In closely focused essays, a group of anthropologists debate the particular nature of religious concepts and categories.

I. Cognitive processes and cultural representations: 1. Cognitive aspects of religious symbolism Pascal Boyer; 2. Whither 'ethnoscience'? Scott Atran; II. The structure of religious categories: 3. Computational complexity in the cognitive modelling of cosmological ideas J. D. Keller and F. K. Lehman (U Chit Hlaing); 4. 'Earth' and 'path' as complex categories: semantics and symbolism in Kwaio culture Roger Keesing; 5. Domain-specificity, living kinds and symbolism Maurice Bloch; 6. Pseudo-natural kinds Pascal Boyer; III. Acquisition and belief fixation: 7. Sign into symbol, symbol as sign: cognitive aspects of a social process Christian Toren; 8. Talking about souls: the pragmatic construction of meaning in Cuna ritual language Carlo Severi; IV. The structure of ritual action: 9. Cognitive categories, cultural forms and ritual structures E. Thomas Lawson; 10. The interactive basis of ritual effectiveness in a male initiation rite Michael Houseman.