{"id":2671,"date":"2014-01-13T17:15:04","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T22:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/?p=2671"},"modified":"2014-01-17T09:26:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T14:26:47","slug":"thesis-seven-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/2014\/01\/13\/thesis-seven-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"Thesis Seven: Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"practice_pic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRoundtable on the Sociology of Religion: Twenty-Three Theses on the Status of Religion in American Sociology\u2014A Mellon Working-Group Reflection.\u201d\u00a0 2013.\u00a0 Christian Smith, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Jose Casanova, Hilary Davidson, Elaine Howard Ecklund, John H. Evans, Philip S. Gorski, Mary Ellen Konieczny, Jason A. Springs, Jenny Trinitapoli, and Meredith Whitnah.\u00a0 <\/span>Journal of the American Academy of Religion, <\/i>PP. 1-36.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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The article above should be discussed by sociologists, especially sociologists of religion, and so I highlight one<\/span><\/i><\/b> of the 23 theses with that discussion in mind.<\/p>\n

Thesis seven<\/span> states:\u00a0 \u201cdisciplinary preoccupations and trends often include conceptual inadequacies and biases that impede the serious study of religion<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elaborating, the authors argue,<\/p>\n

some scholars, especially postmodern and postcolonial critics in religious studies, have\u00a0challenged the very idea of \u2018religion\u2019 as a universal, basically human, and coherent concept.\u00a0 We\u00a0think such critiques are partly insightful and correct (see below), but also misleading on the\u00a0particular question of defining <\/i>religion.\u00a0 It is true that the use of the idea of \u2018religion\u2019 as a\u00a0singular category can be misleading in various ways, including wrongly suggesting that all\u00a0\u2018religions\u2019 in the world are natural kinds that share identifiable sets of properties, tendencies,\u00a0teachings, and practices.\u00a0 At the same time, we believe that, by shifting our focus from largely\u00a0exclusive concerns with discourse and concepts\u00a0 to a more expansive view that takes seriously\u00a0practices and actions, we can identify a particular type of human activity and orientation that\u00a0shares features that can be rightly described under the rubric of \u2018religion.\u2019<\/p>\n

The authors are correct in writing: \u00a0\u201cby shifting our focus from largely exclusive concerns with discourse and concepts to a more expansive view that takes seriously practices and actions,\u201d religion as a category is identifiable.\u00a0 This is an important shift and one that several sociologists of religion are now \u201cpracticing.\u201d\u00a0 I have written in these blog pages previously about the work of Durkheim and one of the most dedicated interpreters of Durkheim today \u2013 Anne Warfield Rawls \u2013 as arguing similarly.\u00a0\u00a0 Specifically, Rawls argues that Durkheim, Goffman, and Garfinkel emphasize \u201cpractices over beliefs\u201d because, as Rawls argues, they understand \u00a0practices as primary whereas beliefs are secondary or retrospective accounts of practices.\u00a0\u00a0 Each would argue that there is an ongoing relationship between practices and beliefs and that they are reciprocal in a number of ways, but, nevertheless, practices or people doing things together precede beliefs.<\/p>\n

The emphasis on \u201cpractices and actions\u201d is noteworthy as well because sociological concepts are glosses for what really occurs in practice and often not very good glosses at that.\u00a0 I believe that is partly what these authors are trying to express in Thesis Seven when they write, \u201cby shifting our focus from largely exclusive concerns with discourse and concepts.\u201d\u00a0 Concepts can be misleading, practices are \u201con the ground real.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, Rawls claims that Garfinkel hammered this point home in his writings (and is often misunderstood because of it).\u00a0 For example, Rawls discusses Garfinkel not using the concept \u201ccommunity\u201d because it is abstract and too distant from what is actually occurring on the ground.\u00a0 So she writes, \u201cGarfinkel referred to members of situated practices, not to communities of practice.\u00a0 He avoided the word \u2018communities,\u2019 which has unfortunate connotations with regard to more traditional sociological views, and developed his own notion of a group as consisting of the procedural rules of interpretation of working acts.\u00a0 It is unfortunate that those who have been influenced by his work have not seen this point\u201d (Garfinkel, Rawls: 91, fn 1).\u00a0 Garfinkel believed that conceptual reduction made invisible the real achieved coherence of events\/practices\/actions, and, moreover, concepts too often rendered social order invisible.<\/p>\n

Texts are good examples of this making invisible.\u00a0 Garfinkel said that texts are markers for concepts but what is most important sociologically is practices, things done, said, felt.\u00a0 Rawls, once again, writes: \u201cIt is Garfinkel\u2019s position that the knowledge of practices he is trying to introduce is not a conceptual or cognitive knowledge but, rather, an embodied knowledge that comes only from engaging in practices in concerted co-presence with others.\u00a0 The details of these practices cannot be seen from within the theoretical attitude. . . .\u00a0 Ironically, much of what is considered Garfinkel\u2019s difficult writing style results from his dedication to overcoming this limitation of texts, trying to make readers DO the practices discussed\u201d (Garfinkel\/Rawls: 5).<\/p>\n

I like thesis seven and its emphasis on \u201cpractices\u201d because by adhering to it sociologists are less likely to lose the phenomenon they are studying.\u00a0 To reduce the details of social life to concepts or models is to gloss over real social activity being achieved in real time by real people through real practices in real situations.\u00a0 For example, in studying the liturgy and the principle of full, active, conscious participation, sociologists need to actually attend Mass and participate in the liturgy and watch people participate.\u00a0 What does \u201cactive participation\u201d mean on the ground?\u00a0 What does it really look like at a real Mass with real people praying?\u00a0 Do people pick up the hymnal to sing?\u00a0 How many do this?\u00a0 How many actually sing?\u00a0 How many respond verbally when it is their turn?\u00a0 How many don\u2019t?\u00a0 Sociologists need to focus on the \u201cdetails\u201d of peoples\u2019 Mass practices.\u00a0 And by focusing on \u201cpractices,\u201d as these authors suggest, sociologists will more likely articulate what is really going on when people do Mass\/religion together.\u00a0 Ideas are secondary, concepts gloss, language deceives, texts are abstract.\u00a0 As much as all of these are needed, sociologists use them best when they have actually observed and participated in what people are doing in the details of their practices.\u00a0 And it is in the \u201cpractices\u201d that most regular lay people recognize this particular thing\/practice as religion and that other particular practice as not religion.\u00a0 \u00a0Indeed, ordinary religious lay folk have no problem defining \u201creligion\u201d \u2013 it is what they DO (practice).<\/p>\n

Rawls Warfield, Anne.\u00a0 2006.\u00a0 \u201cRespecifying the Study of Social Order—Garfinkel\u2019s Transition from\u00a0Theoretical Conceptualization to Practices in Details,\u201d pp. 1-98.\u00a0\u00a0 In Garfinkel, Harold.\u00a0 2006. \u00a0Seeing Sociologically: The Routine Grounds of Social Action.\u00a0 <\/i>Edited and Introduced by Anne\u00a0Warfield Rawls.\u00a0 London: Paradigm Publishers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cRoundtable on the Sociology of Religion: Twenty-Three Theses on the Status of Religion in American Sociology\u2014A Mellon Working-Group Reflection.\u201d\u00a0 2013.\u00a0 Christian Smith, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Jose Casanova, Hilary Davidson, Elaine Howard Ecklund, John H. Evans, Philip S. Gorski, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":444,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2671"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}