Religion Society

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Sociology Foundational Course: This course explores the current research in the sociology of religion, as well as the directions that future work is going in. We begin with classical sociological accounts of religion by Emile Durkheim, who saw religion as a socially transmitted system of knowledge, and Max Weber's argument about the psychological-religious motivations of the Protestant ethic. After that, we will be moving back and forth between studies about religion in America and in other parts of the world, including Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, China, and India. The course will include readings on practices of Catholic converts, an orthodox Jewish community, fasting, meditation, qigong, the connection between religion and gun ownership in America, Muslim youths, evangelical prayer, spirituality without religion, offerings to ancestors, Buddhist volunteers, and hospital chaplains. We will work through themes of emotion, institutions, ritual, personhood, power, politics, sociality, community, markets, and culture. The course will cover the growing body of research that questions some previously taken-for-granted categories in the sociology of religion.