What This Book Actually Is
A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is not a single coherent argument. It is a compiled anthology, usually organized around themes rather than chronology or tradition. You will find ethnographic excerpts, methodological debates, and sometimes older texts that are now considered problematic but are included for historical context. The most common versions are the ones edited by William Arnal and David Chidester, or the older Turner-Bruner volume, though there are many others depending on your syllabus. These readers exist because no single author can cover the entire field in one voice. Religion as an anthropological subject spans functionalism, structuralism, symbolic anthropology, cognitive approaches, and political economy. A reader lets you see the disagreements between schools sitting on the same page. That is its main value. It is also its main frustration.
A Reader In The Anthropology Of Religion
If you are looking to download one, availability depends on which edition and which editor you need. Most university libraries carry them. Amazon and university presses stock current editions. Older editions are often available through open-access repositories or book-sharing sites, though I cannot confirm the legality of every source. If cost is the issue, checking your campus library's reserve section or Interlibrary Loan will usually resolve it within a week. The biggest mistake students make is reading these books cover to cover like a textbook. That approach will not work. The pieces are intentionally discontinuous. You read them for contrast, not for cumulative exposition. Here is the method I use. Identify the theme first. Most readers are sectioned by topic: definition of religion, ritual, myth, possession, secularization, new religious movements, and so on. Go to one section. Read the opening essay, then skip ahead to two or three pieces that take opposing positions. Take notes in the margins noting where the authors disagree, not just what they agree on. The disagreement is where the discipline lives.
I once spent three weeks trying to reconcile Mary Douglas's work on purity with Talal Asad's critique of the category itself. I could not reconcile them. The correct move is not to force reconciliation but to map the fault line. Douglas assumes religion can be studied as a system of symbols that maintain social order. Asad argues that "religion" is not a universal category but a Western construct exported through colonial power. Neither is wrong inside their own framework. Both are limited outside it. Write that down and move on.
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What Beginners Miss
The first thing people overlook is the editorial framing. Every reader includes an introduction written by the editor or editors. That introduction tells you how the compiler wants you to read the selections. Sometimes the introduction is useful. Sometimes it is misleading. I have seen introductions that present competing theories as complementary when the authors themselves would reject being paired together. Read the introduction, then read the first essay in each section, then check whether the editor's framing actually holds up. The second thing beginners miss is that these books were often compiled decades ago. A reader published in 1978 will not address postcolonial critiques, feminist anthropology, or the cognitive science of religion. If your course requires engagement with those areas, you need supplemental readings. A single reader will not cover them adequately. I learned this the hard way when my advisor assigned only the Turner-Bruner volume for a seminar that clearly expected contemporary engagement. I ended up reading three additional books just to be prepared for discussion.
Pitfalls and Where the Format Breaks Down
Readers are efficient for survey courses. They are weak when you need depth. The selections are excerpted. You get a paragraph from Malinowski, a chapter from Geertz, a section from Rappaport. You never get the full argument. This matters because anthropological writing is often subtle, and cutting it short strips away the qualifications and self-corrections the author made in the full text. Another limitation is selection bias. Editors choose what represents a thinker. Sometimes they pick the most accessible piece, which is rarely the most important one. If a reader includes a light introductory essay by Clifford Geertz rather than "Deep Play" or his Bali essays, you are getting a simplified Geertz. Check the bibliography at the end of each piece and follow the citations if you want the real thing. The format also tends to privilege Western academic anthropology. Indigenous voices, practitioner perspectives, and non-academic writings are rarely included. This is not accidental. It reflects the disciplinary history. If you want those perspectives, you need to look elsewhere. There are readers focused on voice and positionality, but they are usually separate publications.
Practical Usage Notes
If you are using this for a paper, cite the specific essay, not the whole reader. The page numbers in the reader are different from the original publication. Professors will notice if you cite the reader's pagination as if it were the original. Pull the citation from the reference list of the excerpted piece and verify it against the primary source when possible. If you are using this to prepare for comprehensive exams, do not try to memorize every author. Group them by methodological camp. Functionalists here. Symbolic anthropologists there. Critics of the category in another corner. You will be asked to compare approaches, not to reproduce individual arguments verbatim. For anyone actually doing fieldwork related to religion, this reader type is a starting point, not a manual. The ethical questions, the positionality issues, the question of whether you are studying religion or studying the category of religion — none of that is resolved by an anthology. You will need primary ethnographies and your own field notes to fill the gaps.
