Module 4B - Contemporary Theories PDF

SOCI 377 -Sociology of the ReligionDr. Gbenga Adejare CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF RELIGION Highlights on Peter Berger Michel Foucault Pierre Bourdieu Jurgen Habermas Jurgen Habermas – On Modernity... Duality: System and life: The world can be seen as composed of "finite province of meaning" and a publi...

SOCI 377 -Sociology of the ReligionDr. Gbenga Adejare CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF RELIGION Highlights on Peter Berger Michel Foucault Pierre Bourdieu Jurgen Habermas Jurgen Habermas – On Modernity... Duality: System and life: The world can be seen as composed of "finite province of meaning" and a public sphere of communicative action (Habermas, 1980: 117-118) Religion and revolution are interlinked: Modernization resulted in secular knowledge independence while religion diminishes in terms of how meanings and purposes are redefined. Advancement in (undistorted) communication bred liberation of minds, undermining religious authority. o "The authority of the holy is gradually replaced by the authority of an achieved consensus" (Habermas, 1987:77) Jurgen Habermas – The Theory of Communicative Action Linguification of the sacred: Nominalization of the sacred through new forms of communicative structures. Mythical views became associable with cultural differentiation typical of multiple view in modernity. It is believed that full communication is impracticable under religious conditions The notion of truth is, thus, debatable as religion does not create a room for communicative actions. Jurgen Habermas – Some Criticisms Overgeneralization: This is evident in how Habermas assumed a single public sphere, ignoring multiplicity of public spheres. He has been accused of being too monolithic - He assumed a oneway interpretation of how religion responds to social changes. Secularism: Laying too much emphasis on secularism has made some critics of Habermas refer to him as a secularist. Pierre Bourdieu – Religious Field Gleaning from Weber, Bourdieu saw an array of possible objective relations between positions (Bourdieu, 1987:121). Division of labour and specialization paved a way for creation of relational positions for different individuals Different religious interactions are symbolic of different interests of the interactors Competition for religious powers are not unconnected with competition for religious legitimacy. E.g., the Evangelicals and others in America Pierre Bourdieu – Religious Habitus Those who control the religious field control the space of habitus (the matrix of perceptions). Power is symbolic in how it is used to establish social order – creation of social realities Created social realities can be in forms of "misrecognitions" of what is real. Religious legitimacy reflects religious power Religion serves as a system of classification o Possibility of analyzing tastes and classes o A system of knowledge and communication Michel Foucault – Knowledge and Power Christianity is a strong force in the western hemisphere of the world. The central focus in the work of Foucault is the role of knowledge in power relations. Foucault is vocal about the negative impacts of religion Religion as a culture that influences perceptions about madness and medicine that spanned across different historical periods (The Order of Things, 1970) Michel Foucault – Knowledge and Power cont'd The docile body: Through a system of confession, region revives guilts Pastoral modality of power enshrines a system of government that makes people subservient Peter L. Berger – Dialectics cont'd Peter Berger's theory of religion emanates from insights and synthesis of extant theories and theorists such as Marx, Durkheim, Weber, among others. For Berger, religion grows out of a fundamental human predicament. It is the idea that humans are born unfinished, lacking the biological programming to survive. As such, we all learn how to cope with our environment. We do this through our adoption of culture Culture is what therefore constitutes the true ecology of our behaviour and the quality of our lives depends, to a large degree on the stability of our cultural creations Peter L. Berger – Dialectics cont'd As a result of our continued interactions with the culture that we identify with, human activity becomes very regular and predictable, providing practical and psychological reassurance to everyone about their own behaviour and that of others. In this way, we have a relatively stable human environment which results in what Peter Berger calls a nomos (a meaningful world order). However, there is a way in which the stability that is achieved is in some sense illusory because human cultures are by their nature inherently unstable. Peter L. Berger – Dialectics cont'd The world we live in, the world as perceived by humans, is constantly being created and re-created by us through a "dialectical process" of world construction. This construction has three aspects : "Externalization, objectivation and internalization". By externalization, we speak of how our thoughts become embodied in the things we make and do in the world. As soon as they are out there, these products of our thought (such as machines, art forms, belief systems, etc.) take on an independent existence as objects of our awareness. Objectivation occurs. Peter L. Berger – Dialectics cont'd We then internalize the lessons of living in the world of these object (physical, social and cultural), adapting ourselves in thought, word and deed to the presumed requirements of "reality". Thus, while we are responsible for 'creating' our world, we are also another of its creations. Also, because the world we live in is the ongoing product of human externalizations, it is subject to constant flux and change. Religion, therefore, becomes the ultimate response to this predicament. Peter L. Berger – Dialectics cont'd On the margins of everyday life are less predictable experiences that resist being incorporated, that threaten some primal chaos. The experiences threaten us with "anomie", an anxiety-inducing sense of normlessness. In Berger's words, "every nomos is an edifice erected in the face of the potent and alien forces of chaos" (1967:25) Religion seeks to provide the "ultimate shield against the terror of the anomie" (1967:25) by supplying the social order with ultimate legitimation Conclusion Contemporary theories are more encompassing as the exegetes focus more of dynamic interpretation of power relations that shape religions. The interface of individuality and the lifeworld is central to the analysis of post-structural theories. Rather than simplifying extant theories, most contemporary theoies are complex yet more pragmatic in scope.