TY - JOUR
T1 - Prayer, cognition, and culture
AU - Wuthnow, Robert
N1 - Funding Information:
The essays in this issue of Poetics are the result of a 3-year research project at Princeton University, with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, on the cultural aspects of prayer. The project was interdisciplinary, but was based intellectually in cultural sociology and was designed to draw insights from cognitive studies and methods of textual analysis. We met weekly as a working seminar. During the first year and a half, we read and discussed relevant literature and hosted speakers from psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, religious studies, and sociology. During the last half of the project, we discussed each participant’s initial research proposal and data collection strategy and later discussed first drafts and then revisions of each paper.
PY - 2008/10
Y1 - 2008/10
N2 - Religious texts, symbols, and practices have long been recognized as important aspects of culture, and yet they are less often the focus of empirical observation than are crude indicators obtained in surveys (such as religious preference and attendance). Prayer is one such topic: widely practiced, and yet treated mostly without regard to its cognitive content or cultural framing. Eleven empirical studies are presented here which examine prayers and prayer-related aspects of religion in contexts including advocacy groups, hospitals, congregations, the Internet, homilies in mosques, religious television, children's books, art, testimonials, inspirational guides, and interviews. The studies illuminate methods and data for studying cultural content of these kinds and draw connections with recent work in cognitive sociology and cognitive anthropology.
AB - Religious texts, symbols, and practices have long been recognized as important aspects of culture, and yet they are less often the focus of empirical observation than are crude indicators obtained in surveys (such as religious preference and attendance). Prayer is one such topic: widely practiced, and yet treated mostly without regard to its cognitive content or cultural framing. Eleven empirical studies are presented here which examine prayers and prayer-related aspects of religion in contexts including advocacy groups, hospitals, congregations, the Internet, homilies in mosques, religious television, children's books, art, testimonials, inspirational guides, and interviews. The studies illuminate methods and data for studying cultural content of these kinds and draw connections with recent work in cognitive sociology and cognitive anthropology.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.poetic.2008.06.002
DO - 10.1016/j.poetic.2008.06.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:55549117121
VL - 36
SP - 333
EP - 337
JO - Poetics
JF - Poetics
SN - 0304-422X
IS - 5-6
ER -