The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (30 page)

We should remember that these religious transformations are not entirely new.

Religious traditions have always been in flux, and sociologists have extensive

historical data about religious and societal change. For example, Christianity

originated and had much of its early strength in the Middle East and North

Africa. Yet with the rise of Islam, much of Christianity in the Middle East and

North Africa disappeared. Buddhism developed in India, but was then reab-

sorbed into Hinduism and disappeared from most of the subcontinent. Import-

ant strands of Tantric and Mahayana Buddhism developed in Central Asia,

spreading from there to China and Tibet, and then on to Korea and Japan. But

both traditions disappeared from Central Asia, replaced by Islam (see Robinson

and Johnson 1997; Skilton, 1997). Nestorian Christianity entered China only

slightly after Buddhism (circa ce 600). Both were initially banned and persecuted as foreign religions, but over time, Christianity faltered, and Mahayana Buddhism came to be viewed as an indigenous religion. Yet Christianity entered

112

Christian Smith and Robert D. Woodberry

India by the second century ce and China by ce 635, well before it entered much

of Northern or Eastern Europe (Neill, 1986; Moffett, 1992; Hastings, 1999).

Conversely, in the twentieth century Christianity spread rapidly in Mainland

China and Buddhism gained influence in Europe. Everywhere, the great mis-

sionary traditions of Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity have spread at the

expense of indigenous and tribal religions, although often these indigenous

religions persist as folk traditions within global religions.

This raises many interesting theoretical questions. Why do some groups

radically change their religious traditions, while others preserve their traditions for centuries despite missionizing, invasion, and persecution ± like Jews, Arme-nians, Coptic Christians, Parsis, and Thomas Christians of India. Why do some

missionary efforts succeed and others fail? How and why do people come to see

some foreign traditions as indigenous, while continuing to see others as foreign?

How do particular religious traditions or the competition between multiple

religious traditions shape society?

Religious globalization has profoundly shaped existing religious traditions.

Both `ìmported'' and `ìndigenous'' religions have transformed themselves in the

process. As people adopt new religious traditions, they adapt them according to

their culture and use them to meet their own interests. As dominant indigenous

religions react to the importation of new value systems and competition for

adherents, they are transformed as well. For example, in India and Sri Lanka,

reaction to Protestant missions played a vital role in both the Hindu and

Buddhist renaissances of the nineteenth century, and, in turn, these new forms

of Hinduism and Buddhism have had important influences on the West. Reac-

tion to neo-Hindu thought, for example, played an important role in the devel-

opment of the theology of universal salvation within liberal Protestantism (Niell, 1986; Ariarajah, 1991; Robinson and Johnson, 1997; Hastings, 1999). These

interactions of religious traditions provide another ideal laboratory for the study of cultural change ± which parts of religious traditions are most malleable or

resistant to change, which groups adopt or resist new religions, etc. This globalization of religious traditions also has important political and social implica-

tions. Imported religious traditions in various countries have influenced gender roles, the practice of slavery, drug and alcohol use, democratization, church±

state relations, and concepts of political and religious rights. Whether religions spread along or across existing cleavages may also help to stabilize or destabilize societies.

Recently there has been a growing interest in global civil society and inter-

national non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Yet this literature seldom

mentions religious INGOs ± in fact they are often excluded from consideration ±

despite the fact that they continue to both dwarf and predate most of their

non-religious counterparts. The literature that does analyze religion suggests

that religious groups were central to the rise of INGOs (Boli and Thomas,

1999), as well as NGOs around the world; and that religious involvement is

an important predictor for participating in both religious and non-religious

voluntary associations. Moreover, comparative research suggests that reli-

gious context plays a substantial role in the number and type of voluntary

Sociology of Religion

113

associations around the world (James, 1987; Anheier and Salamon, 1998, pp.

11±17, 354±6).

One area inviting further research is on missionaries and missionary organiza-

tions, which are important for the massive number of personnel and amount of

resources they have transferred to the developing nations. They invested massive resources in education and translation projects, creating the first written form of many languages, and often importing the first printing technology. They often

established the first formal education for girls, and before the 1960s often

provided the most widespread access to Western formal education. Well into

the twentieth century, more Western missionaries went overseas than any other

group other than tourists. They were also from among the most educated

segments of North America and Europe. Moreover, missions dwarfed other

NGOs in size. In 1900, for example, the American Federation of Labor (AFL)

had a budget of $71,000, but the missions board of Northern Methodists (a

single US denomination) had a budget of over one million dollars (Neill, 1986;

Hutchison, 1987; Sanneh, 1989; Hastings, 1999). Protestant and Catholic mis-

sionaries wanted to transform societies, and they usually did ± some for the

good, some for the bad ± and changed themselves in these encounters as well.

Moreover, the number of Christian missionaries increased substantially over the

twentieth century. And now Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Bahai, and NRM mis-

sionaries compete with Christian groups in spreading their messages, and reli-

gious mission work is increasingly being done by people from the developing

world. Anthropologists have long conducted ethnographies of missions in tribal

cultures, and in the past fifteen years historians have begun to do serious

research on the impact of missions. But we still have little comparative soci-

ological literature that broadly analyzes religious missions' impact on other

societies, how they influenced colonial policy, postcolonial foreign policy, and so on.

Conclusion

Social scientists have increasingly come to realize that religion is not going to disappear with the advance of modernity. Nor is it going to be confined to a mere privatized existence without public influence. Traditional forms of religious

belief and practice have remained resilient in the modern world, and new

religions continue to emerge and spread with regularity. All of this has important consequences in many areas of social life. This realization opens up a host of

research opportunities which recent scholarship is beginning to explore. The

field remains wide open for development in ways that will enhance our under-

standing of the social significance of the sacred in human consciousness and

practice.

9

Intimate Relationships

Raine Dozier and Pepper Schwartz

The study of intimacy is, in some ways, the study of the history of human

thought and a way of looking at the changing position of men and women in

society. For intimacy to even be a concept, it first had to be seen as a capacity of human beings, a desirable state, and perhaps a right of human beings to exercise.

It has been said that the emergence of the idea of the individual as an important actor with integrity of purpose and spirit occurred with the diffusion of capital and liberal democracy. Of course, in all times and in all places there have been one-on-onèìntimate'' relationships, but intimacy as a domain of importance, of

personal meaning, and of societal consequence that merits the notice of the state and of seminal thinkers is placed as a product of the eighteenth-century European movement that historians have labeled the Enlightenment. During this

period, the novel ± that form of fiction that depends on the development of

plot and character and personal striving ± became a popular art form and

philosophers like Rousseau gave voice to a vision of humanity that was trans-

lated during the American Revolution as the inalienable right of ``man'' to life, liberty, and, interestingly, the pursuit of happiness. The self became a preoccupation of that age and the nineteenth century as well when William James invented

the discipline of psychology.

The nineteenth century in the United States and England was a period of rapid

industrialization, intense migration, technological change, and urbanization.

Viviana Zelizer (1985) has described how during this period intimacy was

redefined between parent and child ± as children, heretofore productive mem-

bers of rural family, were sent out to apprentice at tender ages. This accompan-

ied the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society, and children became less valuable workers at home as well. As children's economic contributions to the

family declined and their need for education and training grew, they became a

long-term emotional investment rather than an economic asset for the family.

Intimate Relationships

115

These changes led to a significant decline in the birth rate. In 1800, a white

married couple had an average of seven children; this rate was halved over the

next hundred years (D'Emilio and Freedman, 1988). The useful child was

transformed into thè`precious'' child and the turn of the nineteenth and twen-

tieth centuries markedly romanticized the nobility of womanhood and the

transformation of childhood.

With the mid-1800s came the proliferation of marriage books ± on both

sexual and emotional etiquette. In the early 1900s there were some of the first

empirical investigations into female sexuality, and the Kinsey studies, published in the late 1940s and early 1950s, illustrated the extent to which intimacy was a part of personal relations. As personal life ascended in people's prioritization of needs, experts appeared to give them direction ± and to sell them books

and services. Childrearing books and maternal groups proliferated. Profes-

sionals of the 1920s advocated loving and nurturing children, while those in

the 1940s advised strict regimentation with little physical affection (Grant,

1998). Styles of advice rotated, but the extension of thè`helping professions''

± first physicians, and later psychologists ± into the intimate lives of

families pointed to the centrality of intimate relationships and their transition from relationships of economic necessity to relationships requiring planning,

nurturing, and remediation. Social scientists' role in family life had begun in

earnest.

The rise of industrialization, the decline of agriculture, and the growth of cities during the twentieth century heralded another important transition ± the flow of young people to cities and the creation of a dating culture. The twenties ushered in dancehalls, amusement parks, and growing numbers of automobiles that

afforded young people privacy. Increasing numbers of young people left their

families and had greater discretionary time and income. Dating became an end in

itself instead of a step toward marriage, and multiple opportunities for a private, intimate life radically changed unmarried people's motivation from utilitarian

relationships to ones based on love, sex, and pleasure.

The increasingly daring dating of the thirties and forties occurred within

a traditional framework of male and female roles. Still, this was the soil

from which great ideological and behavioral changes would be grown. This

generation gave birth to the celebrated Baby Boom ± a population that turned

out to be determined to test thè`double standard'' and other gender guidelines

of their parents' generation. The women's movement, the gay rights movement,

and the rise of sexual liberation all changed conceptions about intimate life,

especially for women. The rate of premarital sex increased rapidly for women;

the rate of premarital sex for men increased slightly, but the real transition was in their choice of sex partner. Sexuality became an expression of sentiment

and, then, play. By the 1960s, dating youth were likely to be sexual with a

variety of willing partners. Women's premarital sexuality changed from fianceÂes to only ``sex with meaning'' to the sixties and seventies experience of recreational sex.

The sexual freedom espoused in the sixties created a greater focus on intimacy

as well as sex for pleasure for both sexes. More women (and men) began to

116

Raine Dozier and Pepper Schwartz

expect emotionally fulfilling relationships with some semblance of equality. This change was not just limited to college-educated liberals, but increasingly

permeated the culture at large. Even working-class husbands of the seventies

bewilderedly reported their wives' growing insistence on talking, sharing, and

communication (Rubin, 1976). The search for intimacy became a cultural theme

and altered expectations of sex and love. The quest for sexual and emotional