Dr. Stiles Power-Point Questions

Symbols and Material Culture

  1. Overview of Symbols
    1. What are Symbols?
    2. Types of Signs: Raymond Firth (building on Pierce)
      1. Index, Icon, Signal, Symbol
  1. Symbolic Anthropology and Religion
    1. Clifford Geertz: Meaning
    2. Victor Turner: Structure
    3. Divergent Opinions
  1. Religious Symbols and Material Culture
    1. How objects create meaning
    2. Types: Spaces, Icons/Idols, Charms, Masks, The Body

Susan Harding article

  1. How does Harding look at conversion?  What is conversion in this context?
  1. How is rhetoric/speech the vehicle for conversion here?
  1. What is witnessing? What does it mean to “come under conviction”?
  1. How did people in this community view Harding?
  1. What characterized Reverend Cantrell’s rhetoric?

•         How does rhetoric induce liminality? What does this mean?

  1. To what is the transforming power of rhetoric attributed?
  1. What is being saved? How does Harding conclude the article?

Sacred Speech

  1. What is sacred speech?
  1. The Qur’an in the Islamic tradition
    1. What is the Qur’an?
    2. Learning and Reciting the Qur’an
    3. Recitation: Listening Exercise
  1. Navajo example: review on your own from Bowen book
  1. Speech and Language among Protestants in the United States
    1. The Holy Ghost People (film from last week). What was going on here?
      1. A Pentecostal church
    1. Susan Harding article on speech and language among “fundamentalist” Baptists

Religion across Borders and Cultures, part I

  1. “Diaspora” and “Transnational”
    1. How are the terms used?
    2. Why doesn’t Bowen want to talk about an Islamic or Christian “diaspora”?
  1. African Religions and the Atlantic
    1. Brazilian examples: Umbanda, Candomble and Macumba
    2. How are the Catholic symbols “multivocalic”?
      1. Mary example
  1. World Religions
    1. Redfield’s “Great Traditions” and “Little Traditions” (1953)
    2. How do anthropologists study “world religions”?
  1. “Syncretism” and “Nominalism”
    1. How are the terms used?
    2. What are the benefits and drawbacks of using these terms?
Religion Across Borders and Cultures, Part II
II.Transnationalism, continued: Transnational Islam
A.Movement of population
B.Transnational institutions and organizations
•Sufi Order Example
C.Debates about global Islam
III.
III.Islam in Europe
A.Britain
B.France
C.What are some of the differences in patterns of migration?  Muslim life in these countries today?
IV.Headscarf debate in France
A.Laïcité: Policy of public secularism
Religion in the Modern World, Part I
I.Modernity, Tradition, and Religion
A.What does it mean to be modern?  Traditional?
B.Charles Hirschkind: Cassette Sermon in Egypt
•How does this article make us rethink the opposition between “traditional” and “modern”?
II.
II.Religion and Violence
A.Are religions inherently violent?  Peaceful?
B.Hindu Muslim conflict in India
C.Jihad and “jihads”
•Understand as specific power struggles
D.Galit Hasan-Rokem: what is the problem with the term “martyr” in the Israeli-Palestine conflict?
Charles Hirschkind “Passional Precahing, Aural Sensibility...”
1.
1.What is the focus of this article? What are the cassette sermons?
2.
2.Why does Hirschkind argue that acquiring religion is more than and less than holding a set of doctrines?
3.
3. How can religious practice cultivate a set of ethical dispositions? 
4.
4.What does he mean by saying listening to the cassette sermons are a disciplinary practice? How is the body trained?
5.
5.What are considered the appropriate means of understanding, listening and reacting to sermons?  How is this developed?
6.
6.Who is the khatib and what does he do?
7.
7.How is this part of the historical Islamic tradition?  How is it relevant to the “sensory engagement” with the Qur’an?
8.
8.How are the ethnical practices that are learned relevant across social domains?  Why is this not simply akin to enculturation?
9.
9.How does this research make us rethink the opposition between “traditional” and “modern”? 
10.