The sacred in the modern world: a psychosocial approach

这个项目将探索社会学的神圣概念如何对当代社会的学术研究以及关于我们对深刻意义、价值和关系的理解的更广泛的公共话语做出重要贡献。“神圣”一词有时被认为是“宗教”的同义词，但这个项目将探索另一种对神圣的理解，它起源于埃米尔·涂尔干的作品，在该著作中，神圣被理解为一种象征、价值、理念或个人，被视为具有深远意义的符号、价值、思想或人，与之相关的情感上的社会纽带和实践被伪造。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，S一直关注这一学科的一个主要问题，即如何理解在越来越多的人与传统宗教机构或习俗很少或根本没有有意义的接触的社会中对宗教的研究。这导致了广泛的理论和实证研究，考察了新宗教运动、新时代、新异教和巫术崇拜，以及内在宗教以外的不同形式的灵性。虽然很有价值，但这篇文献中分析的网络和实践往往只涉及很小一部分人口，往往比传统宗教中涉及的人口要少。相比之下，社会学对神圣的理解可以提供一种概念性的语言，用于分析嵌入到公共媒体和法律制度等关键社会结构中的具有社会意义的意义、价值观和关系，以及西方人口的相当一部分参与其中。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，如何发展关于神圣的思想，同时也考虑最近宗教研究中关于宗教和主体间性的工作，以及宗教的文化调解，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，当代媒体作为排练和争夺神圣形式的结构的关键作用，以及多元社会中神圣形式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安娜·林德和皮姆·弗图恩等公众人物的意义，在西方社会中，照顾儿童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，以及围绕BBC决定不播放DEC加沙呼吁的争议如何表明，公共媒体在排练神圣价值观同时保持不偏不倚的作用方面存在紧张。除了学术成果外，该项目还将通过媒体报道和其他活动，鼓励各种公众受众参与到这种对神圣的社会学理解中。这种概念性的语言为思考我们最深刻的承诺的根源和含义提供了一个有用的框架，为确定当代文化中神圣的操作形式提供了一个有用的框架，并为超越宗教和世俗的简单二元论在当代社会生活中定义重大动机提供了一个有用的框架。因此，通过将这些概念介绍给更广泛的公众受众，该项目有可能为一种新的公众反思创建一个框架，以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.