ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the worldview idea has occurred in the study of religion highlights key theoretical issues surrounding the cultural dominance of western philosophical theorizing and the way ‘worldview' has been used to bolster one major psychological innovation. It also explains how the perennial issue of the relationship between social groups and their members captured in the idiom of ‘individual-society'. This relationship between institutional and personal worldviews is highly significant, having long been the prime issue in sociology and philosophy. The difference between national census data gained through questionnaires and the more immediate information gathered from fieldwork engagement with a group can be enormous. While much formal attention is often paid to the former as quantitative and the latter as qualitative research, in practice much is gained by relating them. Personal prejudices, loves, and hostilities are often embedded in a scholar's personal experiences of religious traditions and distinctive worldviews.
