FINAL EXAM

FINAL EXAM
You final exam is take-home. You are to answer the following questions. Answers should be at LEAST 3-5 paragraphs for each section. The answers must be in complete sentences, but you may use bullet points if you wish. Please take the time to outline your answers, and check spelling and grammar. You may use sources other than class materials, such as the internet, but ONLY .edu or .org.
Much of what you have been reading throughout the semester, both in books and in the various articles, concerns that powerful abstraction we call religion. For your final exam essays I would like you to consider the various religions that co-exist in Malaysian Borneo and the relationship of the belief system and culture. The American anthropologist Clifford Geertz offers the following definition of religion. Religion is:
(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [and women] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
(In your email message I have attached a document from the U of Chicago website that explains this in more detail.)

Keeping this definition in mind, please answer the following questions.

DUE DATE: NO LATER than 10 am May 5. NO EXCEPTIONS!!!
(I mean it)
1.
“KSE was first and foremost a Chinese. His religion was a mix of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. He embraced the doctrines in total and was concerned that prosperity followed in his footsteps with the same intensity” (Chpt. 7., The Patriarch)

Briefly explain these three systems of belief. What unites or divides these three systems of thought?

Describe some of the ways in which the influence of these are observable in the life of KSE and his family.


2.
“Nothing happens without a cause’, commented an Iban shaman, and in Iban lore, jars moan for lack of attention, trees talk, crotons walk, macaques become incubi, and the sex of the human fetus is determined by a cricket, the metamorphized form of the god Selampandai.” (pg. 91, The Iban)

The animistic beliefs of the Iban permeate every aspect of their culture. Describe some of the ways that these beliefs aid in maintaining social order among the Iban.


3.
The Malays hold to the five essentials of Islam- the profession of faith, the Five Daily Prayers, the necessity of fasting, the obligation to make the pilgrimage to Mecca , and the obligation to give alms. As practiced by the Malays, however, has absorbed some local practices based both in animism and Hinduism. Drawing from the book you read earlier in the semester as well as Ryan’s article “The Malays” , describe some of the ways that Muslim beliefs shape Malay culture and ways in which the religions permeates the larger multi-ethnic society of Malaysian Borneo. Can you detect ways in which Islam among the Malays is unique to their history and geography?

P.S. You may bring in Judeo-Christian traditions when relevant, ie among the Iban, but I do NOT want a point by point comparison of beliefs!