What did anthropologist george gmelch note about baseball as an activity?

Religion, Magic and Worldview

“The Worst Lover: Boyfriend Spirits in Senegal” by Rachel Mueller

“Baseball Magic” by George Gmelch

“Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage” by Jill Dubitsch

“Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner

#31: Body Ritual among the Nacirema (Horace Miner)

What are a few adjectives you’d use to describe the Nacirema? Why?

Explain.

The Nacirema…like you/ NOT like you?

What are some of the beliefs and body rituals of the Nacirema?

The most fundamental belief underlying the whole system?

Most fundamental belief underlying the whole system….

“The human body is ugly and its natural tendency is to debility and disease.” (288)

Ways to avert and cope are through ritual and ceremonies…

Every home has a shrine dedicated to this purpose… but not for families….private and secret individual ceremonies and rituals.

Shrines and charm boxes.

What are some of the body rituals of the Nacirema?

Body rituals among the Nacirema

Mouth –rites (bundles of hog hairs into the mouth)

Holy mouth men

Medicine men

Men-scrape and lacerate the skin on their face

Women bake their heads in ovens

How do these help people function?

What is the latipso, and for what is it used?

“Some natives are taken here never to recover”

Children resist going here necause that is where you go to die” (290)

What do you think the psychological functions of Nacireman body ritual are?

Who ARE the Nacirema?

The author describes this poorly understood people

“They are a North American group living between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and the Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and the Arawak of ther Antilles.”

“a highly developed marked economy…”

“A North American group living between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles.” (288)

Who are the Nacirema, and why do you think Miner wrote this article?

“Body Ritual among the Nacirema”

Offers a satirical view of American culture

Addresses assumptions about “primitive”/ “advanced” societies

Magic and superstition in an modern,

industrialized society

Cultural relativity

Ethnocentrism

Miner wrote this classic essay in 1958…

2018….changes?

#29: Baseball magic (George Gmelch)

This essay begins with a story about Dennis Grossini, a former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.

Why?

Why does the author (George Gmelch) discuss Bronislaw Malinowski’s theories on magic?

Lagoon

Open sea fishing

According to Gmelch, what is magic

and why do people practice it?

“By magic, anthropologists refer to practices (267)

Rituals

Taboos

Fetishes

(good luck charms)

What parts of baseball are most likely to lead to magical practice? Why?

Illustrate these concepts using examples from this article.

How does the risk and uncertainty of pitching and hitting affect players?

How do they try to control the outcome of their performance?

Uncertainty and Magic

Bronislaw Malinowski

B.F. Skinner

How are their theories of magic alike and different? What is each designed to explain?

Uncertainty and Magic

Bronislaw Malinowski

Anthropologist

Helps us understand how baseball players respond to uncertainty/ anxiety

Belief in having control increases confidence

B.F. Skinner

Behavioral psychologist

Sheds light on why personal rituals get established in the first place; linking particular behavior with a reward

Stuart Vyse adds: “Humans like Skinner’s pigeons tend to repeat any behavior that is coincident with success” (274) Baseball players unlike pigeons are quicker to change rituals once they no longer seem to work (274)

In a footnote, Gmelch notes some research of interest regarding cross-cultural comparisons between American and Japanese baseball players

Americans in general more superstitious than Japanese players

American players believed their superstitions, routines and rituals aided individual performance

Japanese players believed their superstitions aided team performance

Can you think of other areas in the U.S. where magic is practiced?

Do the same theories in this article account for these examples too?

Why do you think Gmelch wrote this article?

Gmelch, who in the 1960s played pro baseball for the Detroit Tigers

took an Anthropology course on “Religion, Magic and Witchcraft”

Listened to professor lecturing on magic and rituals of the Trobriand Islanders…where it occurred to him that what these so-called “primitive” people did wasn’t all that different from what he and his teammates did for luck and confidence in the ballpark (267)

“Baseball Magic”

Describes the use of magic by baseball players

Illustrates nature of magic, fetishes, taboo, and ritual

Ties the use of magic to anxiety related to uncertainty

Malinowski (stress reduction, uncertainty)

B. F. Skinner to show magic's relationship to personal rituals nature of cause and effect

Intro ….“People seem most content

when they are confident about themselves and the world around them.” (254)

Uncertainty breeds anxiety…

“From time to time the unexpected or the contradictory intervenes to shake peoples’ assurance.”

Crops fail

A woman’s husband runs off with another woman

Death, natural disaster, countless other forms of adversity strike…

Magic, one way to cope with uncertainty

Helps people function

#28: The Worst Lover: Boyfriend Spirits on Senegal (Rachel Mueller)

Senegal shaped by two historical influences:

1000 -Muslims arrived w/ Sufi Islam

Prayer mats. head coverings,

marabouts (islamic holy men)

2)1800s- French colonization

French language & gov’t

French & Wolof

Key to the story

Rab…..

Faru rab

Teranga

Spirit Possession and Rab

Laye Fatou’s story?

Lebou religion

What attracts rab spirits?

In what ways do rab resemble humans?

Essay…negative effects of the faru rab on women

Demonstrates steps women must take to reject these spirits, including the dramatic ndepp ritual

Marabout (healer)/ Ndepp (public ritual)/ Ndeppkat (priestess)

Divination

Sacrifice

Ndepp ceremony

Ways of Communicating with the Supernatural World

Spirit possession occurs when a supernatural being enters an individual and controls that person's behavior.

Onlookers can then communicate with the spirit.

Sacrifice is the act of giving up something to influence supernatural beings.

Prayer is a petition directed at a supernatural being.

Can boyfriend spirits co-exist with Islam?

“Rab” in Senegalese Society

What prognosis does Mueller provide for the survival of rab in changing Senegalese society?

Lébou people of Senegal claim to live among rab spirits alongside devout worship of Islam

Explains how rab fits into both Islam and Senegal

Historic religion

Archaic religion

Syncretism

Medical pluralism (rab healers * western trained doctors)

Syncretism

Creative blending of indigenous and foreign beliefs and practices into new cultural forms.

EG: Vodou (divine spirit) is an example of a syncretic religion as it combines both Christian and African belief systems.

Divination

is the use of supernatural force associated with selected material objects to learn answers to particular questions.

Example: The Bhils of India predict the abundance of summer rainfall by watching where a bird lands when it is released.

If it settles on something green, rain will be plentiful; if it settles on brown, the year will be dry.

“Signs”…omens

Divination, omens, signs

A method to prepare for the unknown and/or not yet present.

Divination- a magical procedure for determining the cause of a particular event, such as illness, or foretelling the future.

Do we practice this in our society?

Nechung Oracle Tibet

Divination

Palm readings

Tarot readings

I Ching

Dreams

#30: Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage (Jill Dubisch)

What is this essay about?

What kind of people started the Run for the Wall?

Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage (st. 1989)

Describes a yearly 10 day pilgrimage from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. by motorcyclists, many of whom are veterans of the Vietnam War (arr Memorial Day Weekend)

What does Dubisch mean by

the term “ritual”?

a pilgrimage?

Key terms

Ritual: “a patterned, repetitive, symbolic enactment of cultural belief or value” (279)

The primary purpose of a ritual is “transformation”

Rituals are often performed to mark important occasions times, transitions

Easter, Passover,etc

Often think of them as “traditional” being transmitted generation to generation – but the fact is that they an ongoing human activity are need to be recreated every time they are performed

Rituals subject to intentional and unintentional change

Run for the Wall

Yearly tradition - ritual

Modified and changed and added to every year by those who participate in it and those who host them along the way

Pilgrimage:

As a ritual

Is a journey

One type of “rite of passage”

Marked by a liminal period of physical separation created by the journey itself

Once the journey is over – the pilgrim often has an experience of inner transformation: healing, atonement for sim or spiritual renewal (280)

Anthropology of Ritual

Arnold van Gennep - Rites of passage: separation, betwixt or between (liminality) and reaggregation

Victor Turner – rituals as having two poles: the ideological and the sensory

Important messages about social values

Mircea Eliade – rituals often reenact the important myths of society

Dubisch argues that the Run for the Wall

has a strong emotional and transformative impact on those who participate.

What appears to generate such intense feelings?

Dangers of the road

Reawakening of memories from the trauma of war

a difficult period in history – era of the Vietnam war…and social protests

Purpose of the Pilgrimage:

1) to heal personal wounds

2) to ride for all veterans especially those who were left behind: POWs & MIAs

What were some of the storied moments Dubisch recounts in the pilgrimage?

The Navajo Reservation and the Brotherhood of Warriors

The Power of Places:Angel Fire, New Mexico

Linton, Colorado: remembering the Missing and the Dead

At the Wall; Confronting Sacred Space

Over 58,000 American names engraved

Individual and collective dead

Wall Magic

Night Patrol

Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage

Defines pilgrimage, ritual, and rites of passage

Notes the stress returning that veterans feel and illustrates the way the "run" contributes to healing

Shows how ritual can reinforce basic values

44

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