On the Notion of ‘Religion’: A Taxonomic Analysis of a Large-Scale Database

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  • Edward Slingerland
  • Willis Monroe
  • Rachel Spicer
  • Stephen Christopher
The Database of Religious History (DRH; religiondatabase.org) is a large-scale digital humanities project dedicated to capturing scholarly perspectives on the history of religious groups across the globe. Analysis of the current state of the data shows a remarkable consistency between a taxonomic tree generated from the entries submitted by our expert contributors and larger assumptions within Religious Studies as they pertain to the similarities and differences between religious groups. Additionally, there is broad agreement between how experts answer questions and the tags they use to categorize their own entries, demonstrating a consistency between top-down and bottom-up approaches to describing religious groups. We see both of these results as affirming a commensurable understanding of the category of “religion” while at the same time demonstrating the value of these types of large-scale quantitative analyses for answering larger questions within the field.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of the American Academy of Religion
Vol/bind91
Udgave nummer2
Sider (fra-til) 257–282
Antal sider37
ISSN0002-7189
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

ID: 333860479