The Chapter 6 of Cultural Anthropology is an argument against several 19th and 20th-century historians and ethnographers who treated shamanistic religions as mere superstition. Overall, Bodley (2017) argues that the belief systems of people in South America, the South Pacific, and Africa, who are considered to be tribal, are legitimate systems of religion that should not be derided simply because they have their origins in cultures that Western scholars consider being primitive. For Bodley (2017), the belief systems that such pre-developed people produce are completely rational within the context of their own societies. The notion that simply because a belief system is polytheistic or pantheistic means that it cannot possibly qualify as a legitimate religion is the product of ethnocentrism, and has produced an unfortunate bias in anthropological scholarship.
In order to illustrate the ethnocentrism that has permeated cultural anthropology, Bodley (2017) cites several 19th-century scholars who exhibited an explicit racial bias against their research subjects. According to the author, the psychopathological view of shamanism was quite popular, especially due to such anthropologists as Kroeber and Silverman (Bodley, 2017). The latter, for example, emphasized the parallels between acute schizophrenics and shamans as “an apparent reaction to a major personal crisis involving guilt or failure” (Bodley, 2017, p. 123). Also, the author takes special issue with Wake, the Director of the Anthropological Institute in London, which presented an exhibit on Australian Aboriginal peoples. As Bodley (2017) states, the Director reveals clear ethnocentrism by making “derogatory references to moral defects and the barbarity and absurdity of aboriginal customs, which he claimed were founded on unmitigated selfishness” (p. 114). While describing such testimonies from 19th-century scholars that similarly betray an overwhelming sense of prejudice, judgementalism, and ethnocentrism, Bodley (2017) claims that this chauvinism continues to negatively color cultural anthropology in the 21st century.
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"Tribal Worlds: Magic, Belief, and the Supernatural".
While Bodley (2017) makes an impressive case for the ethnocentrism of 19th-century anthropologists, he almost completely ignores the progress that the field has made in the twentieth century and beyond. Still, the author refers to the 21st-century scholar Boyer, who insists that shamanism is based on the supernatural that is useful, not irrational and suggests that people remember and pass on supernatural concepts that are important to them socially (Bodley, 2017, p. 122). In such a way, it becomes clear that people just find supernatural beliefs useful rather than accept them as normal. Bodley (2017) convincingly argues for the reconceptualization of tribal belief systems as legitimate religions, and he uses the 19th-century scholars as a counterpoint. In many regards, Bodley (2017) appears to have an environmentalist political agenda in writing this book and is attempting to glorify the societies of tribal peoples who currently remain in existence in the Amazonian region of South America, portions of southeastern Africa, and Melanesia.
Regardless of his thinly veiled political agenda, Bodley (2017) does make some excellent observations about the problems that can arise when engaging in scholarly studies of non-Western cultures, especially in regard to their religious systems. The author claims that many observers have questioned the authenticity of shamanic performances, but most suspicions of fraud may be due to a misunderstanding of the nature of shamanism (Bodley, 2017, p. 123). It does not seem that there is much difference between the animistic belief systems of tribal people and the current beliefs that we refer to as organized religion. Clearly, religion is the final frontier of ethnocentrism in the field of cultural anthropology. As Bodley (2017) illustrates, the tribal belief systems have all the requisite aspects of a religion, such as a supernatural being, a belief in an afterlife, and a foundational myth. However, because these tribal belief systems have their origins in “pre-civilized” cultures, they are often referred to as magic or superstition.
- Bodley, J. H. (2017). Cultural anthropology: Tribes, states, and the global system. New York: Rowman Altamira.
