A Working Typology of Transcendence in Anthropology

Abstract This article foregrounds transcendence and its definitions to formalize the term's value as a viable analytic for anthropology. It notes the proliferation of transcendences (plural) in anthropological literature and proposes a working typology of transcendence that recognizes the different scales within analysis on which transcendence is being used. Drawing upon this scalar-aware typology, it reviews existing scholarship in the field of anthropology of material religion, characterized by a detailed theoretical treatment of transcendence. Finally, this article redraws attention to the situatedness of transcendence in the history of anthropology and its attendant Christian legacy, in other words the scale of anthropology itself. It concludes that the most promising value of transcendence as an analytic lies in attending to the tensions between different scales in analysis.