Suchergebnisse

The ways in which political systems & their members respond to social strains are little understood. When citizens are confronted by unfathomable problems or intense pressures, they often seek to suspend serious activities or escape rigid & alienating roles in order to attain psychological release, mutual involvement, & insights about their lives. Release, involvement, & insight are consequences of a universal human activity called play. People play for several reasons: to make room for personal expression in rigid social structures; to create & maintain the bounds necessary for community; & to generate the novelty, perspective, & invention necessary for social & political change. HA.

One of the central dilemmas of politics is the problem of maintaining public morality without unleashing the violence, oppression, & corruption that can result from moralistic uses of political symbols. The frequent abuses of the symbols of civil religions in modern life have provoked increasing demands to dismantle the sacred trappings of the state. However, this solution is much too simple. It begs the question of how civic morality can be generated in the absence of sacred symbols, rules, & rituals. A careful analysis of civil religion suggests a set of conditions that would permit the ordinary use of sacred symbols of state, & minimize their abuses. AA.

Our knowledge of ideology & mass belief systems has evolved from a fairly general consensus about findings, their theoretical implications, & the agenda of future research questions, to a state of increasing disagreement about these matters. A model of the basis of scientific consensus in the field explains the emergence of the central breakdown in knowledge, & suggests four general alternatives for the future development of the field. The model also identifies the key scientific practices responsible for problematic knowledge in mass belief studies. The identification of these practices provides a focus for a number of remedies that may move the major "problems of knowledge" in the field toward resolution. 1 Figure. HA.