Marginality as a societal position of religion.

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2001 Presidential Address

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Marginality as a societal position of religion.

Both blessing and plague--our methodological quandary! We have an object of inquiry that defies both theory and empirical observation. After all, religious people look to God or some other transcendent dimension, and we cannot define God with any adequacy, much less observe the transcendent. This is a blessing in that it lends a particularly open character to our work, preventing us from wrapping our theories in conceptual mummies. It is a plague in that the restriction of our work to what we define and observe -- acts of devotion and religious organizations -- deprives our research of its center. The stratagem of focusing on acts of devotion and religious organizations reduces the sociology of religion to the interpretive non-understanding of certain actions to which social actors attach unspecified meanings. What I propose here is that we can do better than that, and that the study of religion at societal margins provides a particularly opportune occasion for doing better.

Let us begin with conceptualization. The rather large body of literature on the defining of religion has led to theoretical dilemmas rather than consensus (see Hervieu-Leger 2000:30ff.). I have myself proposed the tactic of Georg Simmel's form sociology to arrive at a "formal" definition of religion (Blasi 1980a, 1998a). A form is a social configuration or shared process -- e.g., the dyad, the alliance, competition, conflict, superordination/subordination, consensus (Simmel 1950:21-23). A given form may vary in content; for example superordination exists in government, business, athletics, and religion. Simmel described religion as subordination under a deity (1950:190-91), but that is theoretically incomplete unless one has an adequate concept of a deity.

Let us tactically begin with the social form consensus and its opposite dissensus. There is a third form in the same universe (i.e., the universe of perceived world trustworthiness) -- shared doubt or skepticism over the merit of this world's claims. (1) We cannot study consensus unless we have a clear concept of what the body of people sharing in the consensus agree about. To a considerable extent, the same holds true for the study of dissensus. However, shared doubt not only allows for ambiguity but thrives on it. Where there is doubt, people see inadequacies in the very words being used to present them with a claim or explanation. Presuming religion to be a consensus rather than a shared doubt is at the root of the methodological dilemmas of the sociology of religion. And for research in pluralistic societies, presuming religion to be essentially a state of dissensus leads us to overlook commonalities among diverse religions. The problem with consensus and dissensus is not that they do not occur but that t hey are about God and similar transcendents. The advantage of shared doubt as a form to be employed in our field is that it pertains to life in this world. While religious belief, in the same manner as consensus and dissensus, makes reference to some other world, the doubt I have in mind is about this world. I would define religion roughly as a shared doubt about claims from the social world. (2) Let us leave it as a rough sensitizing concept for the time being. (3) Precisely which observables indicate such doubt depends on a research setting. Fundamentalists' dissatisfaction with the welfare state, sanctuary movement activists' opposition to President Reagan's Central America policy, and sacrifices Orthodox Jews make to maintain traditional observances, in the...

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