The specific availability for this course is not currently known. If you would like to know if this course will be offered during your session, please contact us.
This course concerns the role of religion in society: as a source of common values (Durkheim); of social change and the origins of modern capitalism (Weber); as social control and social rebellion (Marx); its relation to other narratives and ways of seeing the world such as mythologies, modernity, rationalism and secularism; and its role in the construction of nationality, class, race, ethnicity, and gender. We will study the classic definitions and theoretical perspectives in sociology of religion. We will look at mainstream religions, the relative importance of churches, sects and cults, the challenge of fundamentalisms of all types, the importance of evangelicalism in the United States and the recent challenge to it of the "new atheists", the thesis of secular society and modernization, and complex issues related to the growing importance of Islam around the world.
