Religion and Anthropology

Focusing on more recent classical ethnographies this important study provides a critical introduction to the social anthropology of religion. It covers all the major religious traditions that have been studied concretely by anthropologists--Shamanism Buddhism Islam Hinduism Christianity and its relation to African and Melanesian religions and contemporary Neopaganism. Treating religion as a social institution and not simply as an ideology or symbolic system the book follows the dual heritage of social anthropology in combining an interpretative approach with sociological analysis.