Showing papers on "Secularization published in 1972"

Toward the Sociology of Esoteric Culture

Abstract: The point of departure of this paper is an examination of the sociological literature on the recent occult revival in modern societies. This phenomenon, which clashes with the image of secularization, is particularly notable among the youth of the counterculture. To further sociological analysis, a conceptualization of esoteric culture is proposed. It is further argued that esoteric culture has played a significant role in Western cultural change, in such areas as artistic expressions of reality, political ideas, and even scientific thought. Esoteric culture is thus treated as a source of ideational innovations in Western modernization.

Risk and Ritual: An Interpretation of Fishermen's Folklore in a New England Community

Abstract: AMONG CERTAIN GROUPS and in certain behavioral settings in the United States, there is a greater use of ritual magic than is generally characteristic of the whole society. Coal miners and fishermen as well as rodeo performers and gamblers are in occupations and situations that are replete with ritual magic. These groups and situations have in common a high degree of uncertainty associated with them. The "retention" of rituals in these cases, in an otherwise highly secularized society, functions to bridge the gaps of uncertainty. This interpretation is based on the classical theoretical formulation proposed by Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski first related magic to different types of risks; the risks were associated with the interrelationship between technology and habitat in fishing activities among the Trobriand Islanders. Concerning fishing among the Trobrianders he states:

Planning, Politics and Plunder: The Missions and Indian Pueblos of Hispanic California

Abstract: Although the Franciscan missions ultimately made less of an impact in California than either the pueblos or the presidios, it should not be forgotten that the effort to colonize was initially and predominantly the work of a religious order. Missions were essentially frontier institutions and as such, their existence was a temporary one by definition.1 In theory it was assumed that a mission community was to have completed its task of evangelization, education and civilization within a specified period of time, initially ten years, after which its spiritual affairs would be handed over to secular clergy, its lands distributed among the Indians, and its municipal government would function in the manner set forth in the Recopilacion.2 However, these assumptions were based upon experience with the Indians of Meso-America who had attained a significantly higher level of civilization than those on the frontiers where a much longer period of instruction and supervision was required.3 As a result, it was inevitable that some form of conflict over secularization would arise whose aftermath was to witness the plundering of the religious domain.4 Our concern with the California missions is in their urban organization and existence as towns in the years following their secularization. The idea of congregating Indians into towns dates back to the first decade of the sixteenth century. In a 1503 Instruccton to Nicolas de Ovando, the Catholic monarchs suggested that "it is necessary that the Indians be gathered into towns in which they shall live together . . . and that each town shall have a Church and a Priest who will indoctrinate and instruct them in Our Holy Catholic Faith."5 Said towns were to be planned "according to and like those of the people who live in Our realms."6 Charles V encouraged the development of villages for Indians in 1523 and eleven years later he made suggestions, rather oversimplified, concerning methods of congregating the dispersed Indians of Michoacan

The Varieties of Abandonment of Religious Symbols

Abstract: Taking the Weberian use of the term "secularization" as a point of departure, the author has questioned the identification of the term with the abandonment of religious beliefs per se. He distinguishes between two kinds of abandonment, namely eradication and effacement. These two concepts refer to distinct phenomena growing out of very different social conditions and circumstances. Eradication is an abandonment of religious rituals, symbols, or beliefs that reflects a loss of faith in underlying religious values, whereas effacement is an abandonment that does not reflect such a loss. Three cases of symbolic change which occurred in a Djerban synagogue in Israel are discussed and the analysis is extended through a comparison with a Lele ritual. The three Djerban examples in the Israeli environment and the Lele ritual were found to be instances of effacement. In all four cases the very act of abandonment of the religious symbols, which was due to the fact that the particular symbols in question no longer conform with the experiential situation of the actors, actually led to a reaffirmation of the symbols.

Political Development and Secularization in Two Chilean Urban Communities

Abstract: Social scientists assume that secularization, which is said to accompany political development, diminishes the control of religion.l Secularization is defined as the increasing emphasis on pragmatic calculation of costs and benefits in the determination of society's goals and norms. As the roles individuals fill become more differentiated, therefore, the decisions they make become less controlled by tradition or precedent and by beliefs in absolute morality. One consequence of this process is the decreasing rigidity of the belief structures of most religions, together with a lessening emphasis on the mystical or supernatural. Morality itself is defended in terms of the reasonableness of its precepts.2 Thus secularization, as Anthony Wallace suggests, will mean that most religions based on supernatural beliefs will be bypassed altogether or will survive, in a re-

Toward a Sociological Interpretation of the "Underground Church" Movement

Abstract: The "underground church" movement in the Catholic Church should be understood as a response to certain problems of religious belief in contemporary society. The development of this and similar movements may mean that the processes of secularization and privatization of religion may not be proceeding as sociologists have expected. One of the most interesting developments in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council (1961-1964) has been the formation of numerous little Christian communities within, yet dissenting from, the institutional church. These little churches are called variously "the underground church," "the free church," "the group church." There is substantial indication that the development of these groups is an international phenomenon (Caporale, 1968). The movement was described by one of its early spokesmen (Hafner. 1968) as: (1) a search for a new style of Christian life and a new form of Christian presence in the world .... (2) Another feature is variously described as pragmatic ecumenism, secular ecumenism, or free ecumenism. . . . (3) There is a great reluctance to form new institutional structures . . . (4) The distinction between lay and clerical is seen only as a distinction of function within the church community ... (5) Christianity as a revolutionary movement seems to be a key concept in these communities. One of the basic purposes of this investigation' was to explore the extent to which the new dissenting groups in Catholicism might be related to certain general problems of belief in contemporary Western society. In particular, it was hypothesized that these groups served, for their members,. the function of making possible religious belief and commitment in a society in which such belief and commitment are increasingly difficult and uncommon. It is possible that these groups-and similar developments (e.g., religious communes, the Pentecostal movement)-are indicators that the