Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories - Softcover

Saler, Benson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571812199 ISBN 13: 9781571812193

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 1999

Synopsis

How might we transform a folk category - in this case religion - into a analytical category suitable for cross-cultural research? In this volume, the author addresses that question. He critically explores various approaches to the problem of conceptualizing religion, particularly with respect to certain disciplinary interests of anthropologists. He argues that the concept of family resemblances, as that concept has been refined and extended in prototype theory in the contemporary cognitive sciences, is the most plausible analytical strategy for resolving the central problem of the book. In the solution proposed, religion is conceptualized as an affair of "more or less" rather than a matter of "yes or no," and no sharp line is drawn between religion and non-religion.

About this title

About the Author

Benson Saler is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and a former Interim Vice PResident of the Anthropology of Religion Section of the American Anthropological Association. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States. His current research is largely dircted to certain aspects of "popular culture" in the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571812199
• ISBN 13: 9781571812193
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312