourners’ own health. As an anthropologist, it’s important to examine these issues through a variety of perspectives in order to understand the complete reality of the cultural practice and its implications.

Exercise 11D

The purpose, power, and value of land are often contested issues within a society. When a community utilizes land for burial, what obligations do other communities have to respect that? Listen to NPR story about burial sites in Arizona and this story about burial sites in Colorado to explore this type of conflict in modern, American society and reflect on the issues at hand.

What culture clashes are described in these stories? How do Native Americans and archeologists view the importance of this land and how does the American government view the importance of this land?
What burial traditions are described? How and why are these sacred traditions?

11.15 Cultural Relativism and Fore Cannibalism

Because we live in a diverse society, we are accustomed to cultural conflict. This conflict usually arises when a group of people expects another group to conform to their own, culturally-specific practices. We can prepare ourselves to examine the plight of the Fore by first examining two popular forms of death ritual embraced by many societies and by asking ourselves why they are preferred in each context. Consider the following:

Christianity is a diverse religion (like all others) and there is not one universal belief about the appropriate disposal of the dead in that community. But burial is commonly considered to be the best way to dispose of a dead body because, in many Christian communities, the body needs to remain intact in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. Burying preserves the body and allows the body to be resurrected upon Jesus’ return (Choudry 2018).
In Hinduism and Buddhism, it’s preferable to cremate a body because it’s believed that cremation allows the soul to be freed from the body (Choudry 2018). In this case, the soul may be reincarnated in a new life or it may be freed from the cycle of birth and death (called samsara ) in order to reach liberation from suffering (called moksha ).

Both communities are concerned with rebirth and with caring for the eternal soul of their loved ones. Christians want their souls to be reborn by their God upon his return, while Hindus and Buddhists want the soul to have a chance to be reborn in a new life. We can see that these two religions share a core value but that they seek to achieve it in mutually exclusive ways. Asking a Christian to cremate a body would prevent them from achieving salvation and asking a Hindu or Buddhist to bury a body would prevent them from achieving peace. We can practice cultural relativism to see that these cultural practices both make perfect sense in their own, culturally-specific contexts.

Remember that anthropologists take a holistic approach (defined in Chapter 1) when examining a cultural practice. If we don’t examine a community’s “big picture” worldview, we cannot make sense of their cultural practices and beliefs. As a student of anthropology, ask yourself, “what would need to be true for this cultural practice to make sense?” Then earnestly try to discover the answer whenever you encounter a cultural belief or practice that is different from what you expect or are comfortable within your own culture.

Remember that anthropologists practice objectivity, and therefore are:

not interested in making moral judgments.
not interested in creating a cultural hierarchy.

Anthropologists understand that moral judgments and cultural hierarchies are subjective concepts. It is not necessary for anthropologists to agree with or adopt a subjects’ mode of behavior or belief system, only to understand and appreciate it.

Cultural anthropologists know that what is “moral” is culturally-specific and that concepts like “better” or “worse” are also culturally-specific. We cannot judge another culture against our own ideas of morality, but we can strive to learn another culture’s idea of morality in order to understand them.

Let’s practice this with the Fore. The Fore believed that eating the body of their loved ones guarantees that the loved one’s soul will travel into the afterlife successfully while blessing the family who consumed their body (Whitfield et al. 2008, 3721). They believe that your body will, ultimately, be eaten by something (worms if you are buried and maggots if you’re not buried; Ibid 3722) and they believe that the best place that your body should ultimately rest is within the bodies of those who loved you. This process is called transumption , and the Fore believe that eating your family moves their soul into the afterlife (Ibid).

In the Fore worldview, your body becomes the fuel that sustains life for your children and then causes you to live on through them. But it’s not just one person who lives on in this way. As each generation has consumed their parents and grandparents, your body contains the entire ancestral line. To the Fore, burying a loved one in the ground would be a cruel fate that would separate the loved one, trap them forever in their dead body, and end the ancestral line.

At this point, you don’t need to morally agree with endocannibalism nor do you have to want to practice it yourself. But, as an anthropologist, you need to stretch your mind to be able to understand this unique cultural practice in its own terms. Soon, after you complete all of the work associated with this topic, you will get to decide how to analyze this cultural ritual using anthropological tools. We will closely examine the Fore’s form of endocannibalism and, at the end, you should develop your own ideas about this practice based on the evidence presented.

There is one final element to address: gender and power. As you read before, in the Fore community, the women and children were more likely to die from kuru because they are more likely to eat diseased flesh. While anthropologists do not like to judge another cultural practice against their own belief systems, we are interested in examining how these cultural practices are experienced differently by the groups with less power. As lower-status members of the community, women and children may not have the ability to protest the cultural practice of eating diseased flesh (this is hard to comment on without a direct study on the matter). According to Whitfield, Pako, Collinge, and Alpers, the women eat the diseased flesh as a sacrifice to the community and are later rewarded for doing this. According to Rebecca and Phillip Stein, women are given undesirable meat because they are less powerful in society. As always, please practice critical thinking and cultural relativism in order to develop your own ideas about this cultural practice.

Exercise 11E

Anthropologist Shirley Lindenbaum was a principal researcher among the Fore and it was her ethnographic work that ultimately brought kuru to an end. Read her article titled, “ An Annotated History of Kuru .”

“Gender Blindness” is the practice of ignoring the contributions and/or lived experiences of one gender (usually women) in fieldwork. How did gender blindness lead to poor medical research in this case?
What major revelation (previously dismissed by biologists) did Robert Glasse and Shirley Lindenbaum uncover and how did this change the debate surrounding kuru?
What problem arose when the local Fore people did not receive clear and accurate information about the anthropologists’ intentions for research?

11.16 Cross-Cultural Concepts of Cannibalism: Understanding the continuity of spirit

For many readers of this text, the concept of cannibalism may be seen as aberrant and taboo. For Westerners, the idea of cannibalism conjures up frightening or upsetting images. However, when the consumption of human flesh is part of societal religious practices, what does it really entail and what does it mean? In order to better understand the diversity and meaning behind the practice of cannibalism, we can examine cases of cannibalism as a societal practice – that is a mode of consuming humans that is an accepted practice in society. These practices are seen in many cultures around the world and are associated with ritualistic and religious beliefs that are deeply embedded in society. Please note that, in this course, we are not examining the aberrant forms of cannibalism (i.e., criminal) in Western society.

For cannibalism to be an accepted societal practice, the culture practicing the religion believes that partaking of the body or parts of the deceased ensures that the deceased person’s spirit lives on through them. For ritual cannibalism to be accepted, there has to be:

A belief in a supernatural human spirit.
A belief that the spirit can live on after death.
A cultural acceptance of the cyclical nature of life.

11.17 Cannibalism in Catholicism/Christianity

In the New Testament of the Bible, the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke detail what is known as the “Last Supper” of Jesus Christ, which occurs during the Jewish celebration of Passover, before Jesus is sentenced to death and crucified.

During this shared meal, Christ makes various ritualistic gestures as he breaks bread and shares wine with his followers. Specifically, in this story, he states the following as he passes bread to his followers, “Take, eat, this is my body.” Later in the meal Christ takes a cup of wine, and gives it to those present, saying “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

This practice is commemorated today in Christian services around the world. In Catholic traditions, this is known as the Eucharist. This ritual is not symbolic ; it is actually literal in its beliefs. The Catholic doctrine of “Real Presence” established the belief that the bread and wine are actually Christ’s flesh and blood, that Christ is literally present in the Holy Eucharist, and the wine is transfigured into the blood of Christ as it is consumed. A full one-third of Catholic Christians worldwide have a firm belief in the Real Presence of the Eucharist.

Medieval tapestry of a priest giving a woman communion wafer

So, here from an anthropological perspective, we see a few concepts unfolding.

The firm belief in the practice of cannibalism.
A person who sacrifices themselves to be consumed as the ultimate sacrifice.
A belief that the consumption of the sacrificed person unifies the consumer spiritually with the sacrificed person, so that the sacrificed person’s spirit lives on.

11.18 Revenge Cannibalism

The Korowai Tribe of Papua New Guinea practice a type of revenge cannibalism . The Korowai have a strong traditional belief in sorcery, witchcraft, and the belief of curses and revenge. These beliefs permeate the society and act as a sort of social sanction.

Anthropologists use the phrase social sanction to refer to a cultural practice that utilizes positive or negative feedback from others in order to enforce a standard of “proper” behavior. When we deny people access to social life in response to their “bad” actions, we are utilizing social sanctions.

For the Korowai, the belief in magic and sorcery works as a social sanction because “abnormal” behavior can cause one to be accused of being engaged in sorcery. People strive to get along with their community members in order to avoid societal punishment. However, these fears become so heightened that tensions can run high until fights and acts of revenge occur.

The Korowai explain illness and death in their own, culturally-specific way. In fact, until the 1970s when British anthropologists visited them, the Korowai had no idea there were any other people that were unlike themselves. Illness was viewed with suspicion and was explained as the action of an evil sorcerer. Before dying, a victim may state that they had a vision and they know who the sorcerer is that put a curse on them. If a child is dying, a child or an adult relative might name their sorcerer.

After the death, male relatives of the deceased person filled with rage, fear, and sadness, will go and find the named sorcerer, make them stand in a clearing, shoot them with arrows and then cook and eat the sorcerer. The parts and bones of the sorcerer are dismembered and put on branches to warn other would-be sorcerers of retribution.

What religious beliefs would support this action? The Korowai strongly believe that the sorcerers are cannibals. The Korowai believe that illness and death in a loved one is the result of the sorcerer’s magic. The Korowai believe in a practice in which a shaman literally eats the soul of a person from a physical distance; they call this practice remote eating (this results in the death of the victim) (van Enk 1997).

The Korowai claim they do not want to eat sorcerers. The Korowai say that human meat tastes terrible and that ‘ normal people should not eat each other ’. However, in order to prevent the sorcerer from eating people, the Korowai must eat them in retribution. For more, watch “ The Gentle Cannibals ” from Oxford Humanities.

Exercise 11F: Journal Reflection

Now that you more intimately understand cannibalism, has your opinion changed on the matter? In what way? What cultural representations of cannibalism are commonly presented in your culture and how have these impacted your understanding of the practice?

11.19 Relics

In some religious traditions, dead bodies of holy people, parts of dead bodies, and objects associated with the body of a holy person, take on a particular significance. These bodies, body parts, and objects are called relics. We can think of relics as a material aspect of a sacred person or sacred event that has remained on earth. In this sense, certain religious traditions understand relics as blurring the boundaries between life and death; they bring death into the world of the living but may also be believed to assert the continuity of life in death.

Anthropologists Victor Turner and Edith Turner have noted that relics work through the principles of sympathetic and contagious magic (Turner and Turner 2011). Relics involve sympathetic magic, because they can be embedded in a reliquary that resembles the form of the holy person, such as an icon or statue. Also they are often a part of the body, or an object that has been in intimate contact with the body of the holy person. Such an object or fragment of the body is thought to carry as much sacredness as the person from whom it came.

Some scholars argue that the oldest example of relics are those of Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, whose mummified remains were interred in pyramids and venerated. Mummification began as a way to prevent decomposition of the physical body so that when the spiritual element of a person (“ba”) was reunited with the body in the afterlife the body would be complete and functioning. In this section, we will examine relics in two major religious traditions: Catholicism and Buddhism.

11.20 Relics in Catholicism

In Catholicism, the focus on relics can be traced to the rise of the “cult of saints,” which began in the 3rd century CE and gained popularity in the 4th through 6th centuries CE. Whereas earlier Christian beliefs did not place particular importance on graves or bodies (the soul was what was important, and was understood by early Christians to separate from the body upon death and ascend to heaven), beginning in the 3rd century, tombs – and, moreover, the remains that they contained – began to be viewed as sacred sites on Earth. Indeed, tombs were thought to be a point of contact between heaven and Earth. By the medieval period, the cult of saints was so popular that people, including monks, robbed tombs, gravesites, and otherwise engaged in furta sacra , sacred theft in order to obtain relics to place in new shrines.

The historian Peter Brown in his work on Christianity in late antiquity (Brown 1981) argues that as relics were removed from graves scattered across Europe, the cult of saints became at once widespread and localized. New chapels and shrines sprung up in places where people managed to obtain a fragment of a saint’s body. Relics could unify communities and create social identities (a saint could be a patron of a particular place where their relic was located), reveal the Church’s power in a particular place (bishops could consolidate power by obtaining relics), and serve spiritual needs. Relics were thought to be able to produce miracles, in the same way that a saint could during his or her lifetime, such as curing an illness or a physical disability. Other signs believed to show a relic’s authenticity included apparitions, dancing lights, and sweet smells.

From late antiquity to the present, the desire of devout people to be close to the saints and sacred places has motivated them to undergo pilgrimage, a sacred and often transformative journey (see Chapter 6). Relics could travel, too, so that more people could venerate them: the travel of relics is called translation , and is highly ritualized.

Whereas the early veneration of relics generally took place in close proximity to a saint’s tomb, as relics traveled across Europe they were usually kept in reliquaries : cabinets, arks, chests, statues, busts, these containers were often in the shape of the body part that the fragment of bone came from (a head, a hand, an arm). Reliquaries are often spectacular works of religious artistry in their own right: they were often made with precious metals and gems, and were ornately worked and carved.

The emphasis on the proper attitude toward relics points to the importance placed on not viewing the relics as ends in themselves, but rather as a means to an end. They are to be venerated, not worshipped. They are to be recognized as a gift the saint left behind that carries memory of the saint’s own pious life and to be reminded that the owner of the bones has already achieved eternal life. Saints who died as martyrs are understood to have emulated both the life and death of Jesus because they gave up their own lives as a form of sacrifice. Relics in Catholicism work as a kind of channel or conduit to the sacred. At the same time, as Caroline Walker Bynum argues, there is a long history of devout Catholics treating material objects (statues, paintings, rosaries, and relics) as themselves “[loci] of the divine” (Bynum 2015, 65). Devout people may pray in the presence of the relic, meditate on the life of the saint, ask the saint to intercede on their behalf, give thanks to the saint for favors received.

In Catholicism, relics consist of bodies or part of the bodies of holy people (saints), objects associated with martyrdom (the sacrifice of one’s life for one’s religion), and other objects that came into close contact with the holy person. The holiness of a person is thought to exist in their body (or even in the tiniest fragment of their body) even after that person has passed away. In Catholicism, relics are generally categorized into three types:.

First-class relics consist of the entire bodies, or fragments of the bodies of saints and also instruments of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, such as splinters claimed to be from the cross that Jesus was crucified upon, the nails of the crucifixion, the crown of thorns, the shroud that covered Jesus’s body.
Second-class relics encompass objects made sacred by being in close proximity to saints like clothing, objects that the saint used, or instruments of a martyr’s torture.
Third-class relics are objects that touched either first- or second-class relics (Cruz 2015, 3).

11.21 Relics in Buddhism

When we look at relics in Buddhism, we see areas of similarity with Catholic beliefs and their practices surrounding relics, but we also see dissimilarities that reflect the theological differences between the two religions.

In Buddhism, the fragments of bodies and objects considered to be relics belong to the founder of Buddhism, Shakyamuni Buddha, other Buddhas of the past, and saints. Relics have been central to Buddhism since the beginning of that religion. They are considered to be both mobile and fecund, meaning that they miraculously move and multiply. The movement of relics helped to spread Buddhism across Asia (as Christianity spread across Europe). Relics are thought to carry memory and be receptacles of merit and virtue.

Relics in Buddhism may be fragments from the body, such as bones, teeth, hair, etc. . In Buddhism, bodies are generally cremated. The bodies of Buddhas are thought to exude substances during the cremation process and appear as hard, mineral or gemlike substances among the ashes. Some scholars think that the appearance of these crystallized bodily substances may be a cultural response to culturally based taboos concerning the handling of dead bodies, which are considered polluting. However, the existence of relics that are actual fragments of bodies would seem to contradict this idea. Relics also may be objects that belonged to the Buddha, such as his staff. They may consist of other traces of the Buddha’s presence on earth, such as his shadow or footprints. Yet another kind of relic in Buddhism is that of dharma, the Buddha’s teachings. Dharma relics can be anything that recorded these teachings, such as sutras, scriptural texts.

Relics are contained in reliquaries, which can be made of a number of different materials: clay, stone, crystal, and metal. Reliquaries may contain materials not directly associated with the Buddha, such as precious metals and gemstones, pearls, beads, and jewelry. The reliquaries are often placed in larger containers, or in multiple containers, one nesting inside another, then placed in a stupa . Stupas for safeguarding relics of the Buddha were first constructed in India, around 250 BCE. The earliest stupas were low, dome-shaped monuments that simply marked the presence of a sacred site and presence of the relics of the Buddha. Over the centuries, as Buddhism and its architecture spread across Asia, stupas became increasingly decorative, bearing reliefs and friezes. Stupas themselves were placed in prayer halls, or elaborate temples to be visited and venerated (Byrne 2015).

Buddhist tradition holds that following the Buddha’s cremation, the ashes were divided into eight parts to be enshrined in the form of a mound that ranges in shape from low mounds to bell and bulb shapes, depending upon the region. There are many thousands of Buddhists monasteries and temples across the world, and they all contain stupas. Not all possess relics; instead, upon the construction of stupas, they might contain tiny statues, amulets, or even the ashes of ordinary devout people. The continuity of connection between a relic of the Buddha and the Buddha himself allows the power of the Buddha to “flow through time” but also through space: from the relic, to the stupa, to the temple that houses the stupa, and even to the town where the temple is located (Byrne 2015).

The relics of the Buddha can be understood as equivalent to the Buddha: in different cultural settings and historical contexts, the relics of the Buddha have been viewed as being alive, being legally able to hold property, perform miracles, inspire devotees, and have the qualities of the Buddha himself. At the same time, the relics are not the Buddha; they are a substitute for the Buddha. They are mnemonic devices meant to invite reflection on the Buddha’s life.

Relics can be understood as extensions of the Buddha’s own life story: they have biographies of their own. Relics of the Buddha can work to make empires recognize and spread the teachings of the Buddha in regions that the Buddha did not visit in his own lifetime. Some legends tell that in the future, prior to the coming of the next Buddha, the Buddha’s relics, currently scattered across different regions of the world, will eventually assemble and undergo a parinirvana — final extinction and release from karmic rebirth (already experienced by the Buddha upon his death) — of their own (Strong 2004).

Exercise 11G: Journal Reflection

Reflect on loss in your community. How are social networks broken when a person dies? How are people in your community expected to grieve? Does the grieving process rebuild the broken social connections? How?

Exercise 11H: Study Guide

Define the following terms in your own words:

social network
memorial potlatch
secondary burial
egalitarian social organization
furta sacra
translation
reliquaries
Transumption
Endocannibalistic anthropophagers:
Death Ritual:
Mummification:
Tibetan Sky Burial:
Revenge Cannibalism:
Social Sanction:
Remote Eating:
Functionalism:

Ensure that you can briefly summarize the arguments of these social scientists:

Peter Metcalf
Chris Fowler
Peter Brown
Shirley Lindenbaum

Chapter 11 Works Cited

Brown, Peter. 1981. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Burch Jr., Ernest S. 2005. Alliance and Conflict: the world system of the Iñupiaq Eskimos. University of Nebraska Press.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 2015. Christian Materiality: An Essay in Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York: Zone Books.
Byrne, Denis. Buddhist stupa and Thai Social Practice. World Archaeology. Oct. 1995, Vol. 27, No. 2, Buddhist Archaeology. (Oct., 1995) pp. 261-288.
Chase-Dunn, C.K., and Hall, T.D. 1997. Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. New York: Routledge.
Cruz, Joan Carroll. 2015. Relics: What They Are and Why They Matter. Gastonia, NC: TAN Books.
Fowler, Chris. 2004. The Archaeology of Personhood. London: Routledge.
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontents. Hogarth.
Hayden, B. 2009. Funerals As Feasts: Why Are They So Important? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19(1):29-52.
Kan, Sergei. 1989. Symbolic Immortality: the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century. New York: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Lindenbaum, Shirley. “An Annotated History of Kuru.” Medicine Anthropology Theory | An Open-Access Journal in the Anthropology of Health, Illness, and Medicine, vol. 2, no. 1, 2015, p. 95., doi:10.17157/mat.2.1.217.
Malinowski, B. 1955. Magic, Science, and Religion. New York: Doubleday.
Manguvo, Angellar, and Benford Mafuvadze. “The Impact of Traditional and Religious Practices on the Spread of Ebola in West Africa: Time for a Strategic Shift.” The Pan African Medical Journal, vol. 22, no. 9, 2015, doi:10.11694/pamj.supp.2015.22.1.6190.
Margolin, Malcolm. 1978. The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area. Berkeley: Heyday Books.
Martin, Dan. “On the Cultural Ecology of Sky Burial on the Himalayan Plateau.” East and West, vol. 46, no. 3/4, 1996.
Metcalf, P. 1981. Meaning and Materialism: the Ritual Economy of Death. Man 16(4):563-578.
Munn, N. 1986. The Fame of Gawa. Duke University Press.
Sharf, Robert. H. The Buddha’s Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 93, No. 1 (March 2011), pp. 38-59
Stein, Rebecca L., and Philip L. Stein. The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft. Routledge, 2016.
Strong, John S. 2004. “Introduction.” In Relics of the Buddha. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 1-24.
Turner, Victor and Edith Turner. 2011. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Revised Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Weiner, Annette B. 1987. The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
Whitfield, Jerome T, et al. “Mortuary Rites of the South Fore and Kuru.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 363, no. 1510, 2008, pp. 3721–3724., doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0074.

Chapter 11 Suggestions for further reading

Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (2005)”Last Supper. The final meal Christ with His Apostles on the night before the Crucifixion.”, . The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed. rev.) (958). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Edgerton, Robert B. Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. Free Press, 1992.
Hazen, Walter (1 September 2002). Inside Christianity. Lorenz Educational Press.
Mershman, Francis. The Last Supper . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Slocum, Sally. “Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology.” Toward an Anthropology of Women, 1975.
Smith, Gregory A. 19 August 2019. Understanding US Catholics Belief in the Eucharist. Religion News Service. Available at: https://religionnews.com/2019/08/19/understanding-us-catholics-belief-in-the-eucharist/
Williams, Doug.17 Dec 2018. The Korowai Tribe: Cannibals of Papua New Guinea. Outdoor Revival. Available at: https://www.outdoorrevival.com/instant-articles/the-korowai-tribe-cannibals-of-papua-new-guinea.html

Sections 11.1-11.12 written by Ben Shepard. Edited by Sarah Etheridge, Brian Pierson, Jennifer Sime, and Amanda Zunner-Keating. Special thanks to Jennifer Campbell for curating photos; and to Melody Yeager-Struthers for organizing our resources. Sections 11.13-11.19 written by Amanda Zunner-Keating and Laurie Solis. Edited by Ben Shepard, Madlen Avetyan, Brian Pierson, Sarah Etheridge, and Jennifer Sime. Special thanks to Jennifer Campbell for curating photos, Melody Yeager-Struthers for organizing our resource list. Student research/editing by Angelica Alvarado. Sections 11.20-11.22 written by Jennifer Sime. Edited by Sarah Etheridge, Brian Pierson, Ben Shepard, and Amanda Zunner-Keating. Textbook layout by Amanda Zunner-Keating and Madlen Avetyan. Audio recorded by Amanda Zunner-Keating. Photo by Ahmed Adly on Unsplash.

NPR links on this are linked NPR’s website with permission from NPR . All NPR content (audio, text, photographs, graphics, videos) is protected by copyright in the U.S. and other countries. For more, visit NPR’s Rights and Permissions website .

Death and Dying Copyright © by Amanda Zunner-Keating; Madlen Avetyan; and Ben Shepard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Insights into Ancient Greek Religion: Myth, Rituals, and Beliefs

This essay about ancient Greek religion explores the intricate tapestry of myth, rituals, and beliefs that shaped the civilization’s worldview. It examines the pantheon of Olympian gods, the significance of myths in explaining natural phenomena and human experiences, and the role of rituals in communication with the divine. Additionally, it discusses the Greeks’ beliefs about the afterlife and their enduring legacy in Western civilization. Through a lens of historical inquiry, the essay sheds light on the profound impact of ancient Greek religion on society, culture, and philosophy.

How it works

In the tapestry of ancient civilizations, Ancient Greece stands out as a beacon of culture, philosophy, and art. Central to the fabric of Greek society was religion, an intricate weave of myth, rituals, and beliefs that shaped every aspect of life for its citizens. Delving into the depths of ancient Greek religion reveals a fascinating panorama of gods and goddesses, rituals and ceremonies, and a worldview that profoundly influenced Western civilization.

At the heart of ancient Greek religion were the Olympian gods, a pantheon of deities residing on Mount Olympus.

Led by Zeus, the king of the gods, this divine family encompassed a myriad of personalities, each with their own domain and sphere of influence. From Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, to Aphrodite, the embodiment of love and beauty, these gods and goddesses were both revered and feared by mortals, their actions shaping the course of human affairs.

The myths of ancient Greece were not merely stories but potent narratives that provided explanations for the mysteries of the natural world and the complexities of human existence. From the epic tales of the Trojan War to the adventures of heroes like Hercules and Odysseus, these myths served as a cultural touchstone, offering moral lessons and insights into the human condition. Moreover, they formed the basis of religious rituals and festivals, with dramatic performances and sacrifices honoring the gods and commemorating legendary events.

Rituals played a central role in ancient Greek religion, serving as a means of communication with the divine and fostering a sense of community among worshippers. From elaborate ceremonies at temples and shrines to private rituals conducted in the home, these practices sought to appease the gods, seek their favor, and ensure the well-being of individuals and the state. Sacrifice was a common ritual, with offerings of animals, fruits, and libations made to the gods in exchange for blessings and protection.

Belief in the afterlife was another fundamental aspect of ancient Greek religion, shaping attitudes towards death and the hereafter. The concept of Hades, the underworld ruled by the god of the same name, provided a framework for understanding the journey of the soul after death. While the Greeks believed in an existence beyond the grave, their views on the afterlife varied, with some envisioning a realm of eternal bliss for the righteous and others a gloomy realm of shadows for the wicked.

In conclusion, ancient Greek religion was a rich tapestry of myth, rituals, and beliefs that permeated every facet of society. From the heights of Mount Olympus to the depths of the underworld, the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology shaped the destiny of mortals and provided a framework for understanding the mysteries of the universe. Through rituals and ceremonies, worshippers sought to honor the divine, seek guidance, and ensure prosperity in this life and the next. Today, the legacy of ancient Greek religion endures as a testament to the enduring power of myth and the human quest for meaning in an ever-changing world.

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Cultural Belief System: Experiences and Traditions Essay

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6.3: Culture, Values, and Beliefs

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Values and Beliefs

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Intricate Relationships among Religion, Communication, and Culture

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Religion as Part of Culture in Communication Studies

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3.1 What Is Culture?

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How Cultural Beliefs Affect Health Care: Working with Diverse Patients

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11 Death and Dying