Exploring the Challenges and Potentialities of the Database of Religious History for Cognitive Historiography

Abstract

This article explores the potential impact and contribution of the Database of Religious History (DRH) project within the field of Cognitive Historiography. The DRH aims to bring together, in a systematic and open-access format, data on religious groups from across the globe and throughout history. By utilizing robust, open-source technologies and best-practice software principles, the DRH constitutes a novel and innovative approach to historical and cultural studies. As a contribution to the scientific study of both religion and history, the DRH offers data amenable to statistical analyses, thus providing tools for assessing diachronic cultural innovation and adaptation, the testing of grand narrative theories of religious change, and for enriching and revitalizing traditional fields such as comparative religions, history of religion(s), and anthropology of religion. In this article we explore the methods employed in collecting and digitizing historical data, identify our unit of analysis, outline the challenges of recruiting historians of various fields, and highlight the DRH’s methodological potential for both Religious Studies and Cognitive Historiography.

A problem in theory

“…This research has implications for law, political science, economics, and history from individual cognition to societal institutions and back again. New projects are also bringing the humanities to bear on long-standing questions by building large databases in religion and cultural evolution 140,141 . The first step on this ladder integrating the human sciences is building on this general theory of human behaviour, but there are many steps to go.…”

Coding culture: challenges and recommendations for comparative cultural databases

“…The result is that any given slice of space and time in the DRH can be filled by codings indexed to multiple overlapping groups, texts, places or objects. Although each poll is a self-contained database, data between polls is linked through the overlapping temporal and geographic location, explicit links between related questions, and through metadata, such as a tree of religions and geography (Sullivan et al, 2017 ; The Database of Religious History, n.d. ). The advantages of allowing modification of units or additional units of analysis must, however, always be weighed against the costs of weakening standardisation of coding procedures.…”

“…Lack of transparency has led to replication crises in other fields (Christensen & Miguel, 2018 ; Collaboration, 2012 ; Sullivan et al, 2017 ) and risks undermining published analyses in this burgeoning field (e.g. Slingerland et al, 2020 ; Whitehouse et al, 2020 ).…”