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Religion in Secularizing Society
The European Values Study is a large-scale, cross-national, and longitudinal survey research program on basic human values, initiated by the European Value Systems Study Group (EVSSG) in the late 1970s, at that time an informal grouping of academics. Now, it is carried on in the setting of a foundation, using the (abbreviated) name of the group European Values Study (EVS). The EVSSG aimed at designing and conducting a major empirical study of the moral and social values underlying European social and political institutions and governing conduct. A rich academic literature has now been created around the original survey, and numerous other works have made use of the findings.
Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies
Can individual decisions concerning whether or where to attend church, to contribute time or money to religious organizations, or to forgo certain activities be explained as a special case of economic theory? In Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies, Ted G. Jelen brings together the leading scholars in the sociology of religion to debate market theories of religion. As the contributors examine whether or not religious choices can be understood as responding to the same laws of supply and demand as other forms of consumer behavior, they bring out many of the issues, controversies, and concerns surrounding this innovative theory. The result is a concise source for the arguments, evidence, and criticism of the market model of religious economies—a perfect starting point for students and scholars approaching this set of problems.
What the World Believes
In recent years, the subject of religion has undergone a dramatic renaissance and attracted considerable media attention. At the same time, however, knowledge about people's individual religiosity and the social characteristics and dynamics of religion has not grown considerably. Nonetheless, this knowledge has become especially important in a context of growing religious plurality and globalization, where interactions between societies with different cultural and religious backgrounds are increasing. To expand upon this knowledge, the Bertelsmann Stiftung-in cooperation with a team of sociologists, psychologists, theologians and religious studies experts-developed the most advanced instrume...
Everyday Religion
Attempting to let 'everyday religion' raise critical questions about how we understand the role of religion in society, this book examines the social circumstances of religion's presence and absence.
Democracies in Flux
In his national bestseller Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam illuminated the decline of social capital in the US. Now, in Democracies in Flux, Putnam brings together a group of leading scholars who broaden his findings as they examine the state of social capital in eight advanced democracies around the world. The book is packed with many intriguing revelations. The contributors note, for instance, that waning participation in unions, churches, and political parties seems to be virtually universal, a troubling discovery as these forms of social capital are especially important for empowering less educated, less affluent portions of the population. Indeed, in general, the researchers found more soc...
Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media
Increasingly, the religious practices people engage in and the ways they talk about what is meaningful or sacred take place in the context of media culture—in the realm of the so-called secular. Focusing on this intersection of the sacred and the secular, this volume gathers together the work of media experts, religious historians, sociologists of religion, and authorities on American studies and art history. Topics range from Islam on the Internet to the quasi-religious practices of Elvis fans, from the uses of popular culture by the Salvation Army in its early years to the uses of interactive media technologies at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance. The issues that the essays address include the public/private divide, the distinctions between the sacred and profane, and how to distinguish between the practices that may be termed "religious" and those that may not.
Measuring and Mapping Cultures
In 1981, the European and World Values surveys started the empirical investigations of value orientations on a global scale. This volume builds on these surveys, which now cover a time period of a quarter of a century. Two chapters discuss basic theoretical and methodological issues of value research, while four chapters focus on contemporary processes of value change: cultural globalization, individualization, secularization and democratization. These analyses of the data from the value surveys give new life to social science classics such as Tocqueville, Durkheim, Marx and Weber. The analyses are also of interest to the practitioners of economic and social development as well as educational and cultural policies. Contributors include: Chris Cochran, Yilmaz Esmer, Ronald Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, Shalom Schwartz, Thorleif Pettersson and Christian Welzel. This book was originally published as Volume 5 no. 2-3 (2006) of Brill's journal ‘Comparative Sociology'.
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 12
The purpose of this book is to provide an outlet for original research articles examining the role and value of religious and spiritual constructs across the social sciences. The aim of the series is to include an international and interfaith voice to this research dialogue. An effort is made to be interdisciplinary and academically eclectic. The articles in the current volume represent a wide array of perspectives and research projects. Most of the articles report the findings of quantitative or qualitative investigations, but some deal with methodology, theory, or applications of social science studies in the field of religion, and some are applied, demonstrating the relevance of the social sciences to religious organizations and their clergy. The value of the volume is that it gives to researchers in this area a broad perspective on the issues and methods of religious research across a spectrum of academic disciplines. The aim of the book is to stimulate a creative, integrative dialogue that will enhance interdisciplinary research.
Religious Complexity in the Public Sphere
This book is an empirical comparative study of the complexity of religion in the public spheres of the five Nordic countries. The result of a five-year collaborative research project, the work examines how increasingly religiously diverse Nordic societies regulate, debate, and negotiate religion in the state, the polity, the media, and civil society. The project finds that there are seemingly contradictory religious trends at different social levels: a growing secularization at the individual level, and a deprivatization of religion in politics, the media, and civil society. It offers a critique of the current theories of secularization and the return of religion, introducing religious complexity as an alternative concept to understand these paradoxes. This book is for scholars, students, and readers with an interest in understanding the public role of religion in the West.
Universal Ethics
Questions on universal ethics are of utmost importance for peaceful relations between nations, cultures and religions. Are there common values or are all morals just expressions for various political, economic or religious interests? In this book scholars from different academic fields and with various views discuss questions that in different ways concern both the possibilities and risks of universal or common ethics. The book is divided into five parts; philosophical and ethical perspectives, human rights perspectives, universal ethics and religion, globalization and global governance, universal ethics and Nordic values. Scholars from such fields as philosophy, ethics, human rights, history, political science, sociology and theology are represented. All of the authors are active researchers at Scandinavian universities. This collection of articles is directed to professionals in various disciplines, but can also serve as an introduction to the subject of universal ethics.
