Materialist and Ideologist Considerations Overlap in the Formation of Religious Rituals Within Cultures
Rebecca Mahfouz
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The ideas of the materialists and ideologists within anthropology seem, at first glance, to be in direct opposition to one another. The materialists posit that subsistence patterns and technology, the quotidian details of life, are paramount in shaping cultures, including their mythologies and ritua 
ls. Idealists put forth the suggestion that myths, symbols and rituals themselves are principally responsible for shaping cultures. Each side would probably charge the other with putting the cart before the horse. In this paper, I will argue that infrastructural (materialist) and superstructural (idealist) considerations each play a central, if not equal, role in shaping cultures and their various mythologies, symbols and rituals.
A culture forms ideas according to the lived experience and survival consideration of its members. Those ideas, in turn, influence the behaviors of those living in the culture.
In her "Serpent-Handling as Sacrament," Mary Lee Daugherty suggests that widespread poverty and powerlessness in the Appalachian communities she observed are the primary reasons for serpent-handling as part of religious ritual in Holiness churches in the region (83). The desire to feel power, to exercise domain over something, even a poisonous snake, by the otherwise disenfranchised, says Daugherty, is reason enough for serpent-handling congregations to have formed (82). The Appalachian religious practice of handling poisonous snakes is, therefore, a response to an infrastructural consideration. If one is unemployed, perhaps suffering from food insecurity, the harnessing of God's power in the form of handling poisonous snakes seems reasonable enough proof that one can indeed perform other miracles through God, such as finding adequate housing, or a job.
A culture forms ideas according to the lived experience and survival consideration of its members. Those ideas, in turn, influence the behaviors of those living in the culture.
In her "Serpent-Handling as Sacrament," Mary Lee Daugherty suggests that widespread poverty and powerlessness in the Appalachian communities she observed are the primary reasons for serpent-handling as part of religious ritual in Holiness churches in the region (83). The desire to feel power, to exercise domain over something, even a poisonous snake, by the otherwise disenfranchised, says Daugherty, is reason enough for serpent-handling congregations to have formed (82). The Appalachian religious practice of handling poisonous snakes is, therefore, a response to an infrastructural consideration. If one is unemployed, perhaps suffering from food insecurity, the harnessing of God's power in the form of handling poisonous snakes seems reasonable enough proof that one can indeed perform other miracles through God, such as finding adequate housing, or a job.