Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

The second edition of Rosina Lippi-Green's book, English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, continues the conversation from her 1997 first edition regardin...

English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States

The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland

Religion in the modern world

about outsiders are "not entirely imaginary" (p. 178) or that their understanding of American history is "not entirely wrong" (p. 18). In the end, though her subjects probably will not be inclined to acknowledge it, she has written a manual for fundamentalist congregational survival, telling them what they are doing that works and identifying the points at which their beliefs are most vulnerable to attack. Criticisms of this book will likely center on the narrowness of its focus and the precariousness of generalizing from such studies. Fundamentalists come in several varieties; all of them are unlike such cousins as evangelicals and pentecostals. Ammerman understands those distinctions, and she makes clear the tensions between Southside fundamentalists and other conservative Christians, but one must remember that her final chapter and her theoretical interpretations rest on a very narrow base. Ammerman, however, has written an excellent book, one that could become a model for congregational studies. It seeks an experiential as well as an empirical understanding of the life and faith of a congregation of people. It is fair and readable. After reading this book, critics of fundamentalism might be slightly less condescending, fundamentalists slightly less smug, and scholars a bit more careful in framing generalizations.

Moral Monopoly: The Catholic Church in Modern Irish Society . By Tom Inglis. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, Ltd., 1987. xi + 251 pp. $35.00.

The effect of migration on religiosity is a well-documented theme in the sociology of religion. Despite the rapid growth in the number of Polish Catholics in the UK and Ireland, little has been written on the spiritual and religious aspects of their journeys. This article is based on the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork with Polish migrants in the UK and Ireland. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation with Polish migrants of various ages and class backgrounds, we identify three possible outcomes for individuals of Catholic faith being transplanted to a secular context: firstly, Catholic Poles continue to practise in the same way as they did in their home country; secondly, they begin to question their faith and leave the church altogether; thirdly, they take the opportunity to explore their faith in a flexible and relatively independent manner. We argue that the third possibility leads to the privatisation and intellectualisation of their Catholicism. Thus, the experience of ...

/pdf/becoming-a-real-catholic-polish-migrants-and-lived-301mcagb6t.pdf

Becoming a ‘real’ Catholic: Polish migrants and lived religiosity in the UK and Ireland

Religion, in both the sense of the institution and religious practices, is embedded in society - The social forms of religious life are fully integrated into the structures of society. Secularization is a source of great debate, and is a prominent feature in the sociology of religion literature. Religion, in both the sense of the institution and religious practices, is embedded in society - the social forms of religious life are fully integrated into the structures of society. Secularization is a source of great debate, and is a prominent feature in the sociology of religion literature. The need to examine the extent to which Catholicism in Ireland has been affected by the secular movement that has swept through Western Europe is essential to understanding religion in contemporary society, and the everyday meanings people attach to religious objects/institution/terminology at the local level. Through a close micro study of a small Donegal community I examine patterns of religious belief and practice and how these have undergone change in response to wider socio-cultural transformations associated with such things as urbanization and globalization. I therefore, establish the community’s level of religiosity - from spirituality to practice. From this, a test of the applicability of Davies (1994) ‘believing without belonging’ theory to the local Irish case is conducted.

https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jsr/article/viewFile/208/169

Kerry Gallagher

Papers

Becoming a ‘real’ Catholic: Polish migrants and lived religiosity in the UK and Ireland

Dichotomy of Believing and Belonging – An Irish Context