Questioning cognitive and interpretive takes on ritual

Bibliographic Data

ID2401802
AuthorsKoen Stroeken (0000-0003-3409-444X, Ghent University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume11
Issue3
Pages355-372
Publication date2011-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1463-4996 • E-ISSN: 1741-2641
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1463499611416725
OpenAlexW2094101561
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited24

Is 'nature' the only basis we have for explaining universal patterns in culture, such as religious practices? Cognitive and interpretive approaches seem to agree so in surprisingly Cartesian fashion. This paper proposes cosmologies as a second, 'cultural' type of universality. For an ethnographer affected by the field, culture is not something out there to either 'explain' (Sperber, Lévi-Strauss) or 'interpret' (Geertz, Weber). Culture is to be comprehended by 'getting into' a variety of shared cosmological states. These cosmological states are (1) reflexive, (2) exhaustive and (3) mutually exclusive categories, which can account for (4) the semantic shifts characterizing practices such as rituals. These four conditions are lacking in the binary mechanisms of cognitive modules of the Standard Model of religion (e.g. Boyer and Liénard's hazard-precaution) and the epidemiological model (Sperber and Bloch

Epistemology · Ethnography · Reflexivity · Sociology · Universality (dynamical systems · Variety (cybernetics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Differences and Values · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Mathematics · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub