ABSTRACT
Because religion is a category that encompasses many different kinds of practices, it is particularly difficult to define precisely, and how to understand it has been the object of protracted debate in the history of anthropology. It is at once a social experience that brings people together in rituals and a personal experience through which people seek to organize their lives, but it is also an instrument of power and domination. Religions come in many different guises, from large-scale world religions associated with scriptures to practices that are tied to specific environments and lifeways, but people can partake in different religious practices at the same time or blend them together. Religion is traditionally contrasted with the secular, but the latter is often coloured by the religious tradition from which it has emerged. Some religions, such as Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, have become globalized. The concern with ideas of right and wrong that are basic to many religions also animates beliefs in witchcraft, which are often entangled with economic and social change, as well as shamanic belief systems concerned with human-spirit relations.
