Macquarie University

Culture Myth and Symbolism - ANTH307

Individually and collectively people make their lives meaningful through practices of symbolic representation. During the twentieth century anthropologists concerned with the study of culture came to focus on systems of symbols and meaning. Psychoanalysis and linguistics were important early influences on symbolic anthropology because they identified the capacity of the human mind to operate according to symbolic processes, but these theories also proved too universalist in their claims for anthropology's cross-cultural evidence. The 1980s saw a marked shift in anthropological approaches. Taking the anthropology of religion as its focus this unit examines key theorists and ethnographic studies in the field of symbolic anthropology and phenomenology. We discover that the study of culture shows that human consciousness includes a non-rational or affective aspect sometimes described as 'mystical' or mythic. Mythic consciousness is also explored in this unit as a distinct form of consciousness that should not be seen as false, inferior or irrational. We therefore consider the way phenomena such as dreams, spirits, magic, and emotions figure importantly in anthropological analysis.

Timetable Information

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