Rethinking Religion Connecting Cognition and Culture [Paperback]

'& a very important book that marks a turning point in the way anthropologists think about religious ideas and practices.' Pascal Boyer, American AnthropologistAn ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion focuses particularly on ritual action, borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences and makes a strong plea for combining interpretation with explanation.An ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion focuses particularly on ritual action, borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences and makes a strong plea for combining interpretation with explanation.This book develops a cognitive approach to religion. Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors provide a lucid, critical review of established approaches to the study of religion, and make a strong plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented as competitive approaches, they are, rather, complementary and equally vital to the study of symbolic systems. Rethinking Religion deals with the relationship between cognition and culture in a novel manner, and introduces a method of analysis that will have many applications. [The authors] do a splendid job of demonstrating how such a theory would have interpretive and explanatory capabilities that previous theories have lacked....their analysis truly connects the cognitive and cultural dimensions involved in all religious ritual systems. A. Javier Trevino, Sociological Analysis One certainly hopes that this impressive book will set the tone for future discussions of this topic. It provides an important theoretical framework that the anthropology of religion cannot possibly ignore. Pascal Boyer, American Anthropologist Lawson and McCauley's Rethinking Religion is a creative and carefully crafted book that both defends a general approach to explaining religiols!