Why anthropologists don't know what religion is: religion and ritual

old_uid7911
titleWhy anthropologists don't know what religion is: religion and ritual
start_date2010/01/08
schedule14h30-16h30
onlineno
summaryI shall argue that the attempts to explain “religion” in general and evolutionary terms in the cognitive sciences have all suffered from being bounded by unexamined concepts of religion, religious belief and ritual that in fact only apply to a relatively recent historical phenomenon: the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).  However if a more fundamental approach to some of the kind of things which are involved in the Abrahamic religions but not limited to them is taken, we find that much more general ideas that have been developed in the cognitive sciences for understanding the human social as such, turn out to be very revealing and much more useful for the study of religious like phenomena than thinking of “religion” as a cognitive oddity.
responsiblesPacherie, Dokic, Proust