-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 3:30 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] Atheism
Message: 14 From: "Kenneth MacKendrick"
--clip- What we call "religion" is a particular way of being in the world, owing to the intensification of feelings in the presence of certain objects or states of mind. If anything - I would say that "religion" is the "primal' experience of what we moderns experience as secular hygiene. "Religious adherents" (in quotes because I'm making a ridiculous generalisation here) perceive the world as dirty and clean in a supernatural sense (pure and impure, sacred and profane). We moderns perceive it similarly, but in a secular sense. It is religious, but we don't perceive it as such (I would lean toward an anthropological definition of religion). Our most vivid reactions are modifications of this anthropological response to our cognitive classifications.
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CB: Do you use the concepts of "culture" and "worldview" ?
KM: Yes (why do I feel like I'm walking into a trap?). I wouldn't distinguish all that much between culture and religion though, and I would link culture with civilisation. Historiographically culture (and religion) both refer to "ideas" more than structures. Civilisation is a concept more often reserved the for the economy. I think scholars of religion should pay more attention to the links between ritual praxis and political economy - Weber was headed in the right direction, sort of - this would be a more comprehensive approach and productive for the field. One of my favourite books: Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America.
ken