When we talk of modernity we refer to many things, of which one is secularization and another is the use of rational, impersonal criteria to decide, allocate, adjudicate and evaluate. One sense of secularization is the application of these criteria to the religious field: modern culture does not necessarily encourage disbelief, but it is said to encourage rational belief, that is belief…
The case of rational choice is one of a tribe within the broader tribe of sociologists of religion, identified by a distinctive sense of embattlement and by a particular jargon. The writing of the highly prolific founding scholar, Rodney Stark, is interspersed with dismissive, even offensive, remarks and often sarcastic attacks on the secularization thesis and its defenders (
During the Fox sexenio (2000-2006) the Mexican state embarked on an initiative in the then quite new field of intercultural higher education which marked a radical departure in state-sponsored attempts to overcome the social and cultural exclusion of indigenous peoples in Latin America. While other state initiatives have tended to focus on institutional pluralism, as in the establishment of usos y costumbres…
This is an attempt to introduce more clarity into debates and concepts relating to multiculturalism and affirmative action in Latin America on the basis of a theoretical discussion and examples from Brazil and Mexico. The underlying concern is with affirmative action as it relates to social justice. Starting out with the issues arising from the use of self-assignment in deciding on individuals’…
The publication in 1982 of Guillermo O’Donnell’s exhaustive, in-cisive, but difficult book on the Argentine regime of 1966-1973 marked the culmination of a decade’s work by a leading figure in the generation of social scientists who came to maturity during the heady years of resurgent popular movements and the nightmare years of military rule that followed. This book was one of the…
Esperança, do mesmo modo que seu irmão gêmeo, o desespero, é obviamente uma emoção humana duradoura e generalizada, e uma característica comum à religião, em suas inúmeras formas, é certamente a de que ela é procurada por pessoas em busca de esperança e de alívio para o seu desespero. Mas a religião se transforma, e argumentarei nas páginas seguintes que, ao se…
One reasonable response to the vast enterprise of comparing religions, their institutions and the behaviour of their followers is a nagging doubt: after all this, is there much difference among the world religions, or indeed between the world religions on one hand, and the innumerable polytheistic and pagan forms across the planet? Recent work in cognitive psychology applied to religion, especially that…
It is becoming commonplace to refer to the global character of charismatic and fundamentalist religious movements. At its most elementary this simply means that their doctrines and their organizations tend to possess ‘global reach’. But the expression ‘global’ in this context also refers to their propensity to borrow, imitate, and project images of themselves and of others, across frontiers in time and…
