Why do great and little traditions coexist in the world’s doctrinal religions?
Anthropologists and historians of religion have commonly contrasted “great” (literate, authoritative, and centrally regulated) traditions with “little” (popular, unauthorized, and locally variable) traditions. These two dimensions of doctrinal religion are thought to be a product of divergent patter...
| Published in: | Religion, brain & behavior |
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| Authors: | ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge
2021
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| In: |
Religion, brain & behavior
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| Further subjects: | B
Myanmar
B Cultural Evolution B Cooperation B Burma B Moral Psychology B Religiosity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Anthropologists and historians of religion have commonly contrasted “great” (literate, authoritative, and centrally regulated) traditions with “little” (popular, unauthorized, and locally variable) traditions. These two dimensions of doctrinal religion are thought to be a product of divergent patterns of learning and cultural transmission. It is common for the official representatives of doctrinal religions to portray the unauthorized practices of little traditions pejoratively as amoral superstitions. Here, we consider an alternative theory, that great and little traditions are a product of distinct forms of cooperation: the one focused on loyalty to large-scale categories evolving via cultural group selection, the other focused on advancing the interests of kin-based relational ties evolving via intra-group selection. To investigate this theory further, we carried out a series of studies with followers of great and little traditions within Burmese Theravada Buddhism, showing overall that great tradition affiliation involves stronger alignment with categorical large-scale groups, while little tradition affiliation involves stronger alignments with relational kin-based groups. We propose an empirically-grounded general theory of the evolutionary processes and psychological mechanisms underlying the bifurcation between great and little traditions in the world’s doctrinal religions. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-5981 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion, brain & behavior
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2021.1947357 |