Dick Houtman

Galen Watts

Around 20 percent of Americans fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious.” Yoga has become a ubiquitous pastime for middle-class Westerners. Mindfulness is increasingly incorporated into school curricula, sports programs, and even corporate culture. Hollywood icons and Silicon Valley trendsetters tout the benefits of a “spiritual” life. These developments reflect a widespread turn away from “religion” toward “spirituality.” Yet the nature of this spiritual turn is still poorly understood, and its consequences sorely underappreciated. The Shape of Spirituality brings together leading sociologists to challenge common notions that spirituality is individualistic, privatized, and apolitical—and to make the definitive case for its social and political significance. Contributors examine the sweeping influence of spirituality on a variety of realms, including health care and therapeutic practice, popular culture, civic engagement, public protest, conspiracy culture, and progressive politics. Leveraging cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative data, this authoritative book makes clear that, far from being marginal and inconsequential, spirituality holds profound public importance today.

The Public Significance of a New Religious Formation

The Shape of Spirituality

Rudi Laermans

Stef Aupers

Identifying scientism as religion’s secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume unearths the cultural mechanisms that account for the headwind faced by contemporary science. The empirical contributions highlight how the field of academic science has lost much of its former authority vis-à-vis competing social realms; how political and religious worldviews define particular research findings as favorites while dismissing others; and how much of today’s distrust of science is directed against scientific institutions and academic scientists rather than against science per se.

Contesting the Secular Religion of Scientism

Science under Siege

Religions of Modernity challenges the social-scientific orthodoxy that, once unleashed, the modern forces of individualism, science and technology inevitably erode the sacred and evoke the profane. The book's chapters, some by established scholars, others by junior researchers, document instead in rich empirical detail how modernity relocates the sacred to the deeper layers of the self and the domain of digital technology. Rather than destroying the sacred tout court, then, the cultural logic of modernization spawns its own religious meanings, unacknowledged spiritualities and magical enchantments. The editors argue in the introductory chapter that the classical theoretical accounts of modernity by Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and others already hinted at the future emergence of these religions of modernity

Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital

Religions of Modernity

Birgit Meyer

The relation between religion and things has long been conceived in antagonistic terms, privileging spirit above matter, belief above ritual and objects, meaning above form and 'inward' contemplation above 'outward' action. This book addresses these issues.

Religion and the Question of Materiality

Things:

Hedendaagse westerse samenlevingen lijken nauwelijks nog vatbaar voor een sociologische analyse in termen van structuren en instituties en sociologen geloven amper nog dat zij intellectueel toegang hebben tot een ‘onder’ of ‘achter’ de cultuur verborgen ‘echte’ sociale werkelijkheid. Onder deze omstandigheden biedt de cultuursociologie, bij uitstek geschikt voor de analyse van de culturele discoursen die tot bloei zijn gekomen als reactie op de onttovering van de wereld, een wenkend perspectief. De meest in het oog springende van deze discoursen zijn opgetrokken rond idealen van persoonlijke authen¬ticiteit, rebels non-conformisme en individuele vrijheid. Hoewel ze hun wortels hebben in de zogenoemde ‘tegen¬cultuur’ van de jaren zestig, behoren ze al lang niet meer tot de maatschappelijke rafelrand en zijn ze ook al lang niet meer per se ‘progressief’. Ze spelen thans een promi¬nente en dwingende rol in de werelden van consumptie, religie, management en politiek: de tegencultuur van destijds is de dominante cultuur geworden.

Dromen over Authenticiteit in Een Wereld Zonder Fundamenten

Op Jacht Naar de Echte Werkelijkheid

Peter Achterberg

Anton Derks

Social conflicts and voting patterns in Western nations indicate a gradual erosion of working-class support for the left, a process that class theory itself cannot adequately explain. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class aims to fill this gap by developing, testing, and confirming an alternative explanation of rightist tendencies among the underprivileged. The authors argue that cultural issues revolving around individual liberty and maintenance of social order have become much more significant since World War II. The obligation to work and strict notions of deservingness have become central to the debate about the welfare state. Indeed, although economic egalitarianism is more typically found among the working class, it is only firmly connected to a universalistic and inclusionary progressive political ideology among the middle class. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class reports cutting-edge research into the withering away of working-class support for the left and the welfare state, drawing mostly on survey data collected in Western Europe, the United States, and other Western countries.

Farewell to the Leftist Working Class

Verslag van een onderzoek naar de opvattingen van Nederlanders over de rechten en plichten van werklozen.

Dick Houtman

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