Conceptualizing religion
Subtitle: immanent anthropologists, transcendent natives, and unbounded categories
By: by Benson Saler.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
Subjects: Religion; Ethnology -- Religious aspects
Description: "How might we transform a folk category - in this case religion - into an 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."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-276) and index.
Originally published: Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill, 1993, in series: Studies in the history of religions. With new pref.