Religion, Realism and Social Theory: Making Sense of Society (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

225 Pages·2004·1.14 MB·English

by  Philip A Mellor

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Religion, Realism
and Social Theory
Making sense of society
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Religion, Realism and Social Theory
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Theory, Culture & Society
Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture
within contemporary social science and the humanities.Building on the her-
itage of classical social theory,the book series examines ways in which this
tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It also pub-
lishes theoretically informed analyses of everyday life,popular culture,and
new intellectual movements.
EDITOR:Mike Featherstone,Nottingham Trent University
SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD
Roy Boyne,University of Durham
Mike Hepworth,University of Aberdeen
Scott Lash,Goldsmiths College,University of London
Roland Robertson,University of Aberdeen
Bryan S.Turner,University of Cambridge
THE TCS CENTRE
The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture &
Society and Body & Society,and related conference,seminar and postgradu-
ate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent
University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact:
Centre Administrator
The TCS Centre,Room 175
Faculty of Humanities
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane,Nottingham,NG11 8NS,UK
e-mail:[email protected]
web:http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk
Recent volumes include:
Critique of Information
Scott Lash
Liberal Democracy 3.0
Stephen P.Turner
French Social Theory
Mike Gane
The Body and Social Theory,2nd Edition
Chris Shilling
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Religion, Realism and Social Theory
Making sense of society
Philip A. Mellor
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© 2004 Philip A.Mellor
First published 2004
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,or criticism or review,
as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be
reproduced,stored or transmitted in any form,or by any means,only with the prior permission
in writing of the publishers,or in the case of reprographic reproduction,in accordance with the
terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.Inquiries concerning reproduction
outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
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London EC1Y 1SP
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7619 4864 3
ISBN 0 7619 4865 1
Library of Congress Control Number:2004095881
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press,Gateshead
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction: Real Society 1
2 Complex Society 27
3 Contingent Society 53
4 Necessary Society 80
5 Temporal Society 108
6 Tacit Society 133
7 Resurgent Society 160
8 Conclusion 182
Bibliography 192
Index 211
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Acknowledgements
There are a number of people I would like to thank for their encourage-
ment and support. Jim Beckford, Grace Davie, Mike Gane, Robert Alun
Jones,David Lyon,Richard Roberts and Kenneth Thompson have all been
supportive,while my work has also undoubtedly benefited from the con-
vivial and always rewarding discussions at the British Centre for
Durkheimian Studies in Oxford. I would like to thank Bill Pickering,
especially,but also Nick Allen,Mike Hawkins,Willie Watts Miller,Robert
Parkin,Susan Stedman Jones and all the other participants in the Centre.
I have also appreciated the support of my colleagues in Theology and
Religious Studies at the University of Leeds, particularly that of Kim
Knott and Nigel Biggar,who offered comments on early drafts of parts of
the book, and I would like to record my thanks for the conversations,
criticisms and questions offered by a number of my doctoral students
(Louise Child, Jonathan Fish, Martin Hobson and Sylvia Watts), all of
which have helped this book to develop in the form it has.At Sage,Chris
Rojek has also been very supportive and I acknowledge my gratitude to
him.This book is the first to follow a long period of collaborative work
with Chris Shilling, and I owe a particularly great debt to him: not only
did he offer constructive criticisms of most of the manuscript, but the
book could not have developed in the way it has without the stimulus of
our joint work in the preceding years, and the staunch friendship and
consistent encouragement he has provided. None the less, the responsi-
bility for the arguments developed here rests entirely with me. Finally,
Lucie (our own little emergent phenomenon) and Francesca provided
(mostly) welcome distractions and reminders that some things are more
important than books, while Murielle did that yet also gave me the
unfailing love and support that made this book possible.My greatest debt
of gratitude is unquestionably to her.
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For Murielle
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1
Introduction: Real Society
The purpose of this book is to develop a theoretical account of society that
will not only help illuminate important dimensions of the transformations
and developments that are shaping many contemporary forms of social life,
but will also make a contribution to broader debates about the general char-
acteristics of human societies.Contrary to those who argue that ‘society’ is
now an outmoded basis upon which to develop sociological analysis, the
argument of this book is that the idea of society needs to be re-examined,
and developed,rather than abandoned.It may be an exaggeration to say,as
Anthony Giddens (1987a: 25) has done, that ‘society is a largely unexam-
ined term in sociological discourse’,but it is clear that there has been a lack
of theoretical clarity about the term,that the significance of historical and
religious influences on notions of society has rarely been grasped fully,and
that there has often been a failure to address ontological questions about
social life directly.A sociological tendency to overemphasise the unique fea-
tures of modern and postmodern social life has exacerbated these problems,
as have those ‘post-societal’ and ‘post-social’ sociologies, philosophies and
cultural theories that urge the abandonment of ‘society’ as an abstract,
archaic and arbitrary construction of sociological discourse.Against these,a
systematic reassessment of the nature of society, which illuminates its key
dimensions and characteristics,can help reconnect contemporary social the-
ory to its classical tradition, draw more creatively and constructively from
developments in other disciplines,and refocus the sociological project upon
real human beings in their embodied being-in-the-world.
This reappraisal of society is built on a form of social realism:contrary
to some influential forms of the ‘cultural turn’ in sociological theorising it
takes seriously the reality of people,society and the world.Postmodernism
has been particularly influential in promoting the idea that any notion of
reality is arbitrary and culturally specific,but such an implication is evident
in a broad range of sociological and cultural theories. In fact, Berger and
Luckmann’s (1966:14) argument that sociologists cannot possibly remove
the quotation marks from ‘reality’,since the meaning of this term is always
socially and culturally constructed in specific contexts, seems to have
become a widespread norm in sociological theory, even if, like Berger and
Luckmann,an appeal to ‘empirical evidence’ is often used to forestall a slide
into complete cultural relativism.Taken to their logical extreme,such argu-
ments severely limit the possibility of understanding any society or culture
other than our own,and certainly deprive us of any solid ground on which
to challenge social or cultural practices that seem to us oppressive,immoral
or dehumanising.They also suggest a wildly dualistic view of humans:on the
one hand,humans are incapable of having any contact with,or grasp of,any-