At the BASR, we encourage sharing our knowledge not only through our publications, but also through communication with one another. With that in mind, we have started a small social media focused initiative of “Things to Think With”. Each week, we will post on our social media platforms a thing to think with. This may be a term, a phrase, or a quote. The archive of these things will be listed here.

You can participate directly by submitting your thing you think with, by following the form here:  Things to Think With Participation

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Crossing and Dwelling
How cultural and religious practice flows from place to place; how it translates, and how it localises in the process. This helps me think about movement and change, and embeds religion in the places of its practice, rather than thinking of culture as a kind of abstract, placeless content that gets cut and pasted by individuals (see syncretism).
(Tweed, Thomas A 2006. Crossing and dwelling : a theory of religion).
Shared by: Theodora Wildcroft (@theowildcroft)

Cognitive Drift
A gradual and often unacknowledged shift in interpretation as the individual engages with a new community
(Tanya Luhrmann, “Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft”, 1989)
Shared by: David Robertson

Implicit Mythology
the stories people share personal to them which strengthens, or demonstrates the strength of, their connection to myth and mythic landscape
(Jonathan Miles-Watson 2015, “The Cathedral on the Ridge and the Implicit Mythology of the Shimla Hills,” Suomen Antropologi Journal)

Cognitive, Empathetic Engagement:
a methodology which requires approaching the field in an open-minded, empathetic manner of engaging the beliefs “as if” they are “true”
(Fiona Bowie 2013, “Building Bridges, Dissolving Boundaries” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion)