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Dispatches From the Methodological Wars

Dispatches From the Methodological Wars DISPATCHES FROM THE METHODOLOGICAL WARS Review article E. THOMAS LAWSON PASCAL BOYER, Tradition As Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Tradi- tional Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 0 521 37417 0, 143 pages, $ 39.50. HANS PENNER, Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of the Study of Religion, New York: Peter Lang, 1989, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 0 8204-0976 6, 239 pages, $ 38.95. It is becoming increasingly apparent that in the study of religion one of the axes around which methodological disputes range is the relationship between cultural and cognitive categories. Cultural anthropologists and historians of religion who, rather than settling for purely interpretive strategies, strive for explanatory theories about religious behavior seem to assume that the concept of culture (and the categories derived from that concept) carries sufficient theoretical weight to account for both the variability and the unity of cultural phenomena such as religion. Whenever such scholars do entertain psychological constraints on cultural theorizing they do so largely in an ad hoc manner. Even when they are willing to challenge the hegemony of "culture" as an explanatory categorial complex they employ either behavioristic, "personalistic", "hermeneutic", or psychoanalytic categories in their accounts of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Numen Brill

Dispatches From the Methodological Wars

Numen , Volume 38 (2): 261 – Jan 1, 1991

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1991 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0029-5973
eISSN
1568-5276
DOI
10.1163/156852791X00150
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

DISPATCHES FROM THE METHODOLOGICAL WARS Review article E. THOMAS LAWSON PASCAL BOYER, Tradition As Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Tradi- tional Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 0 521 37417 0, 143 pages, $ 39.50. HANS PENNER, Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of the Study of Religion, New York: Peter Lang, 1989, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 0 8204-0976 6, 239 pages, $ 38.95. It is becoming increasingly apparent that in the study of religion one of the axes around which methodological disputes range is the relationship between cultural and cognitive categories. Cultural anthropologists and historians of religion who, rather than settling for purely interpretive strategies, strive for explanatory theories about religious behavior seem to assume that the concept of culture (and the categories derived from that concept) carries sufficient theoretical weight to account for both the variability and the unity of cultural phenomena such as religion. Whenever such scholars do entertain psychological constraints on cultural theorizing they do so largely in an ad hoc manner. Even when they are willing to challenge the hegemony of "culture" as an explanatory categorial complex they employ either behavioristic, "personalistic", "hermeneutic", or psychoanalytic categories in their accounts of

Journal

NumenBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1991

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