Bringing The Study of Religion and Social Movements Together: Toward an Analytically Productive Intersection

• In Event: 488 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Institutional Intersections: Religious Effects in Other Institutional Realms

Abstract

Scholarship on social movements and on religious movements are sequestered on two ships in close proximity but which appear to pass each other on a foggy, dark night, with only a vague sense of each others existence. Work in either domain rarely cite each other, and when such citation occurs, whether one-way or reciprocal, it is rarely used to extend or refine existing work conceptually or theoretically. In light of these observations, two focal questions emerge. First, what accounts for this gloss, this failure to acknowledge the mutual existence of these separate spheres of knowledge and associated practitioners. And second, what difference does it make if the two spheres of inquiry pass each other like ships in the dark? What is lost analytically or, conversely, what might be gained by increasing the theoretical and empirical intersection between the two areas?

Author

• David A. Snow, University of California, Irvine