Posted: May 1st, 2022

Tribal Worlds: Magic, Belief, and the Supernatural

Tribal Worlds: Magic, Belief, and the Supernatural
Tribal Worlds: Magic, Belief, and the Supernatural is a collection of short stories.
Chapter 6 of Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System by anthropologist John H. Bodley takes aim at various nineteenth and twentieth century historians and ethnographers who dismissed shamanistic faiths as mere superstition, and he makes his case in the book. To summarize his argument: the belief systems of peoples in South America, the South Pacific, and Africa who are considered to be “tribal” are legitimate systems of religion that should not be dismissed solely because they have their origins in cultures that Western scholars consider to be “primitive,” according to Bodley. The belief systems that such pre-developed peoples generate, according to Bodley, are perfectly rational when seen within the framework of their own communities. A product of ethnocentrism, the concept that simply because a belief system is polytheistic or pantheistic does not exclude it from qualifying as a valid “religion” has resulted in an unfavorable bias in anthropological research.

The ethnocentrism that has penetrated cultural anthropology is illustrated by Bodley’s use of examples from the nineteenth century of researchers who expressed an explicit racial bias against their research subjects in order to illustrate the problem. For example, Bodley has a strong disagreement with Charles Staniland Wake, the Director of the Anthropological Institute in London, who has exhibited an exhibit on Australian Aboriginal peoples in his home city of London. Wake’s ethnocentrism is readily revealed by his derogatory references to’moral defects,’ the ‘barbarity and absurdity of aboriginal customs,, which he claimed were founded on ‘unmitigated selfishness.'” As Bodley points out, “Wake’s ethnocentrism is readily revealed by his disparaging remarks about aboriginal customs that he claimed were founded on “unmitigated selfishness.” It was the beliefs of racial and cultural superiority that underpinned European colonialism that gave rise to such remarkable ethnocentrism (Bodley, 2017: p. 114). Following this introduction, Bodley goes on to present an impressive array of other testimonies from nineteenth-century scholars that, like the ones presented in the preceding chapter, reveal an overwhelming sense of prejudice, judgementalism, and ethnocentrism. He asserts that this chauvinism continues to negatively color cultural anthropology in the twenty-first century.

In spite of the fact that Bodley provides an excellent case for the ethnocentrism of nineteenth-century anthropologists, he almost dismisses any advance that the field has achieved in the twentieth century and beyond. However, while Bodley makes a compelling case for the reclassification of tribal faiths as legitimate religions, his use of nineteenth-century scholars as a counterweight comes off as the presenting of a “straw man” argument. Over the course of the twentieth century, the field of cultural anthropology made significant strides, and any scholar who attempted to write such things in their present works would be roundly criticized. When it comes to writing this book, Bodley appears to be pursuing an environmentalist political agenda. He appears to be attempting to glorify the societies of tribal peoples that still exist in the Amazonian region of South America, portions of southeastern Africa, and Melanesia, all of which are threatened by environmental degradation. Therefore, Bodley has an economic incentive to portray the study of cultural anthropology as undesirable, and the most effective method to accomplish this is to resuscitate the racist writings of researchers from two centuries ago.

However, despite the fact that he is pushing a political agenda, Bodley makes some important insights regarding the difficulties that might occur when conducting scientific research on non-Western cultures, particularly when it comes to their religious systems. It appears that there is little distinction between the animistic beliefs of tribal peoples and the present belief systems that we refer to as “organized religion” when reading about the diverse belief systems of tribal peoples. As Bodley demonstrates, tribal belief systems contain all of the essential elements of a religion, including a supernatural entity, belief in an afterlife, and a foundational tale. Nevertheless, because these tribal belief systems have their origins in “pre-civilized” societies, they are frequently referred to as magic or superstition by the general public. Without a doubt, religion in the realm of cultural anthropology is the final frontier for ethnocentrism.

References
Bodley, J. H., and Bodley, J. H. (2017). Tribes, states, and the global system are all studied in cultural anthropology. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, New York.

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