Introduction: Crossing religious and ethnographic boundaries – the case for comparative reflection

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue traces the development history of the sub‐disciplines of the anthropologies of Christianity and Islam to suggest that these ‘monistic’ tendencies have obscured exploration and theorisation of inter‐religious coexistence and encounters for people’s lives and the societies in which they live. These sub‐disciplinary boundaries have further led to an unintended ‘provincialisation’ of both geographical spaces and theoretical debates, and stalled the development of a theoretically robust anthropology of religion. This special issue argues for the value of comparative work on multi‐religious encounters within particular contexts, as well as of thinking comparatively on a global scale, as a way to generate new questions and considerations in how we study religion. The final section offers a short overview of the contributions to the special issue.