This book is in a real sense an update and a sequel to my text Anthropological Studies of Religion (1987). It thus offers a critical introduction or guide to the extensive anthropological literature on religion that has been produced over the past forty years or so – with a specific focus on the more well-known and substantive ethnographic studies. My earlier text gave a broad, historical but critical survey of the many different theoretical approaches to religion that had emerged since the end of the nineteenth century – a path that has since been well trod by several other scholars (e.g., Hamilton 1995, Pals 1996, Cunningham 1999, and D. Gellner 1999).

With regard to the present text, I adopt a very different strategy; I take a more geographical approach, for in an important sense the major religious systems – Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, African, Melanesian – are regional phenomena, even though they may have universalizing tendencies. It must be emphasized at the outset, however, that not only is religion a complex and variable phenomenon, but also it is essentially a social phenomenon. Religion is a social institution, a sociocultural system; and it is thus ill understood when viewed simply as an ideology, or as a system of beliefs, still less as merely a ‘symbolic system’ (Geertz), an ‘awareness of the transcendent’ (Tambiah), or a ‘feeling of the numinous’ (Otto).