James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, first published in 1890, traced magical and religious threads throughout history and weaved them into a pattern depicting the p… Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription. Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion. This item is part of JSTOR collection To access this article, please. PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (1965), pp. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Keywords: Anthropology, structuralism, functionalist, post-structuralist, post-colonial, cultural translation, material culture. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. © Oxford University Press, 2018. This will trace Anthropology’s fragmentation into symbolic, cultural, interpretive, historical, and discursive strands, and address its implications for questions of cultural translation, causation, and periodization in the historiography of medieval Christianity. INTRODUCTION Anthropological theories of religion are diverse. Edited by WILLIAM A. LESSA and EVON Z. VOGT. All Rights Reserved. If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code. xiii+ 656. The comparative study of religion formed a central building block of anthropology as the discipline emerged in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Biennial Review of Anthropology 2d ed. The first half of this article reviews classic evolutionary, structural, and functionalist anthropological approaches to religion, and considers how these have influenced Annales, North American and English empiricist historians. He discussed the peoples, customs, and religions of the Indian subcontinent. In the early 12th century Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973–1048), wrote detailed comparative studies on the anthropology of religions and cultures across the Mediterranean Basin (including the so-called "Middle East") and the Indian subcontinent. All Rights Reserved. New York: Row, Peterson & Co. 1st ed. Simon Yarrow, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Birmingham. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions In the light of social evolutionary models of human development, religious practice was perceived as providing a powerful index of the mental and moral levels of so-called primitive peoples. Both disciplines share similar goals, though these have been differently shaped by the conditions in which they encounter their evidence. They are based variously on ideas human social structures, emotions, or cognition. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion is the third volume in the highly regarded series of monographs put out by the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity. The two can- Working in close collaboration with Stanford University Libraries, whose mission and outlook are in lockstep with SUP’s, the Press prides itself on being a digital pioneer, and an academic publisher of creative and sophisticated scholarship. PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. He saw religion as a way […] The first half of this article reviews classic evolutionary, structural, and functionalist anthropological approaches to religion, and considers how these have influenced Annales, North American and English empiricist historians. By ANNEMARIE DE WAAL MALEFIJT. Since the early days of cultural anthropology, religion has been a topic of interest. xiii+ 598. For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. As the Press celebrates its 125th anniversary, SUP is focused ever more on innovating new publishing practices to better serve the scholarly community. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. © 1971 Stanford University Press Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) is the founding father of the anthropological study of religion. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). (1958), pp. Read Online (Free) relies on page scans, which are not currently available to screen readers. ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO RELIGION Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach. Request Permissions. It then presents an interpretation of developments in both fields through what have been variously labeled the post-structuralist, post-colonial and linguistic turns of the later decades of the twentieth century. Please subscribe or login to access full text content. This is modest attempt to approach an anthropological definition of religion by Guido Verboom that has been online since 2002. The article closes with a brief discussion of the convergence of each discipline upon material cultural approaches. Religion, Belief, and Society: Anthropological Approaches, Introduction: A History of Medieval Christianity, Histories and Historiographies of Medieval Christianity, Material Culture and Medieval Christianity, Medieval Christianity in a World Historical Perspective, The Boundaries of Christendom and Islam: Iberia and the Latin Levant, Localized Faith: Parochial and Domestic Spaces, Continuity and Change in the Institutional Church, Using Saints: Intercession, Healing, Sanctity, Missarum Sollemnia: Eucharistic Rituals in the Middle Ages, Spiritual Exercises: The Making of Interior Faith, Intellectuals and the Masses: Oxen and She-asses in the Medieval Church, Christianity and Its Others: Jews, Muslims, and Pagans, Christian Experiences of Religious Non-conformism, Conclusion: Looking Back from the Reformation. This article argues that current anthropology provides historians with the opportunity to enrich their understanding of medieval Christianity. falsify religious claims belong to the religious study of religion) is the subject matter of departments of religion; the dialogue of people who describe the dialogue and its widest possible ramifications in social be-havior is that of the anthropological approach to religion.