Anthropology of Religion: The Basics

Citation

Bielo, J. S. (2015). Anthropology of Religion: The Basics. Routledge. The Basics series.

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

James S. Bielo, an anthropologist at Miami University, Ohio, who wrote the book between early 2013 and late 2014, organises this short introduction (192 pages, six chapters) around research problems rather than topics or world religions. A "problem", in the preface's sense, is a foundational source of inquiry that any anthropologist of religion meets, whatever their field site. The preface says the aim is not to be exhaustive but to equip students with intellectual tools to investigate any research question, and Bielo, who prefers to teach with ethnographies rather than textbooks, presents the book as a companion volume to ethnographies or as supplementary reading. Each chapter combines theory with short ethnographic cases from many traditions, includes "reflection boxes" that ask readers to apply concepts to a case, and ends with a chapter summary; further reading and an index close the book.

Chapter 1: What Is "Religion"?

The opening chapter sets out to show why a single, succinct definition of religion would be unhelpful and even misleading. It compares nine definitions, from Tylor (1871), Frazer, William James and Durkheim to Radin, Wallace, Geertz (1966), Klass and Atran (2002), dividing them into "foundational" and later sets and reading each as a clue to its author's theoretical commitments, such as Tylor's evolutionism or Geertz's interpretive anthropology. Talal Asad's critique of Geertz's definition and examples from popular and consumer culture (including Oprah Winfrey) test the boundaries of the category.

Chapter 2: Doing Religious Ethnography

This chapter addresses how to study religion ethnographically: ethics, fieldwork dynamics and epistemology. It sets out four methodological postures towards religious truth claims (including methodological atheism and methodological theism), with examples such as Edith Turner's engagement with healing practices as real and Susan Harding's fieldwork among fundamentalist Baptists, and closes with "productive reflexivity".

Chapter 3: Bodies, Words, and Things

How can the immaterial be made present? The chapter introduces mediation as a process and examines it through the body, religious language (prayer, verbal art and language ideologies, with cases such as the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea and a charismatic megachurch in Sweden), music (gospel rap and samba in Brazil) and material things, including the links between religion and consumption.

Chapter 4: In Time, In Place

The chapter treats religion as world-making: religions provide experiential, moral, social and cosmological realities that adherents accept as true. It explores models of temporality, sacred place and collective memory, with cases including Garifuna collective memory and shamans' healing altars and the Mescalero Apache, and shows world-making as a contested social process.

Chapter 5: Who Do You Trust?

The problem here is religious authority. Starting from Max Weber's ideal types of bureaucratic and charismatic authority, the chapter considers charisma as a relationship between leader and followers, the role of charisma in generating critiques of the existing order, and the authority of institutions, scriptures and rituals.

Chapter 6: Going Global

The final chapter defines globalisation, introduces the idea of "sacroscapes" to link religion with global flows, and distinguishes two expressions of religious globalisation: diasporic religion (Hindu communities in Mauritius and a second migration, with a box on French Islam) and transnational religion (global Rastafarianism, Pentecostalism and prosperity teaching, and the Virgin of Guadalupe at the centre of a transnational ritual). Thomas Csordas's idea that religions travel through "portable practice" and "transposable message" frames the analysis.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Defining and Studying Religion

• Definitions as clues: each definition of religion reveals its author's theoretical and normative assumptions.
• Methodological postures: stances such as methodological atheism and methodological theism that ethnographers adopt towards religious truth claims.
• Reflexivity: critical attention to how the researcher's position shapes fieldwork and knowledge.

Chapters 3–4: Mediation, Time and Place

• Mediation: the ongoing process by which bodies, words and things make the immaterial present.
• Language ideology: a community's beliefs about what language is and does, which shape prayer and religious speech.
• Religious world-making: the social construction of realities, through time, place and memory, that adherents accept as true.

Chapters 5–6: Authority and Globalisation

• Charismatic and bureaucratic authority: Weber's ideal types for different sources of trust and legitimacy.
• Sacroscapes: religious flows that cross the globe alongside flows of people, media and money.
• Diasporic and transnational religion: religion carried by migrant communities, and religion that spreads across borders and is continually localised.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Organised by problems, not by religions. Instead of surveying world religions or listing topics, the six chapters each pose a question (definition, method, mediation, world-making, authority, globalisation), which equips students to approach any case. S. D. Glazier's review in Choice notes that the chapters follow a logical progression that conveys the anthropology of religion as a discipline.
• Method gets its own chapter. Chapter 2's treatment of methodological postures and reflexivity addresses how to study religion as well as what is studied, as the publisher's description emphasises.
• Wide ethnographic range. Cases run from Papua New Guinea and the Philippines to Brazil, Sweden, Mauritius and Native North America; Glazier highlights the attention to interactions between world religions and local traditions.
• Built for active learning. Reflection boxes ask students to apply concepts to cases or to their own fieldwork, and reviewers (Glazier; Abby Day and Simon Coleman in Religion) praise both its accessibility and Bielo's own theoretical contribution.

Limitations

• Selective by design. At under 200 pages and six chapters, the book is not exhaustive, as the preface states; topics such as magic and witchcraft do not have chapters of their own, and each problem is introduced through a handful of cases.
• Weighted towards Christianity and recent ethnography. Many examples come from Christian communities (Baptist, charismatic Catholic, Pentecostal, convert and megachurch settings) and from recent ethnographies; students wanting the classic ethnographic record will need other reading.
• Designed as a companion. The author intends it to be read alongside full ethnographies, so on its own it gives frameworks more than depth.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is one of the entry-level books in the course on kinship, religion and ritual. Barry Stephenson's Ritual: A Very Short Introduction is its natural partner for the ritual half of the course, surveying how ritual has been defined and theorised and showing ritual beyond religion. Stein, Stein, Kracht and Snipes's The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft is a fuller textbook covering ritual, symbolism, healing, magic and witchcraft; read Bielo first for the questions, then the textbook for breadth.

The classic studies in the course, Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger and Victor Turner's The Ritual Process, together with Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, are best read after Bielo's chapters on definition and on time and place have provided the vocabulary. Janet Carsten's After Kinship and David Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood belong to the kinship side of the course, which this book does not address.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no previous study of anthropology or religious studies and is written for students meeting the subject for the first time. The preface invites both students and instructors to use it alongside ethnographies.

• Read Chapters 1 and 2 first. They establish how to think about the category of religion and how to study it.
• Pair each later chapter with an ethnography. Chapters 3–6 work best when read alongside a full study on the same problem, for example a monograph on prayer and language, on pilgrimage and place, on a charismatic movement or on a diasporic community.
• Do the reflection boxes. Several suggest small research tasks, such as comparing genres of religious speech or analysing a ritual, that can grow into a short ethnographic project.

Use the chapter summaries for revision and the further-reading list to choose essay sources. When a definition or theory is introduced, return to the original author before citing it.