Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Beliefs in Society - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The sacred and the profane:
        
        For Durkheim, the key feature of religion wasn't a belief in Gods, spirits, or the supernatural, but a fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane found in all religions.
        
        The sacred: things set apart and forbidden, that inspire feelings of awe, fear, and wonder. They are also surrounded by taboos and prohibitions.
        
        The profane: things that have no special significance, they are ordinary and mundane.
        
        Durkheim argued that we then perform rituals or practices in relation to the sacred, and these rituals are collective, performed by social groups.
        
        Symbols represent something of great power. In his view, this thing can only be society itself since society is the only thing powerful enough to command such feelings. When the people worship sacred symbols, the people are worshipping society itself
      - Totemism:
        
        Durkheim believed that the essence of all religion can be found by studying its simplest type of society, clan society.
        
        He used studies of the Arunta clan, an Aboriginal Australian tribe.
        
        They consisted of bands of kin who come together to perform rituals involving the worship of a sacred totem.
        
        The totem is the clan's emblem, which symbolizes the clan's origins and identity.
        
        The shared totemic rituals venerating it serve to reinforce the group's solidarity and sense of belonging.
      - The collective conscience:
        
        For Durkheim, the sacred symbols represent society's collective conscience.
        
        These are shared norms, values, beliefs, and knowledge that make social life and cooperation between individuals possible, without this society would disintegrate.
        
        Regular shared religious rituals reinforce the collective conscience and maintain social integration, reminding them that they are part of a single moral community to which they owe loyalty.
        
        Also, they remind the individual of the power of society; so, religion enables us to feel part of something greater than ourselves
      - Criticisms:
        
        Worsley (1956), there is no sharp division between the sacred and the profane, and different clans share the same totems.
        
        Durkheim’s theory may apply better to small-scale societies with a single religion. But it is harder to apply to a large-scale society
        
        Mestrovic (2011), Durkheim’s ideas can’t be applied to contemporary society because increasing diversity has fragmented the collective conscience, so there is no longer a single shared value system for religion to reinforce.
  - - - Armstrong argues that early religions (until 6,000 years ago) often placed women at the centre, but from 4,000 years agom the rise of monotheistic religions saw the establishment of a single-all-powerful male God.
        
        Saadawi argued that even though religion oppresses women, it's not the direct cause of their subordination, this is the result of patriarchal forms of society coming into existence in the last few thousand years.
        
        But once in existence, patriarchy began to infleunce and re-shape religion.
- - - - Evidence, Billings:
        
        He performed a study in Kentucky in the 1920s-30s.
        
        He focused on how 2 trades reacted in different ways to exploitation:
        
        Miners, who strike a lot: Miners who were also preachers, helped convert workers to the cause and stand up for their rights.
        
        Churches kept the spirits of miners high during strikes, sermons, prayer, and singing.
        
        Textile workers, who strike very rarely: Lacked leadership, so they were easily swayed by the Church tended to support the employers, and called them communists.
        
        The textile workers also belonged to 'company churches' so they couldn't use the church spaces for meetings.
    - - Evidence, Cago Cults:
        
        Worsley studies the cargo cults inMelanesia. The islanders had felt wrongly deprived when 'cargo' arrived in the isalnds for the colonists and not for them.
        
        A series of cargo cults sprang up during the 19th/20th centuy asserting the cargo had been meant for the natives but had been diverted to the whites themselves.
        
        These movements had often led to widespread unrest amongst the cargo cults and threatened colonial rule.
        
        Worlsey notes that the movements combined elements of traditional beliefs with elemtns of Christiany, such ideas about heaven where the suffering of the rightous will be rewarded.
    - - How did this come about?
        
        Deepening rural poverty and the growth of urban slums throughout Latin America.
        
        Human rights abuses following military takeovers, such as torture and death squads murdering political opponents, for example, in Brazel, Argentina, and Chile.
        
        The growing commitment among Catholic priests to an ideology that supported the poor and opposed violation of human rights.
        
        A number of catholic priests living in these countries tried to stand up for the poo and have used their influence to try and change things there.
        
        They have done this through sermons in church and through involvement in communities and being supportive of those in need.
        
        Since then, the movement has lost its influence.
        
        However, Casanova emphasizes, it played an important part in resisting state terror and bringing about democracy.
        
        Although Catholicism in Latin America has since become more conservative, it continues to defend democracy and human rights that were achieved in part by liberation theology.
      - The Pentecostal challenge:
        
        In recent decades, liberation theology has faced competition from pentecostal churches, which have made big inroads in Latin America among the poor. Lehmann has contrasted between the 2:
        
        Liberation theology offers an ‘option for the poor’ of community consciousness-raising and campaigning for social change, led by ‘revolutionary priests and nuns in their jeans and sandals’.
        
        Pentecostalism offers an ‘option for the poor’ for individuals to pull themselves out of poverty through their own efforts, supported by the congregation and led by the church pastors, ‘uniformly respectable in their suits, white shirts, and black ties’.
  - - - For Bruce religion was an ideological resource, it provided beliefs and practices that protesters could draw upon for motivation and support:
        
        Taking the moral high ground: Black clergy pointed out the hypocrisy of white clergy who preached 'love thy neighbor' but supported racial segregation.
        
        Chanelling dissent: Religion provides a means to express political dissent.
        
        For example, the funeral of MLK was a rallying point for civil rights causes.
        
        Act as an honest broker: Churches can provide a context for negotiating change because they are often respected by both sides in a conflict and seen as standing above ‘mere politics.
        
        Mobilising public opinion: Black churches in the South successfully campaigned for support across the whole of America
  - - - The idea of a vocation or calling: Before Calvinism, the idea of a religious vocation meant renouncing everyday life to join a convent or monastery.
        
        For Calvinists, the idea of a calling of vocation meant constant, methodical work in the occupation, but work couldn't earn salvation, it was simply a religious duty.
        
        The Calvanists' hard work and asceticism had 2 consequences:
        
        their wealth and success performed a psychological function for the Calvinists that allowed them to cope with their salvation panic.
        
        driven by their work ethic, they systematically and methodologically accumulated wealth by the most efficient and rational means possible.
        
        In Weber's view, this is the very spirit of modern capitalism, where the object is simply the acquisition of more and more money as an end in itself.
- - - - Patriarchy: Hawley notes that fundamentalists favour a world in which control over women’s sexuality, reproductive powers, and their social and economic roles, is fixed for all time by divine decree.
        
        Prophecy: Christian fundamentalists proclaim the relevance of biblical prophecies to contemporary events, they believe the ‘last days’ will be soon upon us when the faithful dead will be resurrected and transported to heaven with the faithful living before the 7-year-rule of the Antichrist and ultimately the final defeat of Satan in the War of Armageddon.
        
        Conspiracy theories: They are often attracted to conspiracy theories: the idea that powerful, hidden, evil forces and organisations are in control of human destiny.
        
        Many Christian and Islamic fundamentalists hold Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that believe Jews are conspiring to secure world domination.
    - - Criticisms:
        
        Ansell sees trends such as France banning students from wearing religious symbols in school as a form of cultural racism that uses the apparently liberal language of universal equality and social integration while denying racist aims.
        
        However, it is about preserving cultural identity and our way of life, and it legitimates the exclusion of religious and cultural minorities.
        
        In conclusion:
        
        Both religious and secular movements can become fundamentalist as a result of greater uncertainties of life in a late modern or postmodern world.
        
        When secular ideologies, such as nationalism, come under attack, some supporters resort to fundamentalism.
    - - Criticisms:
        
        Jackson: Huntington’s work is an example of orientalism – a western ideology that stereotypes eastern nations and people as untrustworthy.
        - Casanova: Huntington ignores the important religious divisions within the civilisations he identifies, e.g., between the Sunni & Shi’a Islam.
- - - - Criticisms:
        
        Religion can be a source of identity on a worldwide scale, this is true of Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim communities, not just in a particular area.
        
        Some religious communities are imagined communities that interact through the use of global media.
        
        Pentecostal and other religious groups often flourish in 'impersonal' urban areas.
    - - Disenchantment:
        
        However, the Protestant Reformation brought a new worldview, Protestantism saw God as transcendent, although God created the world, he didn't intervene, it was left to run according to its laws of nature.
        
        This means the events were no longer explained as the work of unpredictable supernatural beings but as the predictable workings of natural forces.
        
        Using reason and science, humans could discover the laws of nature, understand and predict how the world works and control it through technology.
        
        In Weber's view, the Protestant Reformation beings the disenchantment of the world, this enabled science to thrive and provide the basis for technological advances that gives humans more power to control nature.
      - A technological worldview:
        
        Bruce argues that the growth of a technological worldview has replaced religious explanations of why things happen.
        
        For example, when a plane crashes, we are now likely to look for scientific and technological explanations that blame it on the supernatural.
        
        Bruce concludes that although scientific explanations don't challenge religion directly, they have greatly reduced the scope for religious explanations.
- - - - Religious consumerism:
        
        We no longer have to sign up for specific religious traditions, we can pick and mix elements of faith to suit our tastes and make them part of our identity.
        
        In Lyons’s view, religion has relocated to the sphere of consumption. While people may have ceased to belong to religious organisations, they haven’t abandoned religion. Instead, they have become ‘religious consumers’, making conscious choices about which elements of religion they find useful.
        
        Religion and spirituality aren’t disappearing; they are simply evolving, taking on new forms that fit the consumerist nature of postmodern society.
  - - - 2. Europe Vs America:
        
        In Western Europe, the trend is towards increasing secularisation. They argue that this isn’t surprising, as these societies are among the most equal and secure in the world, with well-developed welfare states.
        
        The US remains much more religious. They argue that this is because America is also the most unequal of the rich societies, with an inadequate welfare safety net and individualistic ‘dog eat dog’ values.
        
        Although American is more religious than Europe, this is explained through there general theory of religiosity because of insecurity.
      - 3. State welfare and religiosity:
        
        Gil and Lundegaarde found that the more a country spends on welfare, the lower the level of religious participation.
        
        They note that in the past religion used to provide welfare for the poor, and still does so in poorer countries. However, from the 20th century, the state in the West began to provide welfare and this contributed to religious decline.
        
        Nevertheless, they don’t expect religion to disappear completely, because although welfare provision meets the need for security, it doesn’t answer ‘ultimate’ questions about the meaning of life, unlike religion.
- - - - Popper
        
        In essence argues that science rules the world because it is governed by falsification, the idea that if a theory or experiment is proven false, the theory can be discarded and the search for a better explanation can begin.
        
        He argues that scientific knowledge is cumulative – it builds on the achievements of previous scientists to develop a greater understanding of the world around us.
        
        Therefore, in his own view, the key thing about scientific knowledge is that it is not sacred or absolute truth, it can always be questioned, criticised, tested and perhaps shown to be false.
      - Merton and the CUDOS norms:
        
        Argues that science can only thrive as a major social institution if it receives support from other institutions and values.
        
        Example: the protestant reformation.
        
        Argues that science as an institution needs an “ethos” or set of norms that make scientists act in a way that serves the goal of increasing scientific knowledge.
        
        He came up with CUDOS as an ethos on how science can survive:
        
        Communism:
        
        Scientific knowledge isn't private property.
        
        Scientists must share it with the scientific community; otherwise, knowledge cant grow.
        
        Universalism:
        
        The truth or falsity of scientific knowledge is judged by universal, objective criteria, and not by the race, sex etc of the scientist who produces it.
        
        Disinterestedness:
        
        This means being committed to discovering knowledge for its own sake.
        
        Having to publish their findings makes it harder for scientists to practise fraud since it enables others to check their claims.
        
        Organised scepticism:
        
        No knowledge-claim is regarded as ‘sacred’.
        
        Every idea is open to questioning, criticism, and objective investigation.
      - What have been the impacts of religion as a belief system?
        
        Medicine has helped eradicate many diseases.
        
        Technological development has enabled transport, communication, work, and leisure developments.
        
        It has revolutionised economic productivity and raised our standards of living.
    - - Science as a closed system:
        
        Despite what Popper says, some other writers argue that science itself can be seen as a self-sustaining or closed belief system.
        
        For example, Polyani argues that all belief systems reject fundamental challenges to their knowledge-claims.
      - Evans-Pritchard:
        
        Evans-Pritchard argues that this belief system performs useful social functions. It not only clears the air and prevents grudges from festering; it encourages neighbours to behave considerately towards one another to reduce the risk of an accusation.
        
        This belief system is highly resistant to challenges – that is, it is a closed system that cannot be overturned.
        
        As Evans-Pritchard says, ‘The very fact of the fowl dying proves to them, that it is badness’. Thus, the test doesn’t disprove the belief system in the eyes of the believers; instead, it actually reinforces it. The believers are trapped within their own idiom of belief’ or way of thinking. Because they accept the system’s basic assumptions, they cannot challenge it.
      - What does Kuhn say?
        
        Kuhn argues that a mature science such as geology, biology or physics is based on a set of shared assumptions which he calls a paradigm.
        
        The paradigm tells scientists what reality is like, what problems to study and what methods and equipment to use, what will count as evidence, and even what answers they should find when they conduct research.
        
        Most of the time, scientists are engaged in normal science (puzzle solving) – the paradigm lays down the broad outlines and the scientist’s job is to carefully fill in the details.
      - Horton, the differences between open and closed belief systems:
        
        Like Popper, he sees science as an open belief system – one where knowledge-claims are open to criticism and can be disproved by testing. By contrast, religion, magic, and any many other belief systems are closed. That is, they make knowledge – claims that cannot be successfully overturned.
        
        Whenever its fundamental beliefs are threatened, a closed belief system has a number of devices or ‘get-out clauses’ that reinforce the system and prevent it from being disproved – at least in the eyes of the believers. These devices vary from one belief system to the another.
      - Case study; Little green men:
        
        Woolgar argues that scientists are engaged in the same process of ‘making sense’ or interpreting the world as everyone else. Where they have evidence from their observations that have to decide what it means. They do this by devising theories and explanations, but they have to persuade others to accept their interpretation.
        
        For example, in the discovery of ‘pulsars’, the scientists initially annotated the patterns shown on their printouts from the radio telescope as ‘LGM1’, ‘LGM2’, and so on – standing for ‘Little green men’.
        
        Recognizing that that this was an unacceptable interpretation from the viewpoint of the scientific community, they eventually settled on the notion that these patterns represented the signal from a type of star.
        
        As Woolgar notes, a scientific fact is simply a social construction or belief that scientists are able to persuade their colleagues to share.
      - Case study to support Horton: witchcraft among the Azande:
        
        Believe that natural events have natural causes.
        
        For example, a snake bit me because I accidentally stepped on it as I was walking down the path.
        
        Unlike westerners though, the Azande don't believe in coincidence or chance. For example, I walked down the same path a thousand times and have never been bitten before – so why me and why now? (They turn to witchcraft to explain this).
        
        For instance, someone, perhaps a jealous neighbour may be practising witchcraft against me...
        
        In cases such as these, the injured party may make an accusation against the suspected witch and the matter may be resolved by consulting the prince’s magic poison oracle.
        
        Here, the prince’s diviner will administer a potion (called Benge) to a chicken, at the same time asking the Benge whether the accused is the source of witchcraft and telling it to kill the chicken if yes. If the chicken dies, the sufferer can go and publicly demand the witchcraft to stop.
      - The legacy of Kuhn:
        
        Interpretivist sociologists have developed Kuhn’s ideas further. They argue that all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is socially constructed. That is, rather than being the objective truth, it is created by social groups using the resources available to them.
        
        Knorr-Cetina argues that the invention of new instruments, such as telescopes or microscopes, permits scientists to make new observations and construct or fabricate new facts.
        
        She also points out that scientists studying in a laboratory are highly constructed and far removed from the natural world that they are studying.