The development of the human sciences in the nineteenth century led to the formation of anthropology, comparative religion, ethnology and folklore – all new disciplines whose focal points lay outside the ‘enlightened’, ‘rational’ and ‘advanced’ realm of contemporary urban life. Anthropologists looked at non-European cultures as living examples of the pre-modern past, ethnologists and folklorists studied the rural people of their own countries as carriers of obsolete traditions, and early scholars of religious studies looked for primitive forms of religion among ‘uncivilized’ peoples and in historical sources, as expressions of belief that antedated the contemporary Protestant Christianity conceived to be the highest stage of religious development. What linked these disciplines was the attempt to engage with the cultures of ‘others’ – non-Western civilizations and ‘backward’ peasants – and by describing them systematically to place them within an externally conceived framework.

After nation states had been established and colonial empires had collapsed, anthropology, comparative religion, ethnology and folkloristics went through periods of self-reflection and critical examination of their objects of research as they had been constructed in the context of Western scholarly discourse and social needs at the time of their formation. Defining categories such as culture, folklore or religion as reified ontological entities has lost its former attraction, because the social and verbal constructedness of concepts has become common knowledge.