Symbols

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Symbols
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Types of symbols

• Visual

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Spatial
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Kinesthetic
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Also

• Verbal (spells/prayers words have meaning in
  excess of their literal meaning)
• Aural (music, drumming)
• Other smell/touch.

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Metaphor

• Metaphor as building block
• Linking two distinct domains of experience
  together
• Component we want to know more about is
  illuminated by identification with what is known,
  e.g.
• If heaven IS (like) a garden or palace
• If god IS (like) a king
• Then other imagery to describe heaven or god will
  be taken from similar domain

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Power of symbols

• Symbols conventional
• there must cultural consensus to understand them
• Sometimes arbitrary but seem natural to those
  familiar with them
• Anthropology of religion is very much about
  learning the meaning of symbols

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What do we mean when we use symbols?

• Symbols are gateways to understanding
• Provide perspectives by offering new way to
  perceive phenomena
• Mystical perspective symbols become real
• E.g. Eucharist in Catholicism

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Symbolic actions, or real?

• Central ritual of Christianity
• Is whats going on -- miracle/magic/symbolic?
• Breadbody/wine/juiceblood
• A cognate of Jewish bread and wine sharing
  after services
• Transubstantiation vs. primarily
  symbolic/memorializing

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Symbols and action

• What do symbols mean to people as they make sense
  of experience?
• Symbols concentrate (summarize) lots of
  connections together into a singularly powerful
  form (the flag, the cross, the idol)
• Geertz on how symbols direct and synthesize
  thinking to help people make sense of life

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Motivating symbols

• Victor Turner argued that symbols have cognitive
  and emotional elements (what they make people
  think and what they make people feel)
• Motivate people to action
• Are both cognitive and emotive
• Allow people to think about the world and also
  act upon it

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Belief and coercion?

• Do people all think the same way about symbols or
  act in the same way concerning them?
• Symbols as collective representations
• Durkheim
• Compliance and defiance