Anthropology › Section M · Religion and culture › Topic M.1
What is religion?
Every known society has beliefs and practices that outsiders would call religious, yet no definition fits them all. Anthropologists study religion as lived human experience, asking what people believe, who leads them, which beings they relate to and how religion changes as societies grow.
In this topic
- Studying religion as anthropologists
- Three classic definitions
- Questioning the definitions
- Religion, spirituality and worldview
- Gods, spirits and ancestors
- Animism, old and new
- Religious specialists
- Worked example: who is the specialist?
- Religion in states
- Worked example: a shrine at New Year
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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