ABSTRACT
"Religion" as a term has never fit well into anthropology because one can hardly use it without pulling in premises alien to some cultures we study as well as alien to our methodology. Coleman was writing in the wake of Talal Asad's "genealogical" or Foucauldian critique of secular approaches to religion. Since 1983, Asad's argument has gradually become the most influential critique affecting the anthropology of religion. Having taken to heart the Asadian critique, sociocultural anthropologists early in the 21st century have begun over. They search for common denominators for describing ritual life without qualifying it on criteria originally internal to Western theology. At this point anybody wanting to do anthropology of religion might well feel both excited and perplexed. Latourian ideas make the "strange" things envisioned in religion less weird than most theories do. Latour considers religion a special type of practice that delves into the phenomenal world in a way complementing the theoretical view.
