The sacred in the modern world: a psychosocial approach

本项目将探讨神圣的社会学概念如何对当代社会的学术研究做出重要贡献，以及我们对深刻意义、价值和关系的理解的更广泛的公共话语。“神圣”一词有时被视为“宗教”的同义词，但本项目将探索源于埃米尔·迪尔凯姆作品的另一种对神圣的理解，在这种理解中，神圣被理解为一种象征、价值、观念或人物，被认为具有深远的意义，与之相关的是，充满情感的社会纽带和实践是伪造的。发展一种关于神圣的社会学理论对于澄清西方宗教社会学的焦点具有重要的潜力。自20世纪60年代以来，这一学科的主要关注点一直是如何理解越来越多的人很少或根本没有与传统宗教机构或习俗有意义接触的社会中的“宗教”研究。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，以及超越机构宗教的不同形式的灵性。虽然有价值，但本文献中分析的网络和实践往往只涉及很小一部分人口，往往比传统宗教所涉及的人口要小。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意义、价值观和关系，这些都是西方人口的重要组成部分。该项目将研究宗教研究以外的领域，特别是文化社会学、人类学和媒体研究领域，神圣的观念是如何发展起来的，同时也考虑到最近在宗教和主体间性以及宗教的文化调解方面的宗教研究工作，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的关系的主体间意义，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争论，以及多元化社会中神圣的集体形式的可能性和挑战。项目中讨论的案例包括对公众人物如Anna Lindh和Pym Fortuyn死亡的集体哀悼的重要性，在西方社会中，照顾儿童的神圣性作为神圣的一种关键形式的出现，在很大程度上取代了传统的宗教权威来源，英国广播公司（BBC）决定不播出DEC加沙呼吁的争议方式表明，公共媒体在排练神圣价值观的同时，也保持了公正性。除了学术成果之外，该项目还将通过媒体输出和其他活动，鼓励公众对神圣的社会学理解。这种概念性语言提供了一个有用的框架，可以思考我们最深刻的承诺的根源和含义，可以识别当代文化中神圣的有效形式，可以超越简单的宗教和世俗的二元对立，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，该项目有可能为公众反思生活在一个以多重、交叉和冲突的神圣形式为特征的社会中的含义创造一个新的框架。

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.