ABSTRACT
Timothy Fitzgerald is one representative scholar who seriously opposes the terms ‘religion' and ‘Religious Studies'. In other words, an anthropologist who normally ‘rejects religion as an analytical category' ought not to let that category slip into discussion of what is, essentially, an account of ‘culture understood as ritual process, values, construction of transcendental identity, and the legitimation of power'. Religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that these moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Social complexity, and the need to identify mutually influencing forces, underlie Weber's approach to what many narrowly define as ‘religion', and one key contribution concerns what is often translated as ‘mood', and which aligns with what has already been said for Geertz and Bateson.
