The sacred in the modern world: a psychosocial approach

该项目将探讨神圣的社会学概念如何为当代社会的学术研究做出重要贡献，以及更广泛的公众话语，关于我们对深刻意义，价值观和关系的理解。“神圣”一词有时被视为“宗教”的同义词，但本项目将探索对神圣的另一种理解，这种理解起源于埃米尔·涂尔干的作品，其中神圣被理解为一种象征，价值，思想或人，被认为具有深远的意义，在情感上-发展一种神圣的社会学理论对于澄清社会学的焦点具有重要的潜力，宗教在西方。自20世纪60年代以来，这门学科的一个主要问题是如何理解社会中的“宗教”研究，其中越来越多的人很少或根本没有与传统宗教机构或实践有意义的接触。这导致了广泛的理论和实证研究，研究新的宗教运动，“新时代”，新异教和巫术崇拜，以及超越机构宗教的不同形式的灵性。虽然这些文献中分析的网络和做法很有价值，但往往只涉及很小一部分人口，往往少于传统宗教所涉及的人口。相比之下，对神圣的社会学理解可以提供一种概念性语言，用于分析嵌入公共媒体和法律体系等关键社会结构中的社会重要意义，价值观和关系，以及西方人口的重要部分。该项目将研究神圣的概念如何在宗教研究之外的领域发展，特别是在文化社会学，在这方面，我们将继续研究人类学和媒体研究，同时也考虑最近在宗教和主体间性方面的宗教研究工作，以及宗教的文化中介，可能会在这些其他学科中产生对神圣的更丰富的理解。它将特别关注与神圣人物关系的主体间意义，神圣形式的历史偶然性，当代媒体作为一种结构的关键作用，通过这种结构，神圣的形式被排练和竞争，以及在多元社会中神圣的集体形式的可能性和挑战。通过该项目讨论的案例将包括集体、调解哀悼公众人物如安娜林德和皮姆佛杜恩之死的意义，照顾儿童的神圣性的出现，作为西方社会神圣的一种关键形式，在很大程度上取代了传统的宗教权威来源，以及英国广播公司决定不广播DEC加沙呼吁的争议表明，公共媒体在排练神圣价值观的同时也保持公正性的作用存在紧张关系。除了学术产出，该项目还将努力通过媒体产出和其他活动，鼓励广大公众从社会学角度理解神圣。这种概念性的语言提供了一个有用的框架，用于思考我们最深刻的承诺的根源和含义，用于识别当代文化中神圣的运作形式，并超越宗教和世俗的简单二元对立，以定义当代社会生活中的重要动力。通过将这些概念介绍给更广泛的公众受众，该项目因此有可能创建一个新的公共反思框架，反思生活在一个以多种，交叉和冲突的神圣形式为特征的社会中的影响。

This project will explore how sociological concepts of the sacred can make an important contribution to the academic study of contemporary society, as well as wider public discourse about our understanding of deeply-significant meanings, values and relationships. The term 'sacred' is sometimes treated as synonymous with 'religion', but this project will explore an alternative understanding of the sacred originating from the work of Emile Durkheim in which the sacred is understood as a symbol, value, idea or person which is regarded as being of profound significance, and in relation to which emotionally-laden social bonds and practices are forged.Developing a sociological theory of the sacred has significant potential to clarify the focus of the sociology of religion in the West. Since the 1960's, a primary concern in this discipline has been how to understand the study of 'religion' in societies in which increasing numbers of people have little or no meaningful contact with traditional religious institutions or practices. This has led to a wide range of theoretical and empirical studies examining new religious movements, the 'new age', neo-Paganism and Wicca, as well as different forms of spirituality beyond insitutional religion. Whilst valuable, the networks and practices analysed in this literature tend to involve only a very small proportion of the population, often smaller than those involved in traditional religions. By contrast, a sociological understanding of the sacred can provide a conceptual language for analysing socially significant meanings, values and relationships that are embedded into key social structures such as public media and the legal-system, and with which significant parts of Western populations are engaged.The project will examine how ideas of the sacred have been developed in fields beyond the study of religion, particularly in cultural sociology, anthropology and media studies, whilst also considering how recent work in religious studies on religion and intersubjectivity, and the cultural mediation of religion, might generate richer understandings of the sacred in these other disciplines. It will give particular attention to the intersubjective significance of relations with sacred figures, to the historical contingency of sacred forms, to the key role of contemporary media as a structure through which forms of the sacred are rehearsed and contested, and to the possibilities and challenges of collective forms of the sacred in pluralist societies. Case examples discussed through the project will include the significance of the collective, mediated mourning of the death of public figures such as Anna Lindh and Pym Fortuyn, the emergence of the sacrality of the care of children as a key form of the sacred in Western societies which has to a significant degree displaced traditional religious sources of authority, and the ways in which controversy over the BBC's decision not to broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal demonstrates tensions in the role of public media in rehearsing sacred values whilst also maintaining impartiality.In addition to its academic outputs, the project will also seek to encourage engagement with such a sociological understanding of the sacred amongst a range of public audiences through media outputs and other events. This conceptual langugage provides a useful framework for thinking about the roots and implications of our deepest commitments, for identifying operative forms of the sacred in contemporary culture, and for moving beyond simplistic binaries of religion and the secular in defining significant motive-forces in contemporary social life. By introducing these concepts to wider public audiences, this project therefore has the potential to create a framework for a new kind of public reflection about the implications of living in a society characterised by multiple, intersecting and conflicting forms of the sacred.