Belief

Abstract This chapter examines the development of the anthropological theorizations of belief. It is oriented around a contrast between “internalist” renderings of belief and “externalist” accounts. The former, characteristic of a Weberian–Geertzian tradition, see belief as a particular state of mind, while the latter, rooted in Durkheimian and Foucauldian ideas, see it as socially or discursively derived, a form of social claim. Several scholars have questioned the legitimacy of belief as a concept, particularly when discussing non-Christian religious practice. This has led to a focus on belief as epistemology, or ontology. Rather than believing, do the religious “know,” or occupy a world in which religious entities are “simply there”? The chapter closes with an examination of belief among anthropologists. To understand the lifeworlds of their religious interlocutors, must anthropologists themselves “believe”?