7.3 Theorists Flashcards
Religion as a source of social change
Weber
theory of the role of religion in the rise of capitalism
Weberian approach focuses less on what religion does (its functions or ideological purpose) and what it means for
- Individuals - Involves studying the motivations, behaviours and beliefs of those who classify themselves as religious
- Society - This aspect looks at collective religious beliefs existing in a particular society and how these influence the development of cultural identities, legal systems or Weber’s case, a complete economic system (capitalism)
Weber
wanted to understand how and why capitalism developed in some societies but not others, even though they had reached similar levels of economic and technological development. Both China and the Roman Empire once developed sophisticated technologies hundreds of years in advance of anything seen in Britain, yet neither developed beyond a feudal economic and political system.
He argued that it was a particular form of Protestant religion called Calvinism that provided the ‘final push’, allowing England to change, in the 16th century, from a relatively poor, agriculture-based, pre-modern society into a wealthy, modern, industrial society. It was Calvinism that provided the ‘spirit of capitalism’ – a powerful set of ideas, beliefs and practices that promoted a strong and lasting social transformation. The basis of this ‘spirit’ was predestination. Calvinists believed that God would know, before individuals were born, if they were destined to achieve salvation. Nothing a person did in the course of their life could change this situation. However, because God would not allow sinners into heaven, the way to prove that you were destined for heaven would be, as Bental notes, to ‘associate morality and Godliness with hard work, thriftiness, and the reinvestment of money’.
In basic terms, those destined for salvation had to be:
* successful (throughout life)
* hard-working
* moral
* thrifty (careful about how you spent your money)
* modest.
Weber argued that these were just the kinds of attributes required to develop capitalism, an economic system built on the creation and reinvestment of profits to make sure of long-term business success.
Evidence- mlk jr civil rights movement aided by baptist movement
Tawney
Critic of Weber’s Calvinist Theory
Argued that capitalism developed in places like Venice and Germany prior to the development of Protestantism. This led him to argue that capitalism developed in Protestant countries like Holland and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries due ‘not to the fact they were Protestant powers but to large economic movements, in particular the discoveries and the results which flowed from them’.
Weber
Religion for Social Change
Weber’s analysis of social transformations points more directly to evidence that religion can start social change. In contrast with Marx, Weber argues that religion is not necessarily a conservative force. On the contrary, religiously inspired movements have often produced dramatic social transformations, such as the transformation from feudal to capitalist society and, in particular, the example of Britain as the first society to undergo this transformation.
Weber suggested that religion, in the form of Calvinism, provided the ‘final push’ that allowed a society with a particular level of technological development to break through the barrier dividing pre-modern, agriculturebased, feudal societies from modern, industrial, capitalist societies. Calvinism, Weber argued, provided the necessary ‘spirit of capitalism’ – a set of ideas and practices that promoted a strong and lasting social transformation.
Religion was a source of social change because, in this instance, two things came together at
the right moment:
- Technological changes that provided opportunities to create wealth in a new and dynamic way.
- A social group (Calvinists) with an ideology that allowed these opportunities to be exploited.
As Bental puts it: ‘Calvinists associated morality and Godliness with hard work, thriftiness and reinvestment of money. Given Western Europe and America served as home for these people, should we be surprised capitalism took off in the West?’
Fanfani
‘Europe was acquainted with capitalism before the Protestant revolt. For at least a century capitalism had been an ever-growing collective force. Not only isolated individuals, but whole social groups, inspired with the new spirit, struggled with a society that was not yet permeated with it.’ If this argument is valid, they call into question – in this context at least – the role of religion as an initiator of change.
Viner
Argues that where Calvinism was the dominant religion in a society it acted as a largely conservative social force that put a brake on economic development and change.
Weber
Theorised that certain denominations and sects appeal to the deprived because they can help people cope with their deprivation.
Ken Pryce
Researched into the role of Pentacostalism among African-Caribbeans in the UK is a useful application of Weberianism. Pentecostalism emphasizes the importance of family and community, and values hard-work and thrift, all of which offer practical support for helping to cope with poverty as well as a sense of spiritual status.
Ernst Bloch
Wrote about The Principle of Hope. He argued that religions did offer people the idea of a better sort of society; a glimpse of Utopia. While Bloch, as an atheist, thought that religious faith was misplaced, he did see in it a hope for a better sort of society and a belief that people should be able to have dignity and live a good life in a good society.
At the risk of over-simplifying Bloch’s work, it does include the idea that the hope for a better world inherent in religious belief can influence the desire for better things on Earth – to build a heaven on Earth, or a new Jerusalem – and can help rally people to organise to bring about revolutionary social change.
Gramsci
Agreed with Marx, Lenin and Althusser that religion played a part in that and contributed to the hegemonic control of the ruling class. However, like Engels, Gramsci did not think this was the only role religion could play. Workers were able to organise against the hegemony and develop a counter-hegemony. Just as religion could be useful for building the bourgeois hegemony, it could also be useful for building a counter-hegemony, led by organic intellectuals. For Gramsci, religious leaders could take the role of organic intellectuals, building a counter-hegemony, popularising ideas that ran counter to those of the ruling class and helping to build rebellion and protest.
Two examples of religious leaders acting like Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and using ideas in religion to campaign for significant change are:
The role of Martin Luther King in the US Civil Rights movement
Liberation theology in Latin America.
Criticism: Even the neo-Marxist views are arguably outdated in that they, like functionalist, feminist and Marxist views, see religion as being socially very significant, whether it be as a conservative force or an engine of social change. Those sociologists that argue that there has been a rapid process of secularisation would question whether religion today plays an especially significant role in either way, conservative or reformist. However, others would criticise this as a Eurocentric position, ignoring the prominence of religion in many other parts of the world.
Bruneau and Hewitt
Brazil
Argued that in Brazil the Catholic Church became a ‘vehicle for working with the poor’ as a way of promoting social and economic changes.
‘For its proponents, the theology of liberation becomes the only way to understand the church and its mission; the church must be involved, it must opt for the poor, and it must use its resources to assist the poor in their liberation. Churches, for their part, become the privileged vehicle to work with the poor and promote their awareness, mobilization, and organization’. In some countries, including Brazil, liberation theology did lead to progressive social changes, and played a part in the gradual move of many Latin American countries from dictatorship to democracy. In
the health programme in Nova Iguaçu, near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Catholic priests organised the local community against lack of food (malnutrition), open sewers and other health hazards.
Bruce
Religion and Conflict
Claims that in many conflicts religion is used as a scapegoat, to simplify the complex reasons behind geopolitical tensions.
for example; Despite the longstanding geopolitical tensions in the Balkan states, religion was cited as the main reason behind the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims (early 1990s)
similary the Northern Ireland conflicts for Independance from the UK was boiled down to Catholics vs Protestants
However, Bruce argued that some conflicts were based on conflict of religious belief systems, for example, Islamic fundamentalism: ISIS, Al Qaeda. ISIL’s involvement in Syria and reemergence of Taliban in Afghanistan.
These conflicts can however, still be explained as reactions to cultural and economic changes; globalisation, westernisation.
Steve Bruce: Communal and Individual Fundamentalism
Communal individualism is that usually found in less developed countries and is primarily concerned with defending communities (or nations) against what are perceived to be ‘modernist’ threats such as western materialism, individualism, multiculturalism, and human rights. These are typically seen by ‘communal fundamentalists’ as secularising forces which undermine religion.
Individualist fundamentalism is more likely to be found within developed nations and is mainly associated with the New Christian Right in the United States – it is concerned with maintaining traditional values within the context of a stable liberal democratic nation state.
Chapman et al
According to Chapman et al (2015) Fundamentalist movements share the following characteristics:
- A literal interpretation of religious texts, which are seen as infallible – they take their ‘moral codes’ straight from their sacred texts. A good fundamentalist is supposed to lead their life in accordance with the original sacred text of the religion, and there is little room for flexibility in this. However, one of the major criticisms of Fundamentalism is that religious texts are often obscure and they have been interpreted at some point by whoever is in power, so there is no such thing as a ‘literal interpretation’.
- They regard all areas of social life as sacred – Fundamentalists tend to impose their views on others in a society, and police people’s day to day behaviour closely to make sure that day to day life is being lived in line with their interpretation of the sacred text.
- They do not tolerate other religions – they have a monopoly on truth, and when Fundamentalists take power, they tend to purge the symbols of other religions from their area and persecute people of other faiths.
- They have conservative beliefs – Fundamentalists tend to support traditional gender roles and are against ‘progressive’ liberalisation, such as women playing a greater role in work and politics and they tend towards tolerance and even celebration of sexuality diversity.
- They tend to look at past religious eras with nostalgia, and sometimes want to change society back to how it used to be, before secularisation, when society was more religions
Huntingdon
Religion has become more important as a source of identity in a postmodern global world where other sources of identity have faded.
As societies come into closer contact because of globalisation, they rub up against each other and people become more aware of their differences, and thus religion becomes a source of conflict.
Karen Armstrong criticises this, suggesting that politics and economics matter more than religion as sources of conflict in the world today.
States that fundamentalist reactions to globalisation is a result of a clash of civilisations. The cultural norms and value systems of western religion are at odds of those at the east. The role of women in western society are different from some religious beliefs. Capitalism and consumerism may be seen as a threat to more traditional values.
Former US president Bush claimed that 9/11 was an attack on the American ‘way of life’, an attack on freedom.
