Suchergebnisse

This paper was to written about 2008 for an edited volume on churches engaged in building community -- a volume that never appeared. It uses the lens of social capital to describe the efforts of church groups in two cities to help poor communities take change of their own destinies. It traces the work of Communities Organized for Public Service ("COPS") and Metro Alliance in San Antonio, Texas to empower people in the city's poorer neighborhoods to demand their fair share of city services. It also describes the work begun at Dolores (Catholic) Mission in East Los Angeles to empower its largely Latino lay members to confront -- and then work with -- police, immigration officials, and other authorities. It concludes with some reflections on the effects such activities have for the development of both social and civic capital.

Le fait que les concepts de base de la sociologie des religions sont fondés sur des modèles religieux occidentaux a suscité des tentatives d'étendre la boîte à outils de la discipline de manière à inclure des idées issues des traditions non occidentales. Cet article explore deux enjeux auxquels se confrontent de tels efforts. Le premier est la question de l'appropriation culturelle : de quel droit des personnes ayant du pouvoir peuvent-elles accumuler les ressources, les artefacts et les idées de ceux qui ont moins de pouvoir qu'elles, en les appliquant dans des manières qui ignorent leurs créateurs ? Le second consiste à savoir si un ensemble d'idées peut s'appliquer en dehors de son contexte historico-culturel d'origine. Une sociologie universelle est-elle possible, comme le prétendaient les fondateurs de la sociologie ? Ou sommes-nous confinés à n'avoir qu'une série de sociologies indigènes, occidentale inclue, chacune applicable uniquement dans sa sphère locale ? Cet article soutient que nous pouvons répondre à ces questions seulement si nous prenons en compte notre propre situation historico-culturelle. Celle-ci inclut une ouverture accrue à reconnaître les inégalités passées et une volonté de réformer les sciences sociales afin d'éviter d'en produire de nouvelles. Le résultat milite en faveur d'une science plus égalitaire et plus inclusive, et non une retraite dans l'isolement culturel.

Cet article analyse l'opposition d'ordre moral que les religions ont formulée à l'encontre des trois vagues de « marchandisation » qui ont secoué le monde anglo-américain depuis la moitié du xviii e siècle. Chacune de ces vagues a augmenté les inégalités sociales, détruit les droits des travailleurs et amené, d'une manière ou d'une autre, à la crise économique. Les deux premières vagues ont également engendré un ensemble important de critiques religieuses, ce qui n'a pas été le cas de la troisième. Cet article explique ce silence à partir de cinq théories sociologiques contemporaines sur la religion : la sécularisation, la résurgence conservatrice, l'individualisation, la localisation et les théories économiques du religieux. Non seulement les tendances que ces théories décrivent équivalent à une diminution de la capacité des religions à formuler une critique sociale durable, mais ces discours sociologiques eux-mêmes tendent à réduire l'impact des positions morales des religions.

The United States has considerable religious and ethnic diversity; it has not always embraced pluralism. Known as "a nation of immigrants", religion has often been seen as a way to integrate newcomers into its national project. That may have worked for European immigrants, who could become 'White'; it has not worked so well for other ethnic migrants, who could not. The result is a diverse intersectionality that as the present moment is a source of significant religious, ethnic, and political division. Are calls for a vaguely defined "pluralism" enough? No, because deeper social factors are at work. These include increasing economic inequality, a complex split between socio-economic elites and the rest of the population, and shifts in the nature of the religious field. The latter include increased religious individualism, individually oriented prosperity theology, and a sectarian turn among American Evangelicals. Such factors make any simple call for pluralist engagement at best naïve. It is an open question whether or how social unity might be sufficiently reforged.

This article, originally presented as a talk at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center, poses the question: What makes ethnography more than just slow journalism in the study of religion? It traces this concern to the political subtext of ethnography's origins in both sociology and anthropology: as an aid to imperial &/or middle-class domination of other peoples. Having discovered this, anthropologists (and a few sociologists) have changed their approach to their interview partners (no longer 'subjects'). This requires several epistemological moves, including a willingness to acknowledge our own projections about our research partners and to recognize that we are as socially situated as they. I illustrate this with scenes from one of my own ethnographic projects: the exploration of specific networks of religious social activists. They, for the most part, are not the heroes we project them to be. They are, however, willing to live on the edge, putting their faith to the test, because living any other way seems a futile waste of time.

Presents the history of the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, focusing on the prior status of human rights in international law and the cultural/ideological aspects of the debates surrounding its adoption. This chapter shows both the Western origin of the core human rights concepts and the positive-law nature of the Universal Declaration. it also shows that the cultural issues were present from the very start of the modern human rights era.

You've all heard about statistics. Have you ever wondered what you can do with them? Thinking Through Statistics shows how everyone, even those who hate math, can use statistics to answer questions like: What causes crime and social disorder Who is wealthy and who is not? How do people's religious views influence their politics? This book shows you how to identify the kinds of data to use and how to organize that data to generate answers. It shows you which statistical techniques to apply. And it shows you how to interpret the results. Each chapter is built around one or more extended examples, to help you learn how to think through an entire problem. The book leads you step by step through the process of statistical reasoning. By the end, you are handling complex problems with ease. ; https://inspire.redlands.edu/oer/1000/thumbnail.jpg