A spate of social scientific literature gives the impression that societies in the twenty-first century are overrun with ‘neoliberal subjects’. But what does it actually mean to be a neoliberal ...subject? And in what ways does this concept relate to ‘neoliberalism’, more generally? In this article, I distinguish between four common ways of thinking about ‘neoliberalism’: (1) as a set of economic policies, (2) as a hegemonic ideological project, (3) as a political rationality and form of governmentality and (4) as a specific type of embodied subjectivity. I argue that while neoliberalisms (1), (2) and (3) potentially hold clear conceptual connections to one another – notwithstanding the quite real tensions between them – their relationship to neoliberalism (4) is often (although not always) tenuous at best. That is, the evidence routinely offered to demonstrate the existence of neoliberalism (4) bears almost no necessary relationship to neoliberalisms (1), (2) or (3). I conclude that, for both academic and political reasons, scholars should be more careful when invoking the monolithic notion of a ‘neoliberal subject’.
Few theoretical traditions dominate the sociological study of culture as does that of the late Pierre Bourdieu. Yet the Bourdieu that dominates is not the only Bourdieu there is, for Bourdieusian ...sociology is comprised of two incompatible philosophical strands—naturalism and interpretivism. In turn, the first goal of this essay is to make the case that cultural sociologists are wrong to give primacy to naturalist Bourdieu, as we so often do. And in order to accomplish this, I advance a critique of naturalist Bourdieu using the theoretical and normative resources afforded by interpretivist Bourdieu. However, this critique is only the first part of a larger project of theoretical translation and reconstruction. Despite the substantial sociological insights contained in interpretivist Bourdieu, for explanatory, ethical, and political reasons, I maintain that a superior critical cultural theory ultimately requires an alternative theoretical vocabulary. “Naturalism and interpretivism” presents brief accounts of naturalism and interpretivism. In “The two Bourdieus: naturalist versus interpretivist,” I flesh out how they manifest in Bourdieu’s sociology, presenting, in ideal-typical form, the basic outlines of what I call naturalist Bourdieu and interpretivist Bourdieu. In “Moving beyond Bourdieu,” I argue that, although the latter is far superior to the former, its economistic vocabulary is parasitic on the normative vision animating Bourdieu’s project. So, in order to bring Bourdieu’s cultural theory more in line with his political ambitions, I propose replacing the language of “capital,” “distinction,” and “fields” with the anti-naturalist language of “goods,” “traditions,” and “spheres.” In “A post-Bourdieusian cultural theory,” I bring together the work of Taylor, MacIntyre, Walzer, and others to sketch the outlines of a post-Bourdieusian cultural theory.
In this article I delineate the cultural structure underlying much (if not most) of what goes by “spirituality” in the popular discourse of twenty-first century liberal democracies—which I call the ...religion of the heart. I begin by reviewing the disparate academic literatures relating to the shift from “religion” to “spirituality,” explicating why the study of spirituality remains both marginalized within the sociology of religion and deeply fragmented. I then lay out the theoretical foundations of a cultural sociological approach to the study of religion, which I use to synthesize the existing sociological and historical literature on “spirituality.” I supplement this synthesis with data from my own empirical research in order to offer a systematic representation of the religion of the heart’s ten core tenets and how they relate to one another. I then conclude with a reflection on the implications my analysis holds for the sociology of contemporary religion.
In this article I offer a meta-theoretical mapping of spirituality studies and its many controversies. I begin by distinguishing between two projects that together constitute the field: the study for ...and the study of spirituality. I argue a good deal of the confusion surrounding 'spirituality' is the result of scholars failing to make this distinction. Next, I outline the few areas of agreement within the study of spirituality in order to illuminate what I consider the issue that defines the field: the merits and shortcomings of late modernity. By late modernity I mean the current era, whose origins can be traced roughly to the 1960s. I then offer a meta-theoretical analysis of the social-cum-political theoretical frameworks commonly used to study spirituality, delineating them according to their assessments of the contemporary epoch. I contend this is a useful and much-needed means of dispelling some of the fuzziness that characterizes the field.
Abstract In this article, we advance a cultural sociological approach to religious change that foregrounds the role of symbolic pollution and shifting religious imaginaries. Leveraging interviews ...with 50 Anglo-Canadian Millennials who identify as spiritual but not religious, and ethnographic research at three field sites, we sketch a religious imaginary comprising four discourses of “religion.” According to our informants, “religion” is (1) anti-modern; (2) conservative; (3) American; and (4) colonial. Next, we draw from a combination of modern intellectual history and social histories of twentieth-century Canada to trace each of these discourses genealogically, thereby elucidating how “religion” became symbolically polluted for a large cohort of Canadian Millennials. We conclude with a discussion of the implications our account holds for secularization theory and the study of religious change more broadly.
In the last quarter century, a steadily increasing number of North Americans, when asked their religious affiliation, have self-identified as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). Charles Taylor ...argues that the popularity of “spirituality” is the result of the “massive subjective turn of modern culture”; while Paul Heelas has deemed this new religious form, “self-spirituality.” Many scholars have taken a critical stance toward this recent cultural development, positing that self-spirituality is a byproduct of the self-obsessed and individualistic culture which saturates the West, or that spirituality, at its worst, is simply a rebranding of religion in order to support consumer culture and the ideology of late capitalism. In this article, I seek to problematize these accounts. Drawing from qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with Canadian millennials who self-identify as SBNR, I will argue that self-spirituality is less individualistic and narcissistic than these scholars assert, its relationship to late capitalism is better understood as ambivalent, rather than congenial, and due to their methodological prejudices these critiques of self-spirituality are inadequate to analyse and understand the politics of self-spirituality.
Abstract
Late modernity has witnessed a growing semantic shift from “religion” to “spirituality.” In this article, I argue what underlies this shift is a cultural structure I call the religion of the ...heart. I begin with an explication of what I mean by the “religion of the heart,” and draw on the work of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell to identify what I take to be its historical antecedents. Second, I analyze the ambiguous relationships fostered between the religion of the heart and the discourses of science and religion, respectively, in late modernity. I illuminate how the social conditions of late modernity undermine or challenge what we conventionally think of as scientific and religious authorities, while at the same time creating existential needs that the religion of the heart is well adapted to meet. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this process, especially as it relates to the sustainability of science and religion, as independent enterprises, in the twenty‐first century.
More than thirty years ago, in their best-selling Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his colleagues coined the phrase “Social Science as Public Philosophy” (SSPP). They proposed it as an ...alternative to the “professional sociology” they believed had become increasingly hegemonic; too many sociologists, they contended, mistakenly embraced an ideal of social science modelled on the natural sciences. Instead, they championed a vision of sociology in which “the boundary between social science and philosophy was still open”—a vision they traced back to the classical works of Tocqueville, Durkheim, and others. Though rhetorically tantalizing and rich with critical potential, unfortunately SSPP remains undertheorized and thus neglected. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to systematically reconstruct, refine, and ultimately revive the sociological vision underlying SSPP. This vision consists of five pillars: (1) a rejection of the dualist aspiration to separate facts from values, in favour of an interpretive-cum-normative conception of social science; (2) a view of sociology as grounded in, and motivated by, specific traditions of ethical and philosophical inquiry; (3) transparency regarding the sociologist’s theoretical and normative commitments, and a willingness to subject them to public scrutiny; (4) an immanent conception of social criticism, which values identification rather than detachment; and (5) a commitment to democracy, substantively conceived. I contend that SSPP remains a vital resource for sociology today.
Abstract
According to some of the most vocal proponents of Critical Religion (CR), taking CR seriously entails accepting that religion as an analytic category leads to reification and naturalization ...and is unduly normative, thus critical scholars of religion should abandon it and restrict ourselves to studying discursive battles over the uses of religion. In this article, we build on the case for alternative critical proposals by offering an immanent critique of the work of proponents of CR. In doing so, we identify and outline CR’s major analytical flaws, which we name as follows: inconsistent historicization, crypto-normativity, and arbitrary abandonment. We conclude that CR scholarship cannot but fail to live up to its own ideals, and moreover that much would be lost were we to limit the critical study of religion to CR.
In a long-forgotten essay, Alvin Gouldner defended the distinctive contributions of Romantic social science. Today, half a century later, very few would risk making a similar plea. Owing to its ...deconstruction, the discourse of Romanticism has increasingly fallen out of favor in the social sciences, meaning social scientists have progressively come to see Romanticism as less a resource for critique than a bourgeois ideology warranting critical scrutiny. Yet the truth is quite a bit more complicated. For despite its disapproval at the level of social science's explicit culture, Romanticism continues to serve, at the level of implicit culture, as a potent resource for social analysis. We start with a clarification of what we mean by Romanticism. While Romanticism may be an amorphous and multifaceted structure of thought and feeling, like Gouldner, we do not think it lacks coherence. Thus, we outline what we take to be the core dimensions of the ‘Romantic syndrome’, and then survey some of its key figures in Western social thought. Next, we move to a discussion of three select studies about the infiltration of Romanticism into the capitalist heartland—the sphere of work. We demonstrate how, consistent with our argument that Romanticism has become increasingly symbolically polluted within social science, each of these studies critiques the Romantic turn at work, while nevertheless anchoring their critiques in Romanticism, albeit in increasingly implicit fashion. We conclude by offering some reflections on why Romanticism continues to haunt contemporary social science—and why this matters.
