Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Theorists for religion
- Functionalist
Anlagen:
- Durkheim
- The sacred and profane
- Totemism
- WORSLEY: there is no
sharp division between hte
sacred and the profane
- collective conscience
- shared religious rituals
- Cognitive functions
- religion is the origin of
the concepts and
catetgories we need for
reasoning
- better applied to small societies
with one religion. theory
explains intergration within a
community but not the conflict
between communities.
- Postmodernists argue durkheims ideas can not be applied to
contemporary society as increasing diversity has fragmented
the collective conscience
- Malinowski
- Psychological functions
- agrees with durkheim on social solidarity but through
psychological functions to help cope with emotionl stress
- 1) Where the outcome is important but is uncontrollable and thus uncertain
- 2) At times of life crisis
- Parsons
- Values and meanings
- Agrees with Malinowski
- Religion creates and legitimates society's
centeral values
- It is the primary source of meaning
- Bellah
- Civil religion
- A belief system that attaches sacred qualities to the
society itself
- Marxism
- Marx
- religion is an ideology that
disorts peoples perception of
reality.
- Ideological weapon
- False consciousness
- Divine right of kings
- king=god representative on earth
- disobedience = sin against god
- Ignores positive functions of
reliogon such as
psychological adjustment to
misfortune.
- NEO MARXISITS: certain
forms of religion as
assisting the development
of class consciousness
- Religion and Alienation
- becoming seperate from or losing
control over something that has
been produced or created
- No control over the production
process. No freedom to express
true nature.
- Religion acts as an opiate to dull the
pain of exploitation
- Althusser
- The concept of alienation is
unscientific and based on
a romantic idea of humans
having a tru self. The concept
is inadequate as a basis
for a theory of religion.
- Synoptic link!!
- marx theory shows relationship between religion and
social stratifaction.
- Religion legitimises the class structure. help
maintain the existing distribution of power
- Lenin
- Spiritual gin, keep people in their place.
- Mystical fog
- Hindu Caste system
- Feminism
- Woodhead
- Criticises feminist explanations that simple equate
religion to patriarchy and the oppression of women
- Not all religion is patriarchal
- Religious Feminism
- e.g Hijab
- seen by western women as oppressive
- to the wearer it may symbolise resistance to
oppression. to escape the confines of the home
and to enter into education or employment with
out being judged by their appearance.
- symbol of liberation that enables them to enter the
public sphere without losing their culture and history.
- Religious orginisations
- Armstrong
- Sees women's exclusion from the priesthood
of most religions as evidence of their
marginalisation
- Places of worship
- Holm- women aren't allowed to touch the
Qu'ran when menstrating. She sees this as a
devaluation of women
- Religious laws and customs
- Woodhead
- argues that the exclusion of women from the catholic
preisthood is evidence of the church's deep unease about
the emancipation of women generally.
- Saadawi
- religion is not the direct cause of
their subordination. rather it is the
result of patriarchal forms of
society. which shaped and
reformed religion.