From the native’s point of view – or daddy-knows-best?

Authors

• Monica Engelhart Stockholm University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67263

Keywords:

Indigenous Peoples, Other, The, Imperialism, Colonization, Objectivity, Methodology, Anthropology, Reductionism

Abstract

This paper discusses how a single approach or attempts to leave the specific socio-cultural setting out of the account can only distort our view of the extremely complex phenomenon 'religion'. The problem of understanding “the Other" arises as soon as we meet this other, but where the other seemed too much unlike ourselves, the demand became imperative, either to reject the other totally, or to find ways to communicate, that is, some form of understanding.