Search results for "Sociology of religion"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
Bearing gods in mind and culture
2011
Abstract Where do supernatural agents come from and why do they stay around? Within the biocultural study of religion one finds a growing tendency to answer these questions by weaving together two conceptual threads, which I will refer to as anthropomorphic promiscuity and sociographic prudery. Although descriptions of these theogonic (god-bearing) mechanisms can differ significantly, the theoretical pattern can be recognized in authors from a variety of disciplines. I illustrate this pattern using four books published in 2010: David Lewis-Williams's Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion, Pascal Boyer's The Fracture of an Illusion: Science and the Dissolution of Rel…
Religion and Civil Society: Theoretical Reflections
2013
Using World Values Survey data, this chapter begins with the global distinctiveness of European societies in terms of both religious vitality and support for the public role of religion. They exhibit a secularity that has been challenged in recent years by an unexpected return of religion as a contentious public issue. The chapter then asks, which theories in the social sciences can help to think constructively through the challenges of religion and civil society in such media-rich, religiously diverse, consumer-oriented secularised societies? It begins with sociology of religion, arguing that while secularisation and rational choice theories shed light on some developments, their conceptua…
The Sephardim of North Morocco, Zionism and Illegal Emigration to Israel Through the Spanish Cities of Ceuta and Melilla
2020
This text looks at the fluid intersection in the emergence and development of Zionism and the later Zionist-promoted emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel from what was the Spanish Protectorate zone in Morocco and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in the north of Sherifian state. This process has received less attention from scholars than similar events in the French zone. However, it has some particularities that merit specific attention. From the early years of contact between North Moroccan Jews and European Zionism, the strong cultural identity of the Sephardim in the region and the mobilization of a Spanish approach informed by philo-Sephardism marked an important difference wi…
Something Mightier: Marginalization, Occult Imaginations and the Youth Conflict in the Oil-Rich Niger Delta
2011
This contribution examines the role of occult imaginations in the struggle against perceived socio-economic marginalization by youth militias from the Ijaw ethnic group in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It argues that the asymmetric power between the federal government/transnational oil corporations (TNOCs) and the militias may have privileged the invocation of the supernatural as a critical agency of strength and courage by the youth militias. The conflict in the region embodies a cultural revision which has been necessitated by both the uncertainty of the oil environment and the prevailing narratives of social injustice. Hence the Egbesu deity, seen historically as embodying…
WISING UP: THE EVOLUTION OF NATURAL THEOLOGY
2012
This essay is in response to Professor Celia Deane-Drummond's 2012 Boyle lectures. The first part calls attention to the value and significance of her “sophianic theo-drama hypothesis” for the contemporary engagement between Christian theology and evolutionary science. In a sense, her proposal itself is a religious “adaptation” to changes within an international, interdisciplinary academic environment. The second part of the essay explores the rapidly shrinking “niche” of Christian natural theology and briefly summarizes an alternative set of hypotheses from the biocultural sciences of religion.
The fertility of female immigrants to Europe from Christian and Muslim countries.
2020
Abstract This article investigates the fertility of female immigrants to Europe in relation to the characteristics of individual women (n=1,667), their countries of origin in Africa, Asia and Latin-America (n=68) and the European country where they reside (n=22), using the European Social Survey (ESS) collected between 2010 and 2017 (rounds 5 to 8). Many immigrants have fertility outcomes that converge towards the native fertility of their country of residence in Europe, a surprisingly strong factor. Immigrants from Muslim countries have higher fertility, though, and they compress their fertility over fewer years than immigrants from Christian countries. Multivariate estimates indicate that…
Belief in God, Confidence in the Church and Secularization in Scandinavia
2021
We used the three latest rounds of the religion module of International Social Survey Programme to study secularization in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, focusing on belief in God. We restricted our sample to the affiliated with the majority Protestant churches and the unaffiliated and analyzed the trends toward disaffiliation and disbelief in God. Then, we studied the association between confidence in churches, religious/secular upbringing, and demographic controls with belief in God using multinomial logistic regression models. Our treatment of belief in God as a nominal variable allowed the inclusion of both the element of doubt and different images of God in the analyses. The trends towar…
Studying religious music at the grassroots level: a look into the discourse practices of Christian metal bands online
2013
Religious issues are studied in various ways, most prominently by sociologists of religion. This paper suggests that in today’s world of globally intersecting webs of people, places, ideas and action, scholars and readers interested in religion will find themselves benefiting from cross-disciplinary approaches which help them to conceptualize and describe today’s phenomena at different levels. This paper describes how the emerging discipline of the sociology of language and religion may be applied to studying Christian metal bands’ discourse online. Although previous studies give a good idea of the structures, practices and tendencies in and related to Christian metal, little is reported on…
¿Campo artístico o tótems de un grupo de estatus? Ritual tradicional, innovación estética y reproducción social en las Fallas de Valencia
2020
¿Pueden ser analizadas las fallas de Valencia con el concepto de campo artístico de Pierre Bourdieu? Esta cuestión ha sido abordada otras veces, pero ha obtenido una respuesta axiomática, considerando sólo su vertiente artística. Sin embargo, entendemos que, a diferencia de los campos artísticos modernos, en las Fallas y otras fiestas tradicionales no podemos constatar una dinámica de autonomización social ni una dinámica de oposición entre arte burgués y arte puro o la sustitución de vanguardias. Por el contrario, el dominio de los Fallas de la elite refleja la heteronomía del mundo fallero respecto del campo económico y social. Por ello a partir de datos cuantitativos y cualitativos el ar…
The Influence of Religion on Life Satisfaction in Italy
2021
Italy is the cradle of Catholicism and, despite the secularization process, religion continues to be part of its national culture. Although Italian sociologists have investigated the religious paradigm in Italy, there are aspects of such phenomenon still little explored. This paper examines the potential influence religion has on individuals’ life satisfaction. Data from the European Value Study survey provides evidence of a two-way interaction between religion and life satisfaction, with a substantial effect only in the case of public religious forms. This association seems to be moved by the mechanism of social support, and it differs across Italian regions. Results confirm the hypothesis…