REL163 FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND CORRECT
DETAILED ANSWERS (VERIFIED ANSWERS) |ALREADY
GRADED A+||BRAND NEW
Ritual studies Ans✓✓✓- Focus on how acts create social cohesion /
sense of community
- James Frazer interested in the role ritual played in the development of
religion overall
In relation to Durkheim's theory on social cohesion, scholars study ritual
as what brings individuals into the collective
- Key questions of religious studies scholars: what did this ritual do?
How is the individual changed in the context of the community? Was it
effective?
- Victor Turner, Ronald Grimes
Performance theory Ans✓✓✓- Concern with specific acts of cultural
interactions in both sacred and secular contexts
- What do they do / what do they mean? Situation in particular cultural
contexts
- a complex theory about the way we continuously perform our
identities, particularly our sexual and gender roles.
- Subverting femininity: Madonna and Lady Gaga (Androgyny and
hyper-femininity in gender performance)
- Judith Butler
Victor Turner Ans✓✓✓- Process of community definition through
religious rituals / individual transformation / impacts
,>> Turner developed a theory of ritual as social drama, tensions of
society could be worked out
- Liminal: no longer part of social order (enter during ritual)
- Post-limnal: back to social order, reaffirmation
Ronald Grimes Ans✓✓✓- Efficacy of ritual performance
- Focus on specific rites
- Ritual categories rather than stages, a ritual can be something that
incorporates given characteristics (doesn't have to be all characteristics,
allows secular things to qualify as rituals)
- Think about the process of ritualization / what we consider rituals:
Performed, formalized, repetitive, collective, patterned, traditional,
highly valued, multilayered, symbolic, idealized, dramatic,
paradigmatic, mystical, adaptive, conscious
- Talks about a ritual as a concept that has been created by scholars
Rite: a specific, patterned event, such as Catholic mass or Muslim daily
prayers.
Grimes encourages the avoidance of the use of rituals
Ritualizing: process of inventing or cultivating rites
Ritualization: involves activities not usually thought of as rites.
Highlights the difficulty in creating a singular definition of ritual that
would cover all elements of rite, ritualizing, and ritualization, in all
cultures.
Judith Butler Ans✓✓✓- Bodies that matter
,- Critique of heteronormativity / imposition of binaries, compulsory
heterosexuality
- Gender as socially constructed / performance, anticipation of gender
- Compulsory heterosexuality because society values reproduction
between male and female
- Repetitive / ritualized acts of being masculine / feminine leads to
naturalization of gender
- Queer theory - naturalization of gender, sex and sexuality is disrupted
(Limitations to disruptions of gender performance)
Butler appeals to drag to show the performativity of gender.
Reveals that gender is contingent on actions
Gender is contextual
Defies and reiterates gender roles
It is impossible to escape gender, we are bound by the constraints of the
heterosexist gender system. All our resistance can only happen within
and in relation to that system.
Ritual and performance theories applied to sports Ans✓✓✓-
Performance of masculinity / hypermasculinity in sports
- Some scholars see sports as the opiate of the people (Provides same
kind of escapist experience as religion / reinforces hegemony)
- Historically has had a similar role, ex original Olympics (cultivating
bodily strength as well as soul strength, historical involvement of
religious figures in sports)
, Relationships between sports and religion Ans✓✓✓- Civil religion
(Michael Novak) - national sports, ex Canada and hockey, brings people
together
- Folk religion
- Cultural religion
- "Secular quasi-religious institutions" (Henry Edwards)
- Sports are as like religion as they are like war, and war is not religion
(Robert J Higgs)
- See slide for similarities
- Cultural / social impact:
>> Sports networks, more people choosing sports over church on
sundays, certain days for certain sports (Sports attract more people than
religious communities)
>> Deep investment, nationalism - framed as participating in something
bigger than yourself (happens globally)
Muscular Christianity Ans✓✓✓- Pro-sport movement, YMCA
- Idea emerging in Victorian England that equated strength with moral
virtue (mental / spiritual training along with physical training)
>> Bodily and spiritual health, manliness, self-sacrifice
>> More trained / disciplined / masculine you are, more Christian you
are
>> Facilitates aggressive masculine performance within religion -
HULK JESUS
DETAILED ANSWERS (VERIFIED ANSWERS) |ALREADY
GRADED A+||BRAND NEW
Ritual studies Ans✓✓✓- Focus on how acts create social cohesion /
sense of community
- James Frazer interested in the role ritual played in the development of
religion overall
In relation to Durkheim's theory on social cohesion, scholars study ritual
as what brings individuals into the collective
- Key questions of religious studies scholars: what did this ritual do?
How is the individual changed in the context of the community? Was it
effective?
- Victor Turner, Ronald Grimes
Performance theory Ans✓✓✓- Concern with specific acts of cultural
interactions in both sacred and secular contexts
- What do they do / what do they mean? Situation in particular cultural
contexts
- a complex theory about the way we continuously perform our
identities, particularly our sexual and gender roles.
- Subverting femininity: Madonna and Lady Gaga (Androgyny and
hyper-femininity in gender performance)
- Judith Butler
Victor Turner Ans✓✓✓- Process of community definition through
religious rituals / individual transformation / impacts
,>> Turner developed a theory of ritual as social drama, tensions of
society could be worked out
- Liminal: no longer part of social order (enter during ritual)
- Post-limnal: back to social order, reaffirmation
Ronald Grimes Ans✓✓✓- Efficacy of ritual performance
- Focus on specific rites
- Ritual categories rather than stages, a ritual can be something that
incorporates given characteristics (doesn't have to be all characteristics,
allows secular things to qualify as rituals)
- Think about the process of ritualization / what we consider rituals:
Performed, formalized, repetitive, collective, patterned, traditional,
highly valued, multilayered, symbolic, idealized, dramatic,
paradigmatic, mystical, adaptive, conscious
- Talks about a ritual as a concept that has been created by scholars
Rite: a specific, patterned event, such as Catholic mass or Muslim daily
prayers.
Grimes encourages the avoidance of the use of rituals
Ritualizing: process of inventing or cultivating rites
Ritualization: involves activities not usually thought of as rites.
Highlights the difficulty in creating a singular definition of ritual that
would cover all elements of rite, ritualizing, and ritualization, in all
cultures.
Judith Butler Ans✓✓✓- Bodies that matter
,- Critique of heteronormativity / imposition of binaries, compulsory
heterosexuality
- Gender as socially constructed / performance, anticipation of gender
- Compulsory heterosexuality because society values reproduction
between male and female
- Repetitive / ritualized acts of being masculine / feminine leads to
naturalization of gender
- Queer theory - naturalization of gender, sex and sexuality is disrupted
(Limitations to disruptions of gender performance)
Butler appeals to drag to show the performativity of gender.
Reveals that gender is contingent on actions
Gender is contextual
Defies and reiterates gender roles
It is impossible to escape gender, we are bound by the constraints of the
heterosexist gender system. All our resistance can only happen within
and in relation to that system.
Ritual and performance theories applied to sports Ans✓✓✓-
Performance of masculinity / hypermasculinity in sports
- Some scholars see sports as the opiate of the people (Provides same
kind of escapist experience as religion / reinforces hegemony)
- Historically has had a similar role, ex original Olympics (cultivating
bodily strength as well as soul strength, historical involvement of
religious figures in sports)
, Relationships between sports and religion Ans✓✓✓- Civil religion
(Michael Novak) - national sports, ex Canada and hockey, brings people
together
- Folk religion
- Cultural religion
- "Secular quasi-religious institutions" (Henry Edwards)
- Sports are as like religion as they are like war, and war is not religion
(Robert J Higgs)
- See slide for similarities
- Cultural / social impact:
>> Sports networks, more people choosing sports over church on
sundays, certain days for certain sports (Sports attract more people than
religious communities)
>> Deep investment, nationalism - framed as participating in something
bigger than yourself (happens globally)
Muscular Christianity Ans✓✓✓- Pro-sport movement, YMCA
- Idea emerging in Victorian England that equated strength with moral
virtue (mental / spiritual training along with physical training)
>> Bodily and spiritual health, manliness, self-sacrifice
>> More trained / disciplined / masculine you are, more Christian you
are
>> Facilitates aggressive masculine performance within religion -
HULK JESUS
