ABSTRACT

Classifi cation and categorization are powerful cognitive processes that pervade every domain of the human construction of reality. In the study of religion\s, the topics of classifi cation and categorization have been a main concern-indeed one of the key issues for scholars belonging to confl icting theoretical approaches such as structuralism, post-structuralism, critical theory and cognitive/evolutionary sciences. While cognitivists have looked at how ‘natural’ processes of categorization have constrained the creation of religious concepts, and structuralists have analyzed religions as classifi catory systems, critical theorists have pointed to the colonial, cultural, hegemonic, political, ritual and other consequences of classifi catory processes in and beyond religion. The category of religion in itself has emerged as the result of specifi c classifi catory processes. On a different level, religions have been theorized as ‘powerful engines for the production and maintenance of classifi catory systems’ (Smith 2000: 38). Hence, the analysis of the processes of classifi cation and the formation of cultural domains is of primary importance for the study of religion\s. The present chapter seeks to introduce a ‘deceptively simple, but powerful technique’ (Bernard 2006: 301) that can be used to obtain and analyze data on the vocabulary people use to refer to, or to conceptualize, a domain or a category .