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Researching Global Religious Landscapes - A Methodology between Universalism and Particularism - Peter Nynäs

The Cognitive Study of Religiosity and Contemporary Lived Religion: Complementarity as a Methodological Approach

Researching Global Religious Landscapes - A Methodology between Universalism and Particularism - Peter Nynäs

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Within cognitive scholarship of religion, a strong case has been made for the idea that religion can be explained from a perspective of human evolution and cognition. This often relies on observations of universals across time and space, and linguistic and cultural boundaries. In this chapter, we focus on lived religion in Peru, Ghana and China; countries with a distinct history of traditional forms of religion that furthermore are present in various and complex ways. In these cultures, traditional forms of religiosity may still be present and surface in the form of emerging new or revitalised aspects of religiosities within the framework of more recent religious or secular positions. In light of such complex forms of lived religion it becomes relevant to explore the relevance of a cognitive approach to religion. To what extent can it be applied within a framework of the complexity of lived religion? This chapter on the one hand sheds light on the extent and way traditional forms of religion surface in contemporary religiosities and, on the other hand, moves on to explore the extent to which such complex configurations allow for the adaptation of observations from a cognitive study of religion. We propose a model of interpretative complementarity that differentiates between two key ways of understanding current concepts, beliefs and practices. The first points to universal cognitive mechanisms and the second to cultural and contextual factors in light of contemporary forms of lived religion.

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