Cultural Analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20052707 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Tomlinson (0000-0001-9808-7615, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 43-56 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-19 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | The Oxford Handbook of the Anthropology of Religion (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/9780191822285.003.0002 |
| OpenAlex | W7124923484 |
| ISBN | 9780191822285 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This chapter examines the ways anthropologists have defined culture and religion in relation to each other. Early definitions prompted a scholarly dialogue which has run energetically for a century and a half. Tylor’s “complex whole” (culture) and “belief in Spiritual Beings” (religion) gave rise to more complex and nuanced understandings of these categories and their interrelationship—as well as critique of the categories as historical products to which no universal definition could be applied. After reviewing the historical development of cultural analysis of religion in anthropology, including the outsized influence of Geertzian symbolic anthropology in the mid- and late twentieth century, the chapter discusses more recent approaches in which culture and religion are analytically reconfigured and rebalanced
Anthropology of religion · Cultural analysis · Culture theory · Ethnography · Relation (database) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Religion and Society Interactions · Study and Philosophy of Religion
Writing Culture
In God's Image
The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity
In Sorcery's Shadow
Beyond “Culture”
Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality
Genealogies of Religion
The Golden Bough
The Slain God
An Anthropological Apologetics
The Reality of Spirits
Theories of Culture
Marxism, Structuralism and Vulgar Materialism
Forget Culture
A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries
The Superorganic
Ontologies, anthropologists, and ethical life
Anthropology and Theology
The repugnant cultural other speaks back
Ontology Is Just Another Word for Culture
"Introduction to "In Focus
The anthropology of ontology (religious science)
Beyond the suffering subject
The problem of belief
Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture
Missionary Positions
Self-Interpretation, Agency, and the Objects of Anthropology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|