Suchergebnisse

This article outlines two inter-related but distinct theoretical approaches to the study of Christianity and Social Class developed from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The first is a model derived from Distinction (Bourdieu [1979] 1984), the second comes from Bourdieu's work on religious fields with a focus on the conversion of capital between different fields. The former, better known, approach has the potential to provide important insights, including identifying the affinity of different religious groups with different class locations; on the other hand, this would tell us little about the internal workings of religious communities; it is also unfortunately hampered by a lack of suitable data. The conception of fields and their inter-relations will not answer the questions about the affinity of particular class fragments for particular kinds of religiosity, but it does provide much keener insight into the operation of class within religious communities, by examining the conversion of different types of capital into religious capital. This is illustrated with an extended Bourdieusian hypothesis, a schematic outline that could be used as the starting point for empirical research on the operation of different kinds of capital in the Church of England.

Despite the many criticisms of the empirical and theoretical adequacy of Rational Choice theory, it continues to have considerable influence and appeal in the sociological study of religion. This article examines the use of the market metaphor and its subsidiary metaphors, with a view to understanding how these metaphors work in rational choice theory, and what this might be able to tell us about its enduring influence. I suggest that the metaphor is a useful one for studying religion in a capitalist, commodity oriented society, but when we forget that the 'religious economy' is a metaphor, it comes to serve ideological purposes well suited to the neo-liberal agenda. The market (conceived after a neo-conservative fashion) is thereby naturalized and serves to reinforce the ideology of a one-dimensional society.

Marx's phrase `opium of the people' is one of the most frequently quoted lines he ever wrote; perhaps because of that, it has been just as frequently misunderstood. By returning to the various meanings of opium in the mid-19th century, I revisit Marx's analysis, offering a way of reading the metaphor that is more consistent with Marx's dialectical method. The paper provides a revised analysis of Marx's "Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction", as well as suggestions about how this new more open-ended reading can contribute to Marxian analyses of religious beliefs and practices in late capitalism.

This book offers a variety of theoretical perspectives on the study of religion that bridge the gap between mainstream concerns of sociologists and the sociology of religion. Following an assessment of the current state of the field, the authors develop an emerging critical perspective within the sociology of religion with particular focus on the importance of historical background. Re-assessing the themes of aesthetics, listening and different degrees of spiritual self-discipline, the authors draw on ethnographic studies of religious involvement in Norway and the UK.

The turn towards nonhuman animals within sociology has shed a critical light on George Herbert Mead, his apparent prioritisation of language and the anthropocentric focus of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Although Herbert Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of this perspective he also played a key role in excising the evolutionary and 'more-than-human' components in Mead's work. This intervention not only misrepresented Mead's intellectual project, it also made symbols the predominant concern in Blumer's version of SI. Since groundbreaking animal sociologists in America framed much of their thinking in opposition to SI's emphasis on language, because it excluded alingual animal others from sociological consideration, Mead's Mind, Self, and Society has largely functioned as a negative classic within this sub-field. Although some scholars recognise there is more in Mead's work that is potentially applicable to this interspecies area the attempt to recover what might be helpful has yet to begin (e.g. Alger & Alger 1997 ). This paper suggests that if the ambiguities and contradictions that exist alongside Mead's oft-quoted anthropocentrisms are also attended to this may open up a more positive reading and use of Mead's work for animal sociology.

Emile Durkheim first outlined the problem of the categories for sociologists after Kant: how do we acknowledge the socially constituted nature of all knowledge and yet still make claims about social reality? In Durkheim's late work he identifies two opposite responses to this problem: empiricism, which denies the problem; and idealism (or constructionism), which finds it difficult to talk about anything beyond our conceptions of social conceptions. In this article we argue that the sociological work of Dorothy E. Smith provides a better solution to this problem than Durkheim does. Her work provides a useful map for studying social 'actuality' without succumbing either to relativism or to naïve realism, all the while maintaining the possibility of telling the truth about the actual social world.