ABSTRACT
Descriptions and analyses of ‘things religious’ require the use of categories and concepts which are, semantically speaking, non-realist and devoid of any ‘essence’. Religion, magic, society, dendrolatry, and incubation oracles are not natural kinds; they are conceptual constructions and analytical devices whereby the world of human action is divided and translated into comparable and understandable categories. All concepts in the study of religion are concepts imagined, invented and employed. As in any other study of socio-cultural realms such concepts are constructions, but they are socially and ideologically real — and some are better constructions than others. 1 Thus, we must be able to distinguish between different classes of meaning and discourse, because although religions, cultures, science and theories in and of it all are, without exception, social facts, there are none the less profound differences as to their status. How can we differentiate between facts and the purely fictional? What are the ontological differences between market economy, class struggle, French cuisine and Santa Claus? Aren’t they all ‘just’ social facts and thus constructions? As nominalists may we not call anything whatever we want? Where are the constraints? What are the rules and what is rational? 2
