Anthropology 1025F/G Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Aleister Crowley, Mother Goddess, Tanya Luhrmann
27 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Even though there is no material proof, people do believe in the power of magic, witches and spirits of the dead. Shared learned cultural assumptions create an encompassing picture of reality (religious or secular), and this picture is called worldview . Worldviews differ significantly between cultures, an example being evans pritchard (british anthropologist). In 1937, he argued that witchcraft was ubiquitous among the azande of southern. These people tend to explain the acts of misfortune (death, illness) due to witchcraft. They claimed that someone was bewitching them, causing them misfortune. So, while we all share share the same universal experiences - sickness, death, birth - we all interpret them based on our worldview. Unfortunately, many think of their worldview as the correct version to interpret reality. This leads to ethnocentric assumptions about other cultures + their beliefs. How to deal with the question of differing worldviews and beliefs has long been a concern of anthropologists.
