At the Mountains’ Altar: Anthropology of Religion in an Andean Community

Description

In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion. As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological reworking of relativism, and the "new materialism" in the context of a deep-rooted Andean ethos. He reflects on central questions such as: Why does sacred ritualism seem almost universal? Is it seated in social power, human psychology, symbolic meanings, or cultural logics? Are varied theories compatible? Is "religion" still a tenable category in the post-colonial world? At the Mountains’ Altar is a valuable resource for students taking courses on the anthropology of religion, Andean cultures, Latin American ethnography, religious studies, and indigenous peoples of the Americas. At the Mountains’ Altar- Front Cover At the Mountains’ Altar Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface Notes References Introduction Introducing a village A word with the sophisticates The cultural voltage of researching sacred things About this book: ethnography and Western theories of religiosity An alternative definition of the object: ritual studies and Bell’s fusion engine About this book in context of courses: programs and chapters A note about research and norms Notes References Chapter 1: A single nest (and some theories about cognitive-evolutionary foundations of religiosity) Llacuaces, the “Children of Lightning” Glacial lords: the nature and rules of rainfall-based pasturing Motherwoman: the nature and rules of irrigation Chacras: the nature and rules of high-altitude farming A traditional inner cabinet rules herding, farming, and ritual Communal endowments and their rites Gods in mountains, gods everywhere, gods in the brain: is religiosityan inborn cognitive bias? Gods everywhere, for adaptive evolutionary reasons: religiosity asauthenticator of “prosocial” commitments Reductionism and the retired engineer’s parable Notes References Chapter 2: A little palace of analogies (and a revised structuralist viewof cultural fundamentals) Astride culture and nature: analogism? A sacred house, but not for saints Works and nights at Kaha Wayi The ritualist as advocate, priest, and hero “Lady Storehouse” and the work of female officers What does a bendelhombre know? “Analogical” erudition and monotheism Notes References Chapter 3: Children of the mummy Libiac Cancharco (and ideas aboutthe sacralization of society) The historical context: when Spain set out to rule Andaxes The uncertain antiquity of Kaha Wayi and Pasa Qulqa Extirpators and the assault on Andean ancestor veneration But why must the dead exist forever? A classic sociological view of death The extirpators and the assault on Mama Raywana,“Mother of Food,” in the 17th century All religions are true: the Durkheimian perspective Kaha Wayi taking a new shape: “little houses” of cult andthe charlatan Quiñones Notes References Chapter 4: Songs for herds and crops (and thoughts aboutreligious experience) with Luis Andrade Ciudad Quechua, a vulnerable giant Tinyas (“drum songs”) as poetry for making life flourish Night songs of the animal powers Nonreductionist (or less reductionist) psychological theories of religiosity Directions of Andean experience? Notes References Chapter 5: Mending their sacred things (and thinking about religionas symbolism, science, or power) Convening a crew, and Friday night movies in Rapaz Partnering conservation in the sacred precinct A temple as gallery of symbols The symbolic or interpretative direction A temple as source of knowledge, and intellectualist theories of religion A surprise in the ceiling, and theories about religion as disciplines of power At a triple intersection of theories: diverging ideas abouthow religion works on and in people Notes References Chapter 6: A temple by night (and religions as other ontologies) Doubling down on relativism Do Rapacinos disagree among themselves at the ontological level? The old allegiance and the weather Tourism, “doublethink,” and the day/night solution Protestant dissidence and “cosmopolitics” Questions and options in the “ontological turn” Notes References Chapter 7: The ground trembles (closing thoughts on secularity andthe “material turn”) Secularity/religion on trial “New materialism”: toward an anthropology of all things Post-humanism? Envoi: researchers and religionists Notes References Glossary of non-English and field-specific terms Index