Part I. Understanding Secularization: 1. The secularization debate 2. Measuring secularization 3. Comparing secularization worldwide Part II. Case Studies of Religion and Politics: 4. The puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe 5. A religious revival in post-communist Europe? 6. Religion and politics in the Muslim world Part III. The Consequences of Secularization: 7. Religion, the Protestant ethic, and moral values 8. Religious organizations and social capital 9. Religious parties and electoral behavior Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Secularization and its consequences 11. Re-examining the theory of existential security 12. Re-examining evidence for the security thesis.

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Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The central argument of network research is that actors are embedded in networks of interconnected social relationships that offer opportunities for and constraints on behavior. We review research on the antecedents and consequences of networks at the interpersonal, interunit, and interorganizational levels of analysis, evaluate recent theoretical and empirical trends, and give directions for future research, highlighting the importance of investigating cross-level network phenomena.

/pdf/taking-stock-of-networks-and-organizations-a-multilevel-1td56u54yb.pdf

Taking Stock of Networks and Organizations: A Multilevel Perspective

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

After a very long hiatus, economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion. This article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion. Although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity, most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity, the characteristics of religious groups, and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets.

Introduction to the Economics of Religion

The Political Mobilization of America's Congregations

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jssr.12681

Racial Diversity in U.S. Congregations, 1998–2019

Segmentation in a Religious Labor Market

Mark Chaves: Introduction to the Symposium



N.J. Demerath III: Diagnosing the Reverend Dr. Dumpty “After the Fall”



Mary Jo Neitz: Eve, Lilith, and the Sociology of Religion: Comments on Zald



Robert Wuthnow: Practice and Progress in the Study of Religion



Mayer N. Zald: Where Are We in the Sociological Study of Religion? Continuing the Conversation

Progress and Cumulation in the Sociology of Religion: A Symposium

Hout and Greeley have raised one major objection and several minor ones to my ageperiod-cohort analysis of the General Social Survey (GSS) data on church attendance. My response is organized around the major objection, with minor points addressed along the way. The most serious point raised by Hout and Greeley is that my results based on GSS 1972-1986 data have been contradicted by their Gallup 1939-1984 results. These "contradictory" results are reproduced here as Table 1. Looking first at the Catholic results, I would respond simply: These results are empirically consistent with my findings, and they support a secularization interpretation of the sort I originally offered. The period effects reveal a sharp drop in attendance from 1959 to 1980. Indeed, much of the original Hout and Greeley (1987) article was devoted to explaining both this decline and the slowing of the decline. In the present context, however, the question is: Can this decline be interpreted as secularization? They say "no," the decline is attributable to eroding papal authority and declining sexual orthodoxy. Yet why does this explanation rule out secularization? They say these issues "had nothing to do with a secular trend toward modern material values." Yet why did papal authority erode and why did sexual orthodoxy decline? It seems to me perfectly reasonable to argue that the enhanced willingness among Catholics to disregard papal teaching and official church doctrine is itself evidence for secularization. The fact that church attendance declined as a result of such shifts adds weight to my argument. In short, the disagreement here is not empirical but interpretive. Hout's and Greeley's criticism of my inability to distinguish empirically in the GSS data the "no cohort" model from the "no age or period" model for Catholics deflects attention away from the interpretive heart of the matter. In my original paper, I clearly acknowledged this empirical ambiguity, and I also explicitly stated that the Hout and Greeley (1987) analysis supported the "no cohort" model (Chaves 1989:475). To reiterate a point made on page 473 in my original paper: This ambiguity was tolerable given the purpose at hand, since both of my Catholic models, as well as the model based on the

Mark Chaves

Papers

The Political Mobilization of America's Congregations

Racial Diversity in U.S. Congregations, 1998–2019

Segmentation in a Religious Labor Market

Progress and Cumulation in the Sociology of Religion: A Symposium

Holding the Cohort: Reply to Hout and Greeley