B

Belief has in the past often been coupled with ritual, as one of the two pillars of religion. However, since the late 1970s the theoretical emphasis on †practice has given greater prominence to ritual, with belief now held in the background. The work of Sperber (e.g. 1985 [1982]), among others, cast doubt on the notion that symbols have specific meanings, even in the context of structured sets of symbols. For Sperber, as indeed (though perhaps in different senses), for Evans-Pritchard and Needham, the concept of belief is dependent on the knowledge of the word which describes it. Only those who have a concept of belief themselves have minds which exhibit the properties of belief. †Talal Asad (1983) criticized anthropological accounts of belief from a more historical point of view: the emphasis on belief as an interior state was, he suggested, specific to a modern, private Christian religiosity. As action has come to dominate much of

anthropological theory in recent years, with philosophy and language becoming as peripheral as they are problematic, belief (as a field of study) has dwindled in importance. Whether it rises will depend on whether anthropology’s pendulum will again swing towards its earlier philosophical concerns. The implicit cultural relativism of those who in the past emphasized the study of belief has thus been overturned in favour of more †behaviourist, †materialist and (in Sperber’s case) †rationalist enterprises.