Invitation to the Sociology of Religion

Phil Zuckerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135948160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book intends to serve as a conversational, colorful, engaging, and provocative introduction to the sociology of religion for undergraduates. Written in lively prose, this volume aims to introduce students to the major themes, problems and goals of the sociological study of religion while also summoning the sense of wonder and curiosity for the enterprise itself.

1
SOCIOLOGY AND RELIGION

Every academic discipline, from philosophy to physics, has its particular “slant” on the subject of religion, its distinct perspective. This book is obviously about the sociological perspective on religion.

In order to explore the sociology of religion, I must begin with the first part—sociology—and then proceed to illustrate how it applies to the second part, religion. Of course, to briefly summarize sociology is no easy task. Every individual sociologist has his or her unique understanding of the discipline, and there will undoubtedly be those who find my attempt to describe sociology lacking. Nevertheless, here I go.

Sociologists, in the words of Peter Berger (1963, 18), are “intensively, endlessly, shamelessly” interested in humans. From the behavior of people in elevators to the racing of llamas, from beer drinking to breast implanting, from race relations to rug making—if it involves humans, sociologists are interested. Sociology is distinguished both by its subject matter (what sociologists actually study) and by its particular orientation/perspective (how sociologists look at the world).

Here then are my “top ten” components of sociology.

1. Sociologists study social groups.

Street gangs and student movements, baseball teams and Boy Scouts, lesbians and libertarians, marines and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, animal rights activists, taxidermists—in short—any association of people you can think of, a sociologist has been, is, or will be studying it.

2. Sociologists study social interaction.

Have you ever been standing with a friend on a street corner, having a great conversation, when suddenly a third person joins you— notice how the dynamic suddenly changes? Have you ever noticed that your boyfriend or girlfriend acts differently when he or she is with you alone than when his or her friends are around? These are just a couple of examples of the kinds of things “micro” sociologists study: how people interact with one another, how people present themselves to one another, how people’s very identities change given various social contexts, circumstances, and forms of interaction (Simmel 1950; Goffman 1959; Garfinkel 1967).

3. Sociologists study social institutions and social structures.

Schools. The military. Corporations. Police departments. City hall. The government. Hospitals. Prisons. The family. Courts. Marriage. Industries. The media. Sports. The economy. Political systems. The workplace. The welfare system. And a whole lot more. Sociologists look at the ways certain social structures and institutions frame and shape our lives, greatly affecting where we live, how we live, who we live with—even how long we live.

4. Sociologists study social patterns.

Social patterns refer to everything from divorce rates to fashion trends, crime rates to how people kiss, rates of drug usage to what people eat. Personally, I like to ponder the social patterns (those primarily concerning race and gender) that can be observed at Los Angeles International Airport: the people who check bags on the curbside are almost always middle-aged black men. The flight attendants are almost always white women. The people working by the luggage x-ray machines are almost always young black women. The pilots are almost always white men. Why? Understanding and explaining such social patterns—how it is that certain jobs become gender and/or racially segregated, for instance—is a typical sociological concern.

5. Sociologists understand that an individual can be truly understood only within his or her sociohistorical context.

From reading assertions 1 to 4, one might get the impression that sociologists don’t concern themselves with individuals. This is simply not so. Sociologists are very much concerned with individuals. But we do approach our study of the individual in a special, sociological way. To put it simply, we believe that the individual only “makes sense” when his or her social environment is taken into account. Though we are all individuals, we are individuals existing in specific points in history, in specific countries, in specific neighborhoods, in specific economies, in specific families. Where, when, and with whom we as individuals find ourselves living are all incredibly important factors in shaping our personal lives and identities. The way every individual dresses, the food she or he eats, the music she or he likes, his or her political opinions, the way she or he experiences love, the way she or he communicates, and so on, are all directly linked to specific sociohistorical circumstances beyond any one individual’s control, or even consciousness.

As C.Wright Mills (1959, 7) taught, understanding the world sociologically involves perceiving the “intersections of biography and history within society.” The point is that while we live our lives as individuals, experiencing personal circumstances, most aspects of our individual lives are actually quite enmeshed in historical processes and subject to specific social constraints. This leads us directly to the next important element of the sociological perspective.

6. Sociologists are interested in the ways in which individuals are shaped and influenced by their social environment.

In 1920, Amala and Kamala—two girls aged approximately nine—were discovered living underneath a giant anthill in an underground wolf den with a family of wolves, just outside the small town of Godamuri, India. It was speculated that they had been abandoned by their human parents at an early age and subsequently “adopted” by the wolves. Here are some of the characteristics of these two prepubescent girls as documented by those who found them. They moved about on all fours, like wolves. They didn’t speak or respond to human language. They were unable to stand, walk, or run in an upright manner. They loved eating raw meat, especially carrion (they were observed aggressively chasing away large vultures from animal carcasses in order to get at the decaying flesh). They ate with their mouths only. They lapped water like dogs. They panted with their tongues out when it was hot. They growled and showed their teeth when frightened or threatened. They loved the night and the dark, but were skittish in the daylight. They howled at the moon. They weren’t interested in other children, but preferred the company of dogs. In sum, they were agile, ferocious, and as wolflike as is humanly possible. Shortly after being discovered, they were brought to an orphanage, where Amala became sick and died. Kamala stayed at the orphanage, however, and over the course of several years eventually learned how to stand and walk upright, eat and drink with her hands, and feel comfortable in the daylight. She was also able to learn some words—about forty-five in all. Kamala became sick and died in 1929, around the age of seventeen.

The implications of this story of Amala and Kamala are staggering (Candland 1993; Gesell 1940). This little-known but very well documented case comes closest of all such similar cases to “proving” that our identities are largely determined by our social environment. Can you imagine what a different person you would be had you lived most of your childhood in a wolf den? Would you have the same taste in music—would you even “understand” music? Would you have the same sense of humor? The same love life? What about you would be the same, if anything?

We may all be born with certain innate characteristics, skills, tendencies, and traits, but these are mere potentialities—potentialities that can only be “brought to life” given external (social) stimuli. And the whole point is that different social environments will suppress or awaken different innate potentialities. As Michael Schwalbe (2001, 19) succinctly asserts, “if you had been born into a different social world you would be a different person.”

7. Sociologists are fascinated by nonconformity and the ways in which people resist or change the socialforces that surround them.

In my high school, it was a norm that girls shaved their legs. Any girl who didn’t shave her legs was considered “gross” and faced ridicule and ostracism. This norm was what Émile Durkheim (1982 [1895]) would call a “social fact.” Social facts are subtle but ever-pervasive rules, norms, and values that most of us succumb to and “obey.” They shape and mold us throughout our lives, often without our even being aware of it. As I said, the girls in my high school shaved their legs. And they didn’t necessarily feel forced to do so; they honestly liked having shaved legs and sincerely felt that not having shaved legs would be unattractive and weird. But there was one girl in my high school who resisted this social fact: Melody Weeks. She refused to shave her legs. And she was ridiculed and ostracized by many as a result. Though it may have been hard to be teased or shunned, Melody clearly had a firm sense of herself and a certain spirit of inner strength that I always admired and envied.

Sociologists are fascinated by deviance: the violation of social norms, the resisting of societal pressures. Deviance can be heinous (molesting children) or heroic (saving the lives of children being hunted by Nazis). But whenever people go against the grain, resist the rules of society, violate accepted laws, don’t do what others expect them to do, we are dealing with an aspect of human behavior of major sociological concern (Becker 1963; Goode 2002). Deviant behavior illustrates the fact that people aren’t completely obedient. Most of us most of the time may behave like sheep—happily conforming to society’s rules and expectations—but not all of us, and not always. While we are all inevitably shaped by our society, it is never completely a one-way street; sometimes some of us “act back” and become the determining creators of our social world. Instances of deviance illustrate the reality that there is always a degree of human freedom, of individualism, of human agency at play in the world. Sociologists revel in the fact that there will always be a Melody Weeks, a Rosa Parks, or a Margaret Sanger out there to stir things up, resist, and maybe even change the very social framework itself.

8. Sociologists are fascinated by “the social construction of reality.”

In the words of Kanagy and Kraybill (1999, 20), “We people are the architects of our social world, but one of the remarkable aspects of social life is how easily we forget who built it.” Sociologists go out of their way never to forget. We are always cognizant of the degree to which much of our world is humanly created, in obvious and not so obvious ways. Think about it: The ring you will give your partner upon marriage is obviously made by humans, but so is the very institution of marriage. The birth certificate which records your race was obviously made by humans, but so is the very concept of “race” to begin with. The lipstick you or your girlfriend wears is obviously made by humans, but so is your very concept of “beauty.” The passport which proves your citizenship of a given country was obviously made by humans, but so are countries.

Many things that we take for granted as being “real” (i.e., permanent or natural), such as countries, money, what constitutes a family, what love is, how time operates, what constitutes a crime, are largely the result of human culture. As Kanagy and Kraybill (1999, 18) put it, “human values, ideas, and patterns of behavior did not drop miraculously from heaven but were fashioned by humans over many centuries.”

9. Sociologists debunk.

Once you start looking at the ways in which so many taken-for-granted aspects of our world are socially constructed, once you start carefully observing the pervasiveness of specific social patterns and the grand influence of social institutions on individual lives, an inevitable consequence is what Peter Berger called an “unmasking tendency” that is inherent in the sociological enterprise. For Berger (1963, 23), “the first wisdom of sociology is this—things are not what they seem.”

What the government says, what the media declare, what corporate executives claim, what professors profess, may not always be true. Sociologists don’t draw conclusions about the world based on common sense, for the things that “everybody knows as true” often aren’t (Ruane and Cerulo 2000). For example, throughout the 1990s, most Americans believed that crime in America was getting worse and worse. But just the opposite was actually happening; rates of murder and all other violent crimes were at thirty-year lows (Glassner 1999; Kappeler, Blumberg, and Potter 2000). How do we know? Evidence. Data. Research. Studies. Martin Marger (2002, 7) clearly explains that sociological conclusions are based on “empirical substantiation,” that is, claims made by sociologists are “subject to inspection and investigation…founded on data collected through research, which can be verified by others.” Because sociologists base their conclusions on careful research—which often reveals the nebulous, contradictory, ambiguous, and multifaceted nature of social realities—they are always skeptical of simplistic answers to complex problems. Again from Kanagy and Kraybill (1999, 104): “Sociologists choose to reflect before judging, to challenge before agreeing.”

10. Sociology entails a critical approach to understanding the world.

One of the founders of sociology was the radical social critic Karl Marx. His favorite motto was De omnibus dubitandum—“one ought to question everything.” Along with the debunking tendency within sociology discussed above is an explicitly critical disposition. What do we mean by “critical”? Evan Willis (1996, 83) explains:

[T]he term critical does not mean being negative. Rather, the term is used…in the sense of being reflexive or skeptical about the social world…engaging in systematic doubt about accounts of the social world… [I]n exercising a critical sensibility, sociologists try to uncover and expose the ambiguities, misrepresentations, distortions, and even falsehoods in competing explanations for particular social phenomena.

No matter what we study, be it educational systems or country clubs, sociologists sniff out racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, hypocrisy, inequality, corruption, and social injustice as best we can. It is not that sociologists have nothing better to do than find flaws in society. Rather, sociology is simply the discipline most actively engaged in questioning, doubting, and critiquing what Peter Berger (1963, 35) dubbed “the official versions of reality.” And ultimately this critical disposition of sociology is embedded in a desire to improve the world, to ponder alternatives toward enhancing human freedom (Scimecca 1995). As Evan Willis (1996) notes, there are several key questions the sociologist is always asking, no matter what subject he or she may be investigating: What’s happening? Why? What are the consequences? How do we know? (and perhaps most important) How could it be otherwise?

Well, there you have it: my explanation of wha...