Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University. He is the co-author of Rethinking Pluralism (2012) and Ritual and Its Consequences (2008).

Robert P. Weller is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. He is the co-author of Rethinking Pluralism (2012) and Ritual and Its Consequences (2008).

"...absorbing book..." -- Janet M. Powers, Religion

"How Things Count as the Same is a profound and wide-ranging meditation on sameness and difference, and on the hugely consequential variations in the ways in which sameness is recognised, asserted, or established: sameness turns out to be a remarkably complex and varied social phenomenon. The latest fruit of a long-standing collaboration between an anthropologist and a religious studies scholar, this book combines imaginative and original theoretical reflection with discussion of wide-ranging historical and ethnographic cases, and throws new light on perennial questions of social existence as well as the most pressing political issues of our time."--James Laidlaw, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

"Seligman and Weller use the seemingly simple question 'What counts as the same?' to take us into a deep examination of the interrelationship between culture and the human mind. Their analysis of memory, mimesis, and metaphor as distinctly different and essential processes is most convincing. The breadth of examples points to the remarkable erudition of these two authors. A tour de force that is an important read for scholars across the humanities, social and cognitive sciences."--Christopher Winship, Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology, Harvard University