The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft

Citation

Stein, R. L., Stein, P. L., Kracht, B. R., & Snipes, M. M. (2025). The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft (5th ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The fifth edition has twelve chapters. Every chapter ends with a conclusion, a summary and study questions, and many include numbered boxes with extended examples, tables and the short "marginalia" case notes that the publisher lists among the features of this edition. Routledge lists 414 pages and 114 black-and-white illustrations.

Chapter 1: The Anthropological Study of Religion

The foundations. Sections cover the concept of culture, cultural relativism and ethics, the four fields of anthropology, the holistic approach and ethnographic fieldwork (with a Fore example from New Guinea and a Kiowa fieldwork box). The chapter then surveys theoretical approaches to religion (evolutionary, Marxist, functional, interpretive, psychosocial, bio-cognitive and postmodern), takes up attempts at defining religion, and sets out religion's dependent and independent variables, with tables of culture areas and food-getting strategies.

Chapter 2: Religious Symbols

What a symbol is, with examples such as the swastika, the pentagram and Christian symbols; sacred art and architecture (Maya architecture and hierophany); the meaning of colour; sacred space and time (the Maya view of time, Australian totemism and Dreamtime); the symbolism of music and dance; and tattooing and other permanent body alterations.

Chapter 3: Mythology

The nature of myths, worldview and oral texts; approaches to analysis, from nineteenth-century searches for origins through functional, structural and psychological readings; and common themes: origin, emergence, apocalyptic and hero myths, with a Navajo creation story and a table of the monomyth in cinema.

Chapter 4: Ritual

The basics of performance and a classification of rituals: technological, protective, divination, therapy and anti-therapy, ideological (offerings and sacrifice, including Maya autosacrifice), and rites of intensification. It also treats rites of passage with transition and liminality, revitalization rituals, body alteration, pilgrimage (the hajj, Huichol and Zuni pilgrimages), and religious obligations including tabu.

Chapter 5: Altered States of Consciousness

The nature of altered states and how people enter them (fasting, sacred pain), their biological basis, and ethnographic cases: San healing, the Cheyenne Sun Dance, Holiness churches and snake-handlers, and hallucinogen-induced states from South American shamanism to peyote and the Native American Church.

Chapter 6: Religious Specialists

Shamans (becoming one, the role, Siberian, Yakut and Korean shamanism, Pentecostal healers, neoshamanism), priests (Zuni priests, Okinawan priestesses, Eastern Orthodox priests, the monks of Mt. Athos), and other specialists such as Kiowa owl prophets.

Chapter 7: Magic and Divination

The nature of magic, its relation to religion and its rules (homeopathic and contagious); magic in the Trobriand Islands, among the Azande and the Kiowa, and in Wicca; forms of divination, including the I Ching, ordeals, astrology and oracles; and magical thinking and why magic is believed to work.

Chapter 8: Souls, Ghosts, and Death

Concepts of the soul (Yup'ik, Yanomamö, Hmong, Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist), ancestors, ghosts, vampires and zombies, and death rituals, from funerary practice to Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

Chapter 9: Gods and Spirits

Spirits (including Japanese kami, guardian spirits and jinn), types of gods and their relation to society, goddesses, monotheism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and atheism.

Chapter 10: Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Wizardry

Distinguishes witchcraft, sorcery and wizardry; examines Zande, Zuni, Fore and Kiowa cases; then turns to Euro-American witchcraft beliefs and the European witchcraze, modern witch hunts, and neo-paganism and Wicca.

Chapter 11: Magic, Medicine, and Religion

The new chapter on religion and healing. It treats explanatory models, disease and illness, healers in the sectors of healthcare, personalistic and naturalistic medical systems, humoral pathology and the rise of biomedicine, and religion in clinical settings.

Chapter 12: The Search for New Meaning

Revitalization movements (Vodou, Santería, cargo cults, the Ghost Dance, Mormonism), fundamentalism, high demand religions and the "cult" question, and new directions such as "spiritual but not religious".

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Cultural relativism: studying beliefs and practices on their own terms, introduced with the discussion of ethics.
• Hierophany and sacred space: the manifestation of the sacred in place, seen in Maya architecture.
• Rites of passage and liminality: ritual marking of status change, with a threshold phase between.
• Revitalization: ritual and movements that renew a culture.

Chapters 5–8

• Altered states of consciousness: induced states, from fasting to hallucinogens, tied to religious experience.
• Shaman and priest: contrasting religious specialists.
• Homeopathic and contagious magic: the two rules of magic in Chapter 7.
• Divination: techniques for gaining knowledge by supernatural means.

Chapters 9–12

• Witchcraft, sorcery and wizardry: distinct categories of harmful power (Chapter 10).
• Explanatory models: the way illness is accounted for in a medical system (Chapter 11).
• High demand religions: groups examined in Chapter 12.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Clear teaching structure. Each chapter ends with a conclusion, summary and study questions, and the publisher says each one reviews earlier foundations so students connect what they learn. A companion website supplies interactive activities, case studies and updated study questions.
• Breadth of topic and example. The twelve chapters range from symbols and myth through ritual, trance, specialists, magic, death and gods to witchcraft and new religious movements, with cases drawn from many parts of the world.
• Strong Indigenous North American material. Kiowa examples appear in Chapters 1, 6, 7, 9 and 10, in line with the authors' fieldwork. The publisher adds that this edition has new case material, especially from Indigenous communities, and a revised introduction that pushes towards decolonizing the anthropology of religion.
• Useful additions. The new chapter on religion and healing, expanded coverage of symbols, healing and wizardry, and the marginalia that can serve as prompts for in-class cases.

Limitations

• Theory is compressed. Seven theoretical approaches share a single section of Chapter 1; courses wanting more will need primary readings.
• Breadth over depth. Chapters such as 4 and 8 move through dozens of short cases, which suits a survey but leaves little room for sustained ethnography.
• Organised by topic, not tradition. Material on a single tradition is spread across chapters: Judaism, Christianity and Islam appear under monotheism in Chapter 9, while Hindu and Buddhist ideas of the soul are in Chapter 8. Students wanting a systematic account of one religion will need another source.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the kinship, religion and ritual list, Stein and colleagues is the broad, case-based first textbook. James Bielo's Anthropology of Religion: The Basics is a shorter introduction organised around the questions researchers ask, and could precede or replace it for a quick course. Barry Stephenson's Ritual: A Very Short Introduction is a brief survey of how ritual has been theorised.

For the topics of Chapter 4, Victor Turner's The Ritual Process treats liminality and communitas in rites of passage, Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger analyses pollution and taboo, and Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice is a theoretical study that proposes understanding ritual as practice; each deepens a section that the textbook covers in a few pages. Janet Carsten's After Kinship and David Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood concern family and relatedness more than religion and are separate directions.

How to Use This Book

The book is for students beginning the anthropology of religion, and for religious studies and sociology students who want a comparative, case-based approach. No prior study of anthropology or religion is needed; Chapter 1 supplies the vocabulary.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1 to 4 in order, since later chapters rely on the concepts of culture, symbol, myth and ritual.
• Choose by interest: Chapters 5 to 9 can be taken in any order; Chapters 7 and 10 pair well, as do 8 and 9.
• Applied topics: Chapter 11, the new healing chapter, suits courses in medical anthropology or health studies; Chapter 12 suits courses on social movements and change.
• Study aids: use the study questions and the marginalia as prompts, and pair each chapter with a full ethnography on the same theme.