Anti-modernism, modernism, and postmodernism: Struggling with the cultural significance of new religious movements

Journal/Book: Sociol Relig. 1998; 59: Marist Hall Room 108, Catholic Univ America, Washington, DC 20064. Assoc Sociology Religion. 131-156.

Abstract: Is the emergence of new forms of religious life in North America indicative of significant changes in the nature and role of religion in our society or changes in the character of our culture os a whole ? Calling on a divergent array of theoretical frameworks sociologists have recurrently sought to explain the broader implications of the study of NRMs by aligning them, in whole or in part, with various perceived anti-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist tendencies in our society. In a critical overview of some of this disparate literature, this paper argues that certain unnoticed convergences in the positions taken, point to a reading of the cultural significance of NRMs that transcends the inaccurate tendency to identify NRMs too exclusively with one side of various essentially invidious dichotomies (e.g., pre-modern and modern, anti-modern and modern, conservative and liberal, modern and post-modern).

Note: Article Dawson LL, Univ Waterloo, Dept Sociol, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, CANADA

Zurück | Weiter