Religion is a broad taxon of social practices, a category that encompasses the paradigmatic forms of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Some critics argue that the concept of religion is a modern invention that was imposed by European colonialism, and that people should stop using it to categorize societies that do not fit the mold of Western world religions. Others take a more realist approach to the idea of religion, noting that social structures exist even without being conceptualized and therefore that people should not be surprised when a new religious tradition emerges in an already existing culture.
The most common definition of religion involves a person’s relation to something that is sacred, absolute, or spiritual, and concerns about their afterlife. The term is also used to describe a social group or institution that manages those relations and concerns. This apolitical definition of religion provides an anchor for most of the other definitions of the term that follow, and it produces a spectrum of prototypical cases for the concept of religion.
Several scholars critique the concept of religion by arguing that it ignores important aspects of human culture, including social structures and the role of humans within nature. They often take a cultural historical perspective in their research and look at how social structures influence human subjectivity. Other scholars, such as Clifford Geertz and Emile Asad, use a more hermeneutic approach to culture that stresses the importance of meaning-making for all symbols in cultures.