Presidential Address: Religion and Power-A Return to the Roots of Social Scientific Scholarship
Early social scientists, including Karl Marx, Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois, recognized the importance of religion for power systems. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, there has been a decline in scholars examining how religion matters for power. This address proposes that scholars...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2019]
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| In: |
Journal for the scientific study of religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 58, Issue: 1, Pages: 5-19 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Religion
/ Political system
/ Power structure
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| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy ZC Politics in general |
| Further subjects: | B
Religious Institutions
B power systems B sociology of religion B Power |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Early social scientists, including Karl Marx, Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois, recognized the importance of religion for power systems. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, there has been a decline in scholars examining how religion matters for power. This address proposes that scholars bring religion back to the center of understanding the production, deconstruction, and distribution of power as religion is critical to the flows of power in the social world. I propose that furthering an agenda that interrogates the role of religion for power means we emphasize that (i) religion is an institution; (ii) religious ideas motivate action; (iii) our epistemology sources theories of power rather than those that invalidate the centrality of religion in societies; and (iv) ground-breaking theoretical and empirical contributions to the social scientific study of religion and power demand that we broaden and diversify the standpoints from which this knowledge is produced. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-5906 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12583 |