LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Food and the Biocultural Approach Many anthropologists take a biocultural approach to their study of food, looking at how food plays both a cultural and a biological role in…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Food Artifacts The study of early human diets is important in understanding the evolution of the human species. The size and shape of our skulls and teeth…
Figure 14.1 A fruit and vegetable vendor in Saigon, Vietnam. How many of these foods do you recognize? (credit: “Vietnam Sept 2012 3432 Market, Sa Dec, Viet Nam” by Lynda/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Chapter Outline 14.1 Food as a Material Artifact 14.2 A Biocultural…
Religion is found across all cultures, and yet it can be difficult to define. French sociologist Émile Durkheim used an empirical definition, identifying religion as an institution related to “sacred things,” with beliefs, practices, and a social organization. This definition…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Utopian Religious Communities While the most typical form of religious community today is a group of people who share a common faith and set of beliefs and…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: The Varieties of Ritual Experience in Religion Rituals, also called rites, are performative acts by which we carry out our religious beliefs, public and private. As sociologist Émile…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: The Role of Myth in Religion Sometimes, our everyday usage of a word is the same as its scholarly use; when it comes to the word myth, however,…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Symbolism in Religion Symbolism plays a vital role in religion. A symbol stands for something else, is arbitrary, and has no natural connection to its reference. There are two…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Defining Religion, Spirituality, and Worldview An anthropological inquiry into religion can easily become muddled and hazy because religion encompasses intangible things such as values, ideas, beliefs, and…
Figure 13.1 A man carries a Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel, rotating it as a way of sending out prayers as blessings. (credit: “Person in face mask holding Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Wheel” by Grisha Grishkoff/Pexels, CC0) Chapter Outline 13.1 What Is Religion? 13.2 Symbolic and…