Suchergebnisse

This article offers a sociological interpretation of the conflict in the 1990s in Croatia between the President of the Republic of Croatia, the late Franjo Tuðman, and a football fan tribe. It began as a family quarrel in the same Croatian nationalist ideological and political family about the imposed name change of a football club but gradually became the first public political contestation of the President's charisma with growing political consequences. The interpretation is based upon identifying the set of confrontations involved: social system vs life world, different deconstructions and reconstructions of social and football reality, expropriators vs expropriated, nation-state politics vs autonomy of the civil society, corporate politics vs sub-politics. In conclusion, it discusses a set of problems regarding football and politics in so-called transition and, in particular, those regarding football fandom and nationalism.

The analysis represents sociological reflection about the contemporary religion and social conflicts in their most violent form. It is based upon the tragic vicissitudes of the crisis in former Yugoslavia having exploded in a cruel war. The course of events is approached as something having been easily predictable, and deeply embedded in the modern European political and social history, and, therefore, with high symptomatic relevance, to be interpreted not primarily as a kind of tail of the world of the XIXth century but as an extreme case of some current trends of wider dimensions. The war is interpreted as the almost unavoidable consequence of political strategies pursuing the same but diametrically opposed political objectives, best described by Mazzini's political formula "Every nation a state and only one state for every nation" or Gellner's sociological one "One nation, one culture, one state". Therefore, the crucial problem becomes the problem of the role of religion and churches in an area with mixed populations but dominated by opposed nationalism. The theoretical framework for interpretation of nationalist political strategies is taken from Gellner as well as from Offe. The crucial fact is that the nationalist political strategies or the ethnicification of politics have obtained not only mass support on the part of believers and belongers to the respective religious comunities but also their specific legitimacy in religious terms. Some major consequences of such a legitimization of nationalist political strategies are traced and described on three different levels and settings: a) a general level, b) a long range historical one, and c) a transitional one. The crucial conclusions arrived at are that an expected spiritual re-awakening focused upon a restoration of personal moral consciousness and renewed interest in spirituality and spiritual tradition has been practically inundated by a tidal wave of nationalization of the sacred and sacralization of the nation. Therefore, the most extensive religious revival has occured so far alongside to nationalist movements.

/ Table of Contents -- I Religion und Sozialer Wandel Theoretische Probleme / Religion and Social Change Theoretical Aspects -- Toward a Theory of Religion and Social Change -- Religion und sozialer Wandel. Die Anwendung eines handlungstheoretischen Modells -- Religion, Geschichte und sozialer Wandel in Max Webers Religionssoziologie -- Anpassung. Zu einem Thema der modernen Religionssoziologie -- Religionssoziologische und sprachstrukturelle Aspekte des Entwicklungsproblems in der islamischen Welt -- II Begriff und Funktion der Religion / Concept and Function of Religion -- On the Nature of Western Religious Explanation -- The Re-Appraisal of Tylor's Concept of Religion: The Interactionist Analogy -- Some Theoretical Implications of the Religiosity as a Mass Phenomenon in a Contemporary Socialist Society -- III Empirische Untersuchungen / Empirical Investigations -- Kirche im Feld sozialer Interaktion -- Religious Commitments of College Students over Five Decades -- Berufspositionen und Berufsvorstellungen promovierter katholischer Laientheologen.