Reflections on the Interface of Religion, Culture, and Society: Between the Symbolic and the Embodied

Abstract:

Religion is without a doubt a multifaceted phenomenon spanning various disciplinary areas and theoretical perspectives. Existing both internally in the form of thoughts, experiences and mental operations, and externally in patterns of behaviours and embodied practices, bringing together the abstract and the material, affecting individuals and groups, reaching back to the past and forward to the future, it covers a vast area of meanings, entities and effects. In addition to being a system of beliefs and rituals connected to the sacred, it is a social phenomenon involving identity formation and group membership (cf. Durkheim 1969/1912; Coleman and Collins 2004; see also Benerjee and German, this volume).