Showing papers on "Secularization published in 1986"

Modes of production, secularization and the pace of the fertility decline in Western Europe, 1870-1930

Abstract: The European fertility transiton was heavily influenced by social attitudes about economic well-being and religious beliefs. This paper considers the perceived advantages of fertility control and its religious acceptability in Europe during the fertility transition. 2 factors are fundamental to an understanding of the decline of marital fertility. Fertility behavior was heavily influenced by the nature of households economic circumstances; where a familial labor-intensive mode of production existed there was little movement in the direction of family limitation. Parents expectations of their childrens mobility into the wage earnig sector replaced this familial mode of production. As children increased their independence from parents the social and economic reasons for sustained high fertility were eroded. As the occupational structure opened up greater investment per child became became feasible and the greater costs of child rearing changed the flows of support between older and younger generations. Although this is an incentive for fertility decline an alteration in moral values and a way to control fertility were also necessary. The areas that were originally Catholic but experienced secularization at an early date tended to have the earliest marital fertility decline followed by Protestant areas that were less secular and last by very Catholic areas. The process of secularization during the last half of the 19th century was markedly different in Catholic and Protestant areas. Protestant areas became moer secular even within the churches parallel with the growth of socialism and social reform. The European experience shows that 1) the moral acceptability of fertility control was embedded in a broader ideological development not necessarily concurrent with economic modernization and 2) reactions to such changes occur in such a way that fundamentalist views are juxtaposed to secular ones.

Islamist appeal in Tunisia

Abstract: The Tunisian ship of state sails on troubled waters. Although the aged and increasingly feeble Habib Bourguiba holds fast to his place at the helm, Prime Minister Mohammed Mzali, his designated successor, has been replaced by another party loyalist, Rashid Sfar, and the doubts about the succession which have troubled Western observers for years are now being confirmed. The economy is in serious disarray and has provoked discontent in every quarter. In the midst of the squalls, the unbroken voice of Islamists raised in political opposition is worrisome for those Tunisians who favor a liberalization of the political system and endorse the secular nature of the state. In Tunisia, as elsewhere in the Middle East in recent years, Islamists' invoke a re-valuation of the role of Islam in society and question the secularization of cultural life, social practices antithetical to Islamic precepts, and the implementation of positivist law. Especially condemnable is the influence of Western society, held responsible for having carried Muslim society far from the basic tenets of organic Islam. Even without the specter of Iran hovering in the background, many of these ideas are anathema to a class of Tunisian elites who have comfortably integrated selected

Secularization and the diminishing decline of religion

Abstract: framework for an analysis of the influences on the religiosity offour JewishIsraeli groups, two Middle Eastern (Moroccan and Iraqi) and two European (Polish and Rumanian). A process of secularization, as measured by intergenerational declines in the performance of the mitzvot (commandments), occurred in all four groups, but the intergenerational declines were greater in those groups whose older generation displayed high levels of religious observance. The relative importance of the independent variables influencing religiosity, such as father's religiosity, socio-economic status, and number of years lived in Israel, depend on the level of observance of the group. These generalizations are modified by attention to differences in the religio-cultural traditions and social locations of Israelis from Middle Eastern and European origins.

Society, Theory and the French Revolution: Studies in the Revolutionary Imaginary

Abstract: Acknowledgements - Introduction: History and the Revolutionary Imaginary - PART 1 REVOLUTION AND KNOWLEDGE - Secularization and Representation: The Discovery of Society - Volney's Ruines: A Discursus on Religion and Enlightenment - Science, Ideology and Social Transparency - PART 2 REVOLUTION AND POWER - Introduction: Knowledge without Power? - The Problematization of Power - A Theoretical Interlude: Power and the Imaginary - Despotism and Democracy: State and Society - PART 3 DESIGNATING THE NATION - The Abbi Sieyhs and the Social Contract: The Nation behind the Polity - Saint-Just against the Social Contract: Society without a Polity - PART 4 CONSTRUCTING THE STATE - The Problem of Political Representation - Power and Constitution: Civil vs Political Society - Power and Will: Power Ascending - Power and Action: Power Descending - The Terror - Afterword - Endnotes - Index

Urbanization, secularization, and birth spacing: a case study of an historical fertility transition

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of the effect that urban secularization of religious pronatalism had upon established birth spacing behavior over the course of the fertility transition in the population of 19th century Utah. A model of variance in birth intervals attributable to age at marriage age of childbearing termination and completed family size over the duration of childbearing thus defined is presented. The simple analytical model achieves a reasonable fit for birth interval data. In addition the model demonstrates the relative dependence of birth intervals upon the fertility achieved over the duration of childbearing rather than upon deliberate control over the beginning or ending of the childbearing interval. Variations in age at marriage become more important in explaining birth intervals than do variation in age at last birth. The model is elaborated by incorporating 5 specific hypotheses concerning the effects of urbanism secularization and their interaction upon interbirth intervals. 2 principal conclusions were derived. 1) Birth interval differentials among subcohorts defined by religiosity and urbanism are generally consistent with fertility effects of traditional urbanism and secularization perspectives. 2) There is however no consistent evidence that this frontier population was as heterogeneous in the secularization of traditional pronatalism as is often the case in either European or 3rd world settings. Although a pattern of urban secularization is found uniformity of social and behavioral changes suggestsa that relatively homogeneous demographic behavior was produced on the frontier by the largely external locus of secularizing influences in the mainstream eastern American community.

Secularization and the politics of traditionalism: The case of the right-to-life movement

Abstract: Research on the traditionalist movement against abortion needs alignment with currents in historical sociology, the theory of social movements and the sociology of politics. The religious (specifically, Christian) basis of the right-to-life movement has attracted considerable attention in the literature. The movement is seen as a traditionalist bloc claiming to oppose secularization and return to customary restrictions. However the “tradition” in question appears to be a recent social construction. There is slim warrant in the actual traditions of Western religion for asserting a categorical right to life. As a result, the movement's ideology is best approached as the product of—rather than the antidote to—secularizing processes (including the demographic transition, discourse about rights, markets for symbolic entrepreneurs and the separation of church and state) and possibly as an unintended import from non-Western religion. Implications for traditionalism, the functions of religion, and the study of countermovements are explored. This case illustrates the value of attending to historical sequences and the external cultural environments of social movements.

Religion, Modernization, and Utilization of Western Health Care

Abstract: A strong tradition in sociology argues that the seeds of secularization and rational outlook have long been present in Christianity per se. Presented in this paper are cross-national research findings from a 136 nation sample that the proportion of Christians in a society is positively associated with that society's degree of modernization; and that modernization in turn, leads to a tendency to practise and utilize Western "scientific" medicine. These findings remain strong even after industrialized nations are excluded from analyses.

Succes als bedreiging. De paradoxale situatie van de sociologie

Abstract: The present situation of sociology is analyzed in the manner that the secularization thesis deals with religion. The initial promise of scientific salvation -- shared by both the natural & the social sciences -- is reviewed. While the religious flavor of nineteenth-century science has vanished, the pretention that there is a surplus value in scientific rationality remains. The new situation can be seen as a result of a process of trivialization of sociological content, since the general public became sociologically educated, & no longer recognizes sociological viewpoints as the property of a distinct profession. This process coincides with the process of the politicization of science. Modified HA