Geertz and anthropological debates around religion

Abstract

Among various anthropological questions religion surely takes the central position. The author of the article tries to show C. Geertz’s conception of religion as the background of evolutionist and functional debates about it. He departs from perceiving religion in the categories of a social fact towards treating it as a system of symbols. The model suggests a certain closed circulation of connected elements: ethos and worldview, mutually confirming each other. Worldview is an element of the natural structure of the world. This suggests that it is the only possible and natural way of acting and perceiving the world, consolidated by religious and emotional experience that is an element of the ritual. In the situation of social change religious symbols seem to lose their influence, turning into various forms of ideology – a phenomenon Geertz called “ideologization of religion”. This is done owing to the victory of “commonsensical cognition” over religious cognition. By the very fact the religious lifestyle – “religiousness” – is transformed into “religious-mindedness”. The struggle between them is the “struggle for reality”.