1,721,560 research outputs found
Turner Bryan S., Citizenship and capitalism : the debate over reformism.
No full textWacquant Loïc J. D. Turner Bryan S., Citizenship and capitalism : the debate over reformism.. In: Revue française de sociologie, 1989, 30-2. pp. 342-345
Turner (Bryan S.). éd Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity
No full textSéguy Jean. Turner (Bryan S.). éd Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°78, 1992. p. 277
Turner (Bryan S.). éd Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity
No full textSéguy Jean. Turner (Bryan S.). éd Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°78, 1992. p. 277
Turner (Bryan S.) Religion and Social Theory. A Materialist Perspective
No full textSéguy Jean. Turner (Bryan S.) Religion and Social Theory. A Materialist Perspective. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°58/2, 1984. pp. 314-315
Robertson (Roland) Turner (Bryan S.) eds Talcott Parsons Theorist of Modernity
No full textSéguy Jean. Robertson (Roland) Turner (Bryan S.) eds Talcott Parsons Theorist of Modernity. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°82, 1993. p. 338
Religion
No full textJacques Derrida in 'Faith and Knowledge' (1998: 34) notes, following Emile Benveniste in Indo-European Language and Society (1973), that the word 'religion' (religio) has two distinctive roots. First, relegere from legere means to bring together, to harvest or to gather (in). Second, religare from ligare means to tie or to bind together. The first meaning indicates the religious foundations of any social group that is gathered together, while the second points to the disciplines or morality that are necessary for controlling human beings and creating a regulated mentality. The first meaning indicates the role of the cult in forming human membership, while the second meaning points to the regulatory practices of religion in the discipline of passions. This distinction formed the basis of Kant's philosophical analysis of religion and morality. In Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason (1960), Kant distinguished between religion as cult (des blossen Cultus), which seeks favours from God through prayer and offerings to bring healing and wealth to its followers, and religion as moral action (die Religion des guten Lebenswandels), which commands human beings to change their behaviour in order to lead a better life. Kant further elaborated this point by an examination of 'reflecting faith' that compels humans to strive for salvation through faith rather than the possession of religious knowledge. The implication of Kant's distinction was that (Protestant) Christianity was the only true 'reflecting faith', and in a sense therefore the model of all authentic religious intentions. Kant's distinction was fundamentally about those religious injunctions that call human beings to (moral) action and hence demand that humans assert their autonomy and responsibility. In order to have autonomy, human beings need to act independently of God. In a paradoxical fashion, Christianity implies the 'death of God' because it calls people to freedom and hence the Christian faith is ultimately self-defeating
Introduction : mapping the sociology of religion
No full textIn the modern world, religion, contrary to the conventional understanding of modernization as secularization, continues to play a major role in politics, society and culture. Indeed that role appears if anything to be increasing rather than decreasing and hence in recent years that has been a flurry of academic activity around such ideas as "political religion," "religious nationalism," and "post-secular society." In broad terms, religion appears to be increasingly an important component of public culture rather than a matter of private belief and practice (Casanova 1994). Of course the salience of religion in modern culture depends a great deal on which society we are looking at. Religion - in the form of Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, charismatic movements, and revivalism - appears to be flourishing in much of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Religions are also reviving under the somewhat more liberal government policies of contemporary China and Vietnam. However in Europe and North America the growth of diasporic communities with large religious minorities is also changing the cultural map of what were thought to be predominantly secular societies. There is naturally the temptation to think that after 9/11 and the terrorist bombings in London, Madrid, and elsewhere that the revival of interest in religion is in fact a function of the political importance of understanding Islam as the Terror in the Mind of God (Juergensmeyer, 2003). There has indeed been a growth of scholarly interest in Islam, including the study of "radical Islam," "political Islam," and so forth, but one ought to avoid such narrow, popular and often prejudicial labels when considering Islamic revivalism. In most Muslim societies, there is very little evidence of political radicalism and on the contrary Islamic revivalism is not necessarily connected with youth alienation or anti-modern attitudes (Pew Research Center 2007). It is important for academics to avoid such popular, prejudicial, and political attitudes. The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion attempts to understand and describe the prominence of religion in modernity and therefore takes a comprehensive and (in the neutral meaning of the term) catholic approach to the study of religion in society. In response to narrow views of religion, handbooks and companions can play an important role in both defining and defending the field of the study of religion and religions
Talcott Parson's sociology of religion and the expressive revolution : the problem of Western individualism
No full textImmanuel Kant distinguished between religion as cult in which people seek favours from God through prayer and offerings to bring healing and wealth, and religion as moral action that commands human beings to change their lives. Kant further defined religion as a ‘reflecting faith’ or ‘moralizing faith’ that compels humans to strive for salvation through faith alone. The Kantian distinction was fundamental to Max Weber’s view of the relationship between asceticism and capitalism. Talcott Parsons’s early sociology of religion engaged with this theme in Kant and Weber, but in his later work Parsons came to a re-appraisal of Émile Durkheim. In the concept of the expressive revolution, Parsons followed Durkheim in studying individualism as a major transformation of society. There is, however, a contradiction between individualism as either the legacy of Protestant pietism or the product of modern consumerism. Parsons’s sociology of religion remains distinctive because he did not subscribe to the secularization thesis, but instead saw American liberalism as the fulfilment of Protestant individualism. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of the differences between the values of the expressive revolution and the legacy of Kantian individualism. Romantic love in modern society is an aspect of the expressive revolution, but it is also a legacy of the emphasis on emotional conversion and attachment to the person of Jesus in pietism. The expressive revolution developed this legacy of emotional expressivity, but combined romantic love with a consumer ethic. Religiosity survives in the context of consumerism as an aspect of what Robert Bellah called the ‘civil religion in America’
Pragmatism, democracy and imperialism
No full textThrough a paralled commentary on socialist internationalism, this chapter asks whether “democracy in one country” – the United States of America – is either feasible or compatible with the critical legacy of pragmatism. In its response to the growth of international terrorism, especially in its “liberation of Iraq”, the United States is in danger of becoming a “predatory democracy”. While Rorty has in the past argued that America cannot functions a global policeman, the trend of contemporary international relations is to create an American Empire. The chapter concludes by arguing that Rorty’s patriotism functions as “a final vocabulary” that contradicts his postmodernism and makes it difficult for modern pragmatism to remain a critical theory
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