[Introduction]

[Introduction]Author(s): Christian SmithSource: Social Forces, Vol. 86, No. 4 (Jun., 2008), pp. 1561-1589Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20430821 .

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Future Directions in the Sociology of Religion

A Special Section edited by: Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame

The past 20 years have seen major developments in theoretical and empirical scholarship in the sociological study of religion. Most of the European founders of sociology, of course, engaged religion as an important dimension of understanding social order and transformation.

The 20th century saw the production of many significant works in the sociology of religion in the United States. Yet the mostly taken-for-granted nature of the larger secularization theory that overshadowed a lot of social scientific thinking about religion during much of the past century tended to undermine the taking too seriously of religious institutions, cultures and movements. Old-timers today often report that when they were in graduate school they were actively discouraged by mentors from studying religion. Why invest in studying something that was destined to wither and die? They had to swim against the current to study religion. As a result, in some decades, the sociology of religion languished.

How times have changed. Unexpectedly, socio-political events in recent decades have forced religion back onto the scholarly table for social scientists to reconsider. Beginning in the mid-1 970s and continuing thereafter, major world events and movements - liberation theology in Latin

America, the Iranian Revolution, the Religious Right in the United States, Catholic Solidarity in Poland, the church-led anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, the strongly religious U.S.-Central America solidarity

movement, the spread of Pentecostalism in the Global South, the growing cultural power of American evangelicalism, and, of course, the eruption of militant Islam sometimes violently confronting the West - forced all but the most resistant social scientists to acknowledge that, whatever might be the validity of secularization theory long term, religion was clearly still a present and important force in social, political, and cultural life that needed to be researched, understood, theorized and explained (Berger 1999). In significant part because of the stunting legacy of secularization theory in academia, however - and perhaps due to the field's somewhat narrow focus in the 1970s on "cults" and other new religious movements - many social scientists (as well as journalists and many of the educated public) at first found themselves lacking adequate analytical tools and so made more than a few false starts and misguided efforts trying to make sense of the religious reality they confronted.

Despite these theoretical disadvantages, however, sociologists of religion in the past two decades have - often with the help of research grants from well endowed private foundations with interests in studying

K The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 86, Number 4, June 2008



1562 . Social Forces Volume 86, Number 4 . June 2008

religion - made important strides in better understanding the energy, meanings and complexities in and of contemporary religion. Ethnographies of religious conversion and congregational life (e.g., Neitz 1987; Davidman 1991; Ammerman 1997) have, for example, offered helpful inside views of what might otherwise have been alien religious experiences to readers. Multiple research projects on American evangelicalism greatly enhanced our understanding of the worldview, motives and organizational dynamics of that movement (e.g., Wuthnow 1989; Smith et al. 1998; Emerson and Smith 2000; Smith 2000; Gallagher 2003). Helpful historical sociologies of religion improved our longer-term view of religious change (e.g., Wuthnow 1988; Finke and Stark 1992; Stark 1997; Stark 2003). Scholars developed new survey measures of religion that proved much more discriminating and useful than the religion questions they replaced (e.g., Steensland et al. 2000). Statistically oriented scholars have greatly increased the sophistication of quantitative analysis applied to religion (e.g., Sherkat 1999; Sherkat and Ellison 1999). The field witnessed major advances in our understanding of the relationship between religion and life outcomes, particularly deviance (e.g., Stark 1996) and health (e.g., Ferraro and Albrecht-Jensen 1991; Ellison and Levin 1998). A host of solid field studies have enhanced our understanding of the interaction of religion and immigration (Warner and

Wittner 1988; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000), religion and politics (Epstein 1991; Demerath and Williams 1992), and the internal transformation of religion (Roof 1999). Both survey and ethnographic methods have deepened our knowledge about the organizational and cultural dimensions of U.S. religious congregations (e.g., Chaves 1997; Becker 1999). The list of notable advances and achievements by scholars including Melissa Wilde, Richard Wood, Omar McRoberts, Michael Young, David Smilde, Don Miller, Wendy Cadge, Phil Gorski, John Evans, Michele Dillon, Mark Regnerus, John Bartkowski and many others could go on and on.

In the midst of this fruitful scholarly ferment and production, the single research debate that emerged to dominate theoretical discourse within the field was that between the so-called new paradigm, rational choice, religious economies theory (Stark and Finke 2000; Warner 1993) vs. a revitalized secularization theory (Lechner 1991; Chaves 1994; Yamane 1997). The arguments, which were frequently contentious, mobilized many forms of individual-, congregational-, county- and national-level data to try to determine whether religious pluralism increased or decreased religious adherence, whether religious competition energized or undermined religious mobilization, whether religious beliefs were eroding or maintaining stable levels, and so on. The debate produced a lot of important and valuable research and we are that much the more knowledgeable for it. But, by my reading, that debate has lost most of its energy - particularly due to the publication of an article (Voas, Olson and Crockett 2002) questioning



Future Directions in the Sociology of Religion . 1563

the very usefulness of one of the key analytical indicators in the argument - and has not produced a satisfactory resolution or verdict.

My own sense is that the sociological study of religion has now entered an ill-defined transition phase in which many scholars are moving beyond some of the field's burning concerns of recent years but have not yet clearly re-defined the major issues, challenges and goals for the future. A great deal of terrific work does continue to be produced by sociologists of religion. But the larger intellectual concerns or theoretical frameworks that often help to define and guide social science fields for periods of time seem to me to be somewhat amorphous and wearied in the sociology of religion at present. My purpose in this article is to help the field move forward toward a greater clarity of vision and purpose, to help solidify a firmer sense of the substantive and theoretical agendas that matter most in the field's endeavor to make its contribution to the larger discipline of sociology and to public understanding. I do that by first outlining a series of specific substantive and methodological concerns that deserve greater scholarly attention by sociologists in the coming years and setting the stage for the eight separate articles in this special section that follow this Introduction. Second, I consider a recent theoretical innovation concerning our model of modernity and social change

- the hypothesis of "multiple modernities" - that in my view deserves much greater attention and development, particularly when it comes to the study of religion in modernity and post-modernity. Third, I advocate an alternative meta theoretical basis on which to better pursue the sociology of religion - in fact, actually, all of sociology - in a way that I believe will be more fruitful than the two background approaches that currently govern most scholarship, namely, positivist empiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. That alternative is the philosophy of (social) science known as critical realism.

Elements of a Forward Looking Research Agenda

A lot of the best work in sociology is produced not by scholars closely following an established research program or incrementally adjusting our understanding of well-ploughed features of social life, but rather by researchers who press into newly emerging areas of social experience, creatively crossing established conceptual boundaries, and developing innovative approaches for understanding the seemingly well known.

There is, of course, no formula for creativity of that sort, and I stand in no position to orchestrate such movements or innovations. In this section, I instead pursue the more modest goal of sharing what I think are a variety of unjustly understudied and under-developed areas of scholarship in the sociology of religion. I do not expect all of my colleagues to agree with me. But I think the following are worthy of consideration, in order to stimulate a larger conversation about fruitful future directions in the field.




Beliefs

At first glance, it may seem bizarre to suggest that beliefs need more study in the sociology of religion. Is not religion centrally about beliefs, on the one hand? And, on the other, do beliefs even matter as causal influences in people's lives? Are not religious beliefs either commonplace or mostly irrelevant for the sociology of religion? Didn't old research show that attitudes predict very little variation in dependent variables? Shouldn't we leave the study of beliefs to the discipline of religious studies? I think not, on all points. People's beliefs may be central to their religion, but that does not mean that sociology studies them adequately. I think we often do a poor job of it aside from some rich ethnographies. Most survey work in religion that engages beliefs relies primarily on the most simple survey questions about "belief in God" and "Bible beliefs" - about the validity of which I have more than a few concerns. Other sociological research on religion focuses little on beliefs but instead on organizational structures, behavioral practices and connections to non-religious concerns and outcomes. Yet if the sociology of religion deserves to remain a distinctive field of study

- and not simply be dissolved into apparently more foundational fields, such as culture and organizations, for example - it must be the case that something about the particular content of religious beliefs (as they related to cultures, organizations and practices) is crucially important for constituting and motivating selves, identities, communities, organizations and movements. If the religious contents of religious beliefs do not matter, then religion is immediately reducible to more generic features of social life, and the study of religion can be readily subsumed into the fields that study them. 1, for one, do not think that is justified. I believe that the substance of religious beliefs finally do matter in the formation of this distinctive dimension of social life we call religion (see Smith 2003a). Yet I think we have not done as good a job as we ought in sociologically understanding religious beliefs and how they operate interactively in complex processes of cognitive activity, identity formation, action motivation, collective solidarity, organizational constitution and so on. Still, promising signs of research on religious beliefs are emerging of late. Paul Froese and Christopher Bader (2007, 2009), for example, are systematically exploring the importance of substantively different beliefs about God in the United States that have previously been neglected. Among the articles that follow, two stand out as encouraging signs of a growing interest and payoff in better studying beliefs empirically. Hempel and Bartkowski demonstrate how religious measurement on surveys can be improved by taking more seriously in our question development the actual beliefs of particular religious groups. And Gabriel Acevedo's article suggests the importance of examining particular theological formations in socio-political contexts to determine how and




when they may shape presupposed cultural visions that have possible political and economic consequences. Beyond such analyses I am sure there is much more research of value and importance to be conducted on religious beliefs and their consequences.

Bodies

Beliefs are not the only sociologically significant aspect of religion deserving improved study. We also ought to invest in better investigating the role of the religious body. The body is not a new focus of study in the social sciences and related fields. Feminist theory has long exhorted the taking seriously of the body for understanding social life. Foucault has also inspired a great deal of academic attention to bodily disciplines. Scholars in both cultural studies (e.g., Scheper-Hughes and Wacquant 2002) and religious studies (e.g., Coakley 2000) have emphasized the role of the body in cultural and religious formations. But far too little interest in the body, I think, has seeped into the sociology of religion - to our loss. Religion is

very much about the body, its comportment, treatment and enactments. One cannot adequately understand religious conversion, meanings, rituals, disciplines or communities without attending closely to the handling and behaviors of bodies. Furthermore, religious approaches to the body have very much to do with the relationship of religion to the family and politics. Religious beliefs are inscribed into and, in part, govern the behaviors of bodies. And bodies partly incarnate religious beliefs and enact religious practices. And all of that has implications and consequences for larger social and political relations. Taking a non-cultural approach to bodies, on the other hand, I also suspect that there is much to learn about biological inputs to religious life. I cannot outline a specific research program for the study of the body in the sociology of religion. I simply believe that advances in our capacity to study the body in relation to the sacred will significantly enrich our sociological understanding of religion. Toward that end, two (very different) articles following this Introduction engage the issue of the body in religious life. Winchester explores how bodies figure into the formation of religious selves through ongoing processes of faith conversion. And Eaves et al. examine the possible role of genetic influences in religious outcomes. These together only begin to scratch the surface of the potential to improve our knowledge of religion and society by better understanding in various ways the role of bodies in them.

Genetics

I could have entirely subsumed the topic of genetics and religion under the former paragraph concerning the body. But because introducing genetics




into sociology is controversial and very different from what culturally oriented approaches to the body do, I wish to make certain points explicit. I am highly skeptical of many socio-biological approaches to explaining human social life and have written critically against evolutionary psychology and related projects (Smith 2003a). However, there is no denying that people are or have bodies which are biological organisms that, as far as we know, are powerfully genetically controlled. It would be naive to view bodies as mere corporeal "platforms" on which all of the interesting and unrelated stuff of social life is played out at another level. Our biological bodies are actually crucially important in the specification of the contours of social and institutional existence (Smith forthcoming). There is no good reason to think that genetic dispositions do not interact with socio-cultural influences to shape outcomes in human social life. Sociologists, therefore, should have little to fear, in my view, in collaborating with genetics experts to better understand the complexities and consequences of mind body-social interactions. None of that - when properly understood and pursued - needs to entail an inappropriately essentialist view of humanity or potentially racist assumptions or anything else worth resisting. As a sociologist concerned about understanding religion, I am interested in learning how an increased knowledge of genetic influences might fill out our understanding of religious dispositions, actions and choices. There may in the end be less payoff than some expect. But we have to investigate more to find out. The particular article by Eaves et al. on religion and genetics actually concludes that genetics play a fairly minor role in religious outcomes among adolescents, although other research cited in that paper finds a greater role of genetics in adults. I therefore add here a possible fuller understanding of genetic influences on religion to my agenda for important new direction in the sociology of religion.

Emotions

Sociologists have made significant headway recently in better understanding emotions and social life. Yet scholars studying religion have, in my view, not adequately incorporated a focus on and insights about emotions into our scholarship. This may be a reaction against certain historical academic polemics reductionistically associating religion per se with emotions (and fear and ignorance; see Smith 2003a). So, in response, scholars today who want to take religion seriously may prefer to focus instead on organizational, cultural, political and other more sociologically "respectable" aspects of religion, and avoid associations that in the past have been used to dismiss religion. But I believe there is no getting around the facts that emotions are central to human life, that emotions play a crucial role in religious belief and commitment, and so that we will never adequately comprehend




religion sociologically if we do not involve a keen understanding of the role of emotions in it. I see current signs that some scholars - including R. Stephen Warner and Mary Jo Nietz and their students - are working on religion and emotions. We need to continue and expand research and theorizing with that focus.

Ecological Context

My list of agenda items for new directions in sociology of religion is so far largely concerned with issues commonly thought of as operating at the

micro level. But I think that the sociology of religion in coming years also needs to focus on linkages including levels above that of organizations, subcultures, denominations and movements: at ecological contexts providing multi-level analyses. Too often, even good sociological analyses of religion are limited to explaining dynamics operating at one level - whether individual religiosity, congregational attributes, organizational structures, subcultural systems, etc. - and their consequences. But we have good reason to believe that institutional and ecological contexts - within which religion operates - exist at diverse levels and exert important interactive causal influences on and with religion. We need more and better studies that directly analyze different aspects of religion interactions with family, peer groups, congregations, schools, neighborhoods, counties and other structures and environments that provide ecological contexts for religious life. The trick here is collecting and linking data from multiple levels of social life in single, coherent datasets, which tends to be more costly and difficult than more standard forms of data collection. But working with such datasets will push our analyses to a higher level of complexity and value. Examples of such work engaging religion and contexts do exist (e.g., Ammerman 1997; Stark 1996), but much more can and needs to be done. Among the articles in this special section, Blanchard et al. provide one model of how this may be done, demonstrating, in their case, the effects of religious influences on contextual compositions that in turn influence health outcomes.

Elites

The vast majority of work in the sociology of religion focuses on individuals, clergy, congregations and denominations that comprise the mass of ordinary, on-the-ground religion in the United States and beyond. This is valuable and important. But we also know that a great deal about social life, including religious life, is driven not by ordinary people on the street and their local organizations but by various kinds of institutional elites with special access to authority, information and financial and other resources.

Most kinds of elites are harder to study than ordinary people. But I believe




the sociology of religion can significantly enhance the contribution it makes to the discipline and beyond by studying elites as they influence and perhaps are influenced by religion. Relevant here are political, media, business, military, academic, artistic, literary, scientific and other elites. Again, we do not proceed without models here (Schmaltzbauer 2003; Smith 2003b; Lindsay 2007). Among the articles in this section, Ecklund et al. provide another example of the sociology of religion focused at the elite level - in this case, on scientific elites. But much more of interest and importance in the study of elites and religion could and should be taken on in the future.

Islam

Islam is an immensely important religion in the world today, well deserving of careful and thorough investigation on many fronts. Yet, we know, the sociology of religion, particularly in the United States, is heavily weighted toward the study of Christianity and religions practiced widely here. A number of fine sociologists of and publications on Islam exist, but not enough. We will increase the relevance and value of the field of sociology of religion overall by conducting more research on Islam around the world and in the United States and Europe. To encourage movement in that direction, three of the articles in this section focus on Islam. Moaddel and Karabenick examine religious fundamentalism among young Muslims in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Winchester explores the conversion process to Islam in the United States. And Rinaldo investigates the role of Islam shaping women's public sphere activism in Indonesia.

Cross-national Religions

Expanding the previous argument on Islam, in a global society, the sociology of religion, particularly in the United States, must engage in more cross-national, comparative research than we currently do. Increasingly, good cross-national survey data are generated, but go under-analyzed. We simply have so much more to learn about religion by expanding our fields of vision, researching religion in other nations, and capitalizing on the comparative method to gain analytical edges. In doing so, we would of course not be starting from scratch. One thinks of the work of scholars such as Jose Casanova, Peggy Levitt, Rob Robinson, Nancy Davis, Ronald Inglehart, Grace Davie, Peter Beyer and others as models from which to proceed (e.g., see Casanova 1994; Davie 2000; Davis and Robinson 1999, 2006; Levitt 2007). But, there is much more potential for internationalizing our scope of perspective with great payoff than we currently realize. In this, I also believe that it will be important to employ not only standard




regression forms of analysis but also Fuzzy Set/QCA methods that allow for complex conjunctural causation and multiple paths to similar outcomes, pioneered by Charles Ragin (2000). Below, the articles by Moaddel and Karabenick and by Acevedo both analyze comparative cases to try to gain leverage of understanding on implications of Muslim faith.

Communism

A particular instance of the former focus worth singling out for mention is the study of religion in communist and post-communist societies. Here

we have various forms of something like natural experiments with religion involving different regions, cultures and time periods. The potential to deepen our understanding of religion in modernity and post-modernity is great if, in addition to studying religion in the United States and the

United Kingdom, say, we also study religion in China, Vietnam and Cuba, as well as in post-communist nations such as Russia and those of Eastern Europe. Here we also have some leads to follow. Fenggang Yang has developed a major enterprise connecting the sociology of religion in China and the United States (e.g., Yang 1999, 2004; Carnes and Yang 2004). And Paul Froese will soon publish a significant book on the failed Soviet experiment to exterminate religion (2008). But so much more could and ought to be done to learn sociologically about religion from the experience of communist and post-communist societies.

These nine topical areas and different approaches - beliefs, bodies, genetics, emotions, ecological contexts, elites, Islam, cross-national and communism - top my list of items to add to any agenda laying out most promising and important new directions in the sociology of religion. Others would no doubt prioritize their lists differently. What matters more is that the sociology of religion today could benefit from some nudges forward, fresh perspectives, new blood and forward-looking research programs. Graduate students and young faculty are particularly, though not exclusively, important in this endeavor. The real task, then, is not so much to debate what should and should not top the agenda, but rather to develop the vision and capacity for conducting new research and then do it.

Multiple Modernities

A helpful agenda for new directions in the sociology of religion cannot consist simply of a list of various areas and approaches that have been understudied and that promise analytical payoff with investment and attention, as important as that is. To move forward in ways that are most fruitful I think we also need to stand back and reconsider some of our larger assumptions, perspectives, concerns and intellectual habits. To that




end, I lay out two larger approaches that offer real promise in guiding the overall direction of future thinking and research in the sociology of religion. The first is the hypothesis of multiple modernities. The second is the philosophy of (social) science known as critical realism.

One master theoretical concept that has for many decades organized focuses, problems, explanations and interpretations within the sociology of religion has been the idea of "modernity." Theories in most of the social sciences have long been organized around the pre-modern/modern conceptual divide, seeking to understand the institutional and cultural transformations from the one to the other. In sociology, the crucial works of Marx, Tdnnies, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Parsons and many others explored processes of economic growth, differentiation, rationalization, individualization, urbanization and so on, as central dynamics of a theorized process of modernization. Until the end of the 1900s, anthropology, likewise, was defined as a discipline per se by the very constitutive idea of the existence and interest of "traditional" pre-modern tribes, societies and cultures - in contrast to the societies of modernity. Particularly important is the fact that all such social science theorists and theories consistently believed that modernity was unavoidably destructive of religion, belief in spiritual realities and objective universals, non-naturalistic metaphysics, and "traditional" cultures and perspectives generally. Modernity always contained "acids" - it was widely believed - that are necessarily secularizing, disenchanting and fostering of a naturalistic and materialist outlook. By theoretical definition, religious faith and belief in such things as gods and natural laws, for example, became cognitively deviant and were expected certainly to fade away with the progress of time and the advance of modernity.

This inherited central focus on modernity in the social sciences took a particularly sharp and systematized form after World War I1. The second half of the 20th century saw the development of theories that posited modernity and modernization as largely universal, uniform, predictable and entailing inevitable dynamics inexorably transforming the world. In sociology, Parsons (1951) theorized universal "pattern variables" and processes of evolutionary development of differentiation organizing the process of modernization. In economics, Rostow (1 960) theorized the "Five Stages of Economic Growth" through which all societies would pass in order to develop and modernize. An entire "Economic and Social Development" industry worked for decades under such theoretical notions. Thus, until as late as the 1970s, a very particular theoretical model for understanding modernity and modernization dominated much of the social sciences. And this model continues to exert powerful effects in the social sciences through its residual background assumptions and models of thought - even when individual social scientists were or are not "modernization" scholars. Especially relevant for




present purposes is the fact that this model assumed that modernity and modernization are not only inevitable and inexorable, but also that modernity produces predictable patterns of uniformity and standardization - which, it turns out, was thought to resemble the particular experience of Western Europe. Although many scholars have rejected such an approach, such a view is by no means entirely disbelieved even today, as the writings of scholars from Ronald Inglehart (1997) to Steve Bruce (2002) attest. Again, a key element of the uniformity that modernity is believed to engender is the necessary and inevitable abandonment of religion, spirituality, objective universals and non-naturalistic metaphysics.

But numerous developments in recent decades have opened up an important theoretical space for the reconsideration of modernity in more empirically realistic and metaphysically open terms. In particular, newly emergent on the theoretical horizon is the thesis of "multiple modernities," which is now being articulated by the likes of Eisenstadt, Taylor, Martin, Wagner, and others (see Arnason 1989, 1991; Arnason, Eisenstadt and Wittrock 2004; Berger and Huntingon 2003; Delanty 1999; Eisenstadt 2000, 2003; Friese and Wagner 2000; Hefner 1998; Kamali 2006; Katzensteain 2006; Kaya 2003, 2004; Martin 2005; Lau 2003; Roniger and Waisman 2002; Taylor 2000, 2004, 2005, 2007; Wagner 1993, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2001 c; Therborn 2003; Yack 1997). The essential idea behind the multiple modernities thesis is that "modernity" and its features and forces can actually be received, developed and expressed in significantly different ways in different parts of the world, and - by extension, I suggest (Smith et al. 1998)- by different communities living in single societies. Thus, while the long-observed forces of modernization still operate through powerful historical changes around the globe, the original thesis of uniformity and standardization, including the related secularization thesis, are suspended if not rejected. In other words, it is possible for different societies and subcultures to be truly modern and yet not end up looking like, say, France or Sweden with regard to religion, culture, morality and views of science and metaphysics (see, e.g., Chakrabarty 2002; Davie 2002; Hefner 1998; Himmelfarb 2004). This simple yet fundamental, even radical, change in the old assumptions, images and expectations about modernity and

modernization opens up at this moment an opportunity for rethinking, re-theorizing and re-framing our empirical analyses in the social sciences, particularly with regard to religion. This opportunity creates the conditions for something of a potential paradigm shift in social science (and, in due time, popular) understandings of the actual nature of the world in which we live. And this can foster a variety of changes, including perhaps reinvigorating and advancing work in the sociology of religion. What, then, have been the developments in recent decades that have

brought us to this moment? They include: (1. The emergence of Japan in




the 1980s as a global economic powerhouse which, nonetheless, did not simply come to conform culturally or socially to the Western European model (see Bellah 2003). (2. A growing disenchantment in many sectors, particularly as expressed in "postmodernism," with Modernity in the latter 20th century that focused on useful reconsiderations of the particular historical and cultural situatedness of the modern project, though not all aspects were particularly smart or salutary (e.g., postmodernist anti humanism and relativism). (Note that the thesis of multiple modernities enables us to move beyond the false strictures of "modernity" without having to fall into the serious problems of postmodernism, not to mention an unhelpful nostalgia for pre-modern times and conditions.) (3. The larger economic and cultural fact of globalization and its consequences,

which has raised basic questions about the real relationship between modernization and Westernization, suggesting possible alternative forms of something like an "Asian Modernity," as well as casting into some doubt the future of the nation state which was so central to the modern project. (4. The reality of numerous modern Islamic and quasi-Islamic states and societies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, etc.) which appear to be appropriating modernity selectively and applying it in more customized fashion than traditional modernization theory would have expected (e.g., Moaddel 2007). More broadly, fairly recent so-called "post-colonial" and "subaltern" studies in academia have driven home a similar point about the capacities for resistance and alteration by local and subjugated cultures (e.g., Chakrabarty 2002). (5. Current developments in China, a country which is clearly economically modernizing in many ways at an impressive rate yet, again, does not seem to be simply evolving inexorably toward conformity to a Western European model (e.g., Yang and Tamney 2005). (6. The diverse paths that post-communist states and societies appear to be forging with regard to their own religious futures, particularly around the role of religion in public life. (7. The growing force of terrorism, which routinely uses all sorts of modern technology often to promote apparently

"anti-modern" agendas. (8. The complication of what was once taken to be a straightforward secularization theory by the empirical fact of the widespread continuation of "traditional" religion both in the United States (perhaps the most modern nation on earth) and, as Philip Jenkins (2006) and others have shown, in much of the Global South (Berger 1996). (9. The experience of many traditional Muslims actually living in urban centers of Western Europe who, by all accounts, are very selectively adopting "Western" ways, even if they seek to be and understand themselves to be entirely "modern" - as disruptive events in Paris in 2005 demonstrated.

The point here is not that all of these facts and events are to be praised, nor that they decisively refute the standard model of modernization that posited inexorability and movement to uniformity. ("True believers" in the




extant model of modernity simply counsel confident patience, believing that, inevitably, a homogenizing modernization process of secularization will eventually work its logic out.) The point is simply that real world facts and events have forced a reconsideration of the received model of modernity. Again, one response has been to retrench and defend the model. Another has been the anti-modern protest of swinging into some form of postmodernism. But in the past five years, a serious alternative has surfaced: the thesis of multiple modernities. However dramatically innovative or not the idea of multiple modernities per se is judged to be - and there are differences of views on this - I am nonetheless convinced that it provides a most helpful and promising theoretical way to frame and interpretively explain the vast body of empirical knowledge that has accumulated in recent decades about the failure of the "inevitable and homogenizing" version of modernization theory.

The handful of scholars currently thinking about the idea of multiple modernities have not formulated a coherent and well-developed theory, but their statements are highly suggestive. Political theorist and philosopher Charles Taylor (2000:367), for example, observes that a cultural approach to modernity appreciates that,

"[T]ransitions to what we might recognize as modernity, taking place in different civilizations, will produce different results, reflecting the civilizations' divergent starting points. Their understandings of the person, social relations, states of mind, goods and bads, virtues and vices, sacred and profane, are likely to be distinct. The future of the world will be one in which all societies will undergo change, in institutions and outlook, and for some these changes may be parallel. But it will not converge, because new differences will emerge from the old. Thus, instead of speaking of 'modernity' in the singular, we should better speak of 'multiple modernities.' "

Similarly, sociologist Ibrahim Kaya (2004:37-39) writes that,

"[M]odernity is an open-ended horizon in which there are spaces for multiple interpretations. This immediately implies a critique of totalizing theories of modernity ... I

want to argue that it is modernity which makes it possible for radically plural world-interpretations to be expressed openly, and it is for this reason that the field in which human beings live necessarily becomes a field




of tensions ... Modernity's openness to interpretation makes necessary a concept of the plurality of modernities." (also see Kolakowski 1997)

This lack of development itself suggests that more work needs to be done to explore, develop and synthesize the best thinking on multiple modernities. We can, for present purposes, name a few of the key ideas underlying the multiple modernities thesis, to give at least a preliminary sense of the assumptions and approach. First, the multiple modernities perspective believes that a sound understanding of modernity must reject older social-evolutionary and functionalist assumptions about social change which cast certain processes as universal and inevitable. In their stead, assumptions about the centrality of contingency, complexity, timing and context - which themselves reflect deeper assumptions about human agency and freedom - are adopted. Second, "modernity" itself is not a simple coherent unity, but in certain key ways an internally conflicted movement. For example, contained within the single project of modernity are strong tendencies toward both autonomy and control. On the one hand, modernity liberates individuals from the constraining bonds of tradition, generating a multiplicity of options that give rise to choice and pluralism. At the same time, modernity imposes certain forms of discipline, uniformity, rationalization, and social control that counter individual liberation. Most early sociological theorists were aware, at least in some ways, of such complexities, contradictions and unintended consequences involved in the processes of modern social change. What remains to develop, however, is a fuller understanding about the implications of how this internally-contradictory and "unstable compound" of modernity shapes prospects for multiplicity and diverse outcomes. Third, it is essential to an understanding of modernity as not simply a series of institutional changes, which positive science can somehow track and predict, but as a cultural project of purposive human agents operating from the start with different categories and beliefs about humanity, society, morality, purpose of life, etc. This cultural dimension of modernity opens up possibilities for dramatic differences that the older institutionally-focused theories of modernity could not appreciate. Fourth, I suggest that rather than working with an underlying positivist empiricist model of social science, we ought to adopt instead the approach of critical realism, which conceives of societies as open systems in which multiple and complex real (though perhaps directly unobservable) causal forces operate interactively to produce distinct outcomes. Fifth, modernity needs to be understood every bit as much as a cultural entity as it is a "structural" fact. By reflecting social science's "cultural turn" in this way, the multiple modernities thesis opens up new possibilities for considering ranges of options that modern




people and societies might take when it comes to matters of religion, science and morality. Sixth, much of what has been promoted by the received modernization model is actually less a scientific description of actual processes of social change, and rather more a particular normative (anti-religious, skeptical Enlightenment) ideology of "progress" and the good society (secular) masquerading as objective social science. Having unmasked the normative and ideological biases baked into standard theories of modernity, we will stand in a much better position to conduct open, relatively objective, empirical and analytical social science that better interprets the operations of the real social world. That said, the multiple modernities thesis is, to date, still largely a

promising suggestion, an idea just now beginning to be mapped out more systematically in preliminary ways. What needs to happen to realize this thesis' promise is to better explore, assess, develop and promote it - particularly by and among U.S. social scientists, who seem nearly universally oblivious to this nascent approach. Herein lies an opportunity for scholars in the sociology of religion to contribute significantly to a new larger perspectives with theoretical implications both for sociology as a discipline more broadly and for our understanding of the religious reality operating in the world today. Part of the new direction we need to envision for the sociology of religion must include sustained attention to and development of a theory and research program on multiple modernities.

Critical Realism

What is critical realism? Critical realism is a philosophy of (social) science that was expressed originally in the form I appropriate here by the British philosopher Roy Bhaskar and is currently being developed by various scholars, especially in England and Scandinavia, including Archer, Sayer, Collier and Ekstrom (see Archer 1995, 2000; Archer et al. 1998; Bhaskar 1997, 1998; Collier 1994; Cruickshank 2002; Danermark, Ekstrom, Jakobsen and Karlsson 2002; Ekstrom 1992; Lopez and Potter 2005; Kemp and Holmwood 2003; Harvey 2002; Manicas 1989, 2006; Outhwaite 1987; Porpora 1987, 1989, 1993, 2002, 2008; Porter 2002; Sayer 1992, 2000; Steinmetz 1998). Critical realism seeks to offer a constructive framework for understanding science that is alternative to both the positivist empiricist paradigm, on the one hand, and the constructivism, postmodernism and certain versions of the hermeneutical perspective, on the other. The struggle between these two older, broad alternatives, advanced in different times in different forms, has left the social sciences deadlocked in a debate that cannot be resolved within its own terms. Critical realism seeks to transcend that sterile impasse by articulating a coherent, third way alternative. 1 believe critical realism




succeeds in this and so I wish to advance it further in American social science. For present purposes, I believe critical realism opens a window for understanding human social life, including religious life, in more illuminating and satisfying ways than do rival approaches.

I cannot adequately explain here all of the ideas involved in critical realist philosophy. It will have to suffice, at the risk of generating some confusion and perhaps controversy, simply to note very briefly some of its key ideas. Interested readers can learn more by consulting the established literature and perhaps, eventually, a book of my own (Smith forthcoming). In its presuppositions, critical realism prioritizes ontology (the study of being) over epistemology (the study of what and how we can know), refusing to constrain our reasoning about that which exists and how it works by the limits of what is knowable through observation. Critical realism distinguishes the three aspects of the real, the actual and the empirical. The real exists whether we know or understand it; the actual, by contrast, is what happens as events in the world, when objects that belong to the real activate their powers and capacities; the empirical, by contrast, consists of what we experience, either directly or indirectly. These three, for numerous important reasons, must not be conflated. Critical realism also believes that reality exists with its own objective structures and dynamics independently of human cognition of it - people do not actually construct reality but only construct their beliefs about and interpretations and understandings of reality. Critical realism also views scientific knowledge as fallible but not all such knowledge as equally fallible. Some accounts of the real are identifiably better than other accounts. It is the job of human knowing generally - and science specifically - to engage the process of sorting through the merits of different accounts. Furthermore, critical realism understands objective reality as by nature not "flat" but "stratified," existing on multiple, though connected, levels, each of which operates according to its own characteristic dynamics and processes. In part for this reason, critical realism is also strongly anti-reductionistic in its explanations. The best way to understand and explain something is usually at the level of reality at which it exists, not by reductionistically decomposing it into its component parts at a lower level. This is, in part, because the combination or interaction of two or more phenomena at one level often gives rise through "emergence" to new phenomena at a higher level, which possess characteristic properties and capacities that are irreducible to their constituent parts at the lower level from which they emerged. Furthermore, causation is real. Causality has to do with real causal capacities and mechanisms, not with the association of regular sequences of observed events. Thus, Hume's "successionist" theory of causation (that so strongly influences variables-oriented sociology) is rejected in favor of causal realism emphasizing the natural causal powers




of real entities. Scientific inquiry should therefore be concerned more with the patterned properties of causal relations and mechanisms than with the mere regularity of observable sequences of events (Hedstrdm and Swedberg 1998). Further, not only are material objects real but many (at least partially) non-material, emergent phenomena, such as social structures and human cognition, are also real, insofar as they possess emergent, durable, causal power. In addition, because social phenomena are always intrinsically meaningful to and for both those who constitute them (people) and who seek to understand and explain them (social scientists), social science necessarily has a hermeneutical dimension that requires the interpretive work of cultural understanding. Yet interpretive social science cannot on these grounds reject causal analysis, because causality is real, meanings are embedded in a causally operative reality, and meaningful cultural reasons themselves possess causal powers for humans. All social science therefore has an interpretive aspect, yet not all that the social sciences study consists of meanings requiring interpretation. Within this framework, the larger goal of science is to produce generalizable claims, which means understanding transfactual conditions of reality more than universal laws or probabilistic inferences to populations. Social science should seek to generalize, yet in doing so focus more on the structured and causal nature of the real, not primarily on the regularity of events. Finally, by conceiving itself as critical realism (instead of so-called empirical realism or scientific realism), this approach signals its anti-foundationalist character, reasoned resistance to modernity's absolute separation of fact from value, and readiness to engage in normative critical theory without (because of its ontological realism) collapsing into ideology and crass academic political activism.

This fleeting and incomplete initial description of some key critical realist commitments and beliefs certainly raises more questions than it answers. It is meant only to suggest some main contours of this approach and encourage further investigation into it. Through the development of a coherent framework reliant on these and related commitments and beliefs, critical realism successfully transcends a host of unhappy dualisms that have long divided the social sciences and offers the sociology of religion the best philosophical framework within which to proceed with its work.

To try to make that promise more concrete, I provide a brief example of application drawn from the sociology of religion. My example concerns the fate of religion in the modern world and is framed at the most general level by the rival secularization and religious economies theories. For

much of the history of modern sociology, it was believed that modernity would undermine the plausibility and influence of religion. That belief was advanced in secularization theory, which elaborated different explanations of how and why that religious decline and perhaps extinction would




occur. Secularization theory predicted that more modernity - particularly as represented by science, rationality, individual freedom, institutional differentiation, market competition and cultural pluralism - would mean less religion. That view of religion and modernity, however, began to be doubted by some in the 1980s and then was forcefully attacked in the 1 990s, especially by religious economies theory. This alternative approach argued the opposite of secularization theory, suggesting that religious practice itself is a rational activity, that science and religion are not naturally in conflict, that religious pluralism spurs entrepreneurial religious organizations to mobilize resources, and that religious competition increases the share of populations that are religiously affiliated. For various reasons, then, religious economies theory predicted that more modernity- as represented by rationality, individual freedom, institutional differentiation, market competition and cultural and religious pluralism - could very well mean more religion.

A great deal of scholarship in the sociology of religion in the 1990s consisted of attempts to empirically verify or falsify these two theories. They each hypothesized opposing expectations that, in principle, should have been straightforwardly testable with empirical data. Much of the most influential research in the debate employed variables analysis to sort through the matter. And most of that presupposed - whether wittingly or not - a positivist empiricist backdrop to their analyses. That meant that investigators were looking to regular associations between variables measuring observable facts and events to identify law-like generalizations about modernity and religion that would hold across populations and cases. Does religious competition at the national level increase or decrease levels of religious participation when viewed cross-nationally? Do higher levels of religious pluralism in U.S. counties lead to higher or lower levels of church attendance in those counties? And so on. The operative assumption in the research and debate was that one theory or another would be vindicated by the empirical evidence and that its vindicated, general, law-like expected associations between variables would be evident in whatever context was studied. But when all in this research dispute was said and done, a funny thing happened. The sum total of evidence produced by the many studies proved inconclusive. A 2001 state-of-the-artAnnual Review of Sociology chapter that analyzed 193 of the most important pieces of empirical scholarship in the debate concluded definitively that no definitive conclusion could be drawn (Chaves and Gorski 2001). Some of the studies showed one thing, some show another thing, and some were just unclear. Since then, the debate has lost its energy. Once again, the search for a law-like generalization about modernity and religion ended in failure. An alternative approach to the issue - framed not by positivist empiricism

but by critical realism - can both explain why all of these studies as




conducted and interpreted were inconclusive and can offer a constructive and illuminating way to move the larger inquiry forward. We do not need to abandon a variables approach to the matter. But we do need to conduct our variables analyses within a theoretical framework reconstructed in critical realist terms. This means the following changes. We should stop looking for generalizations in law-like regularities of associations between observable events. We should stop thinking in zero-sum terms that either the secularization theory or the religious economies theory is true. We should stop assuming that the validity of one or another theory will be manifest similarly across different contexts. We should instead be seeking first and foremost to identify and understand the variety of underlying causal mechanisms by which aspects or dynamics of modernity influence religion, whether positively or negatively. We should expect most or all of the relevant mechanisms to exist in potentia within the reality comprising religion in modernity. We should expect that different specific social conditions activate or trigger different mechanisms into operative influence. We should expect the causal effect of each mechanism to be influenced by the reinforcing or neutralizing effects of other activated

mechanisms. We should therefore be looking not only for independent effects of hypothesized causal influences but also for conjunctural and suppressing effects of combinations of mechanisms at work together.

We should not assume that a lack of observed change in any instance means that no causal mechanisms are active because opposing causal mechanisms might have neutralized each other. Nor should we assume that two cases exhibiting the same outcomes were produced by the same causal influences because different combinations of mechanisms might produce similar outcomes. We should also not expect triggered mechanisms to produce similar intensities of effects in different cases as the causal influence of such mechanisms operate only as identifiable tendencies in open systems, not consistently linear effects. What then would it look like against this critical realist backdrop for the

sociology of religion to succeed in its efforts in this research program? It would look like identifying and becoming highly familiar with the inherent and interactive operations and tendencies of all of the important causal mechanisms existing in modern social structures and practices that influence the strength and character of religion. By contrast, seeking, as the sociology of religion has so far mostly done, to discover some generalizable covering laws would be viewed as misguided. Rather than paradigms bashing each other over the head with empirical evidence purporting to validate one rival theory or the other - which is what a lot of the 1 990s saw in the sociology of religion - critical realism would direct us instead to identify all of the plausible causal mechanisms suggested by all the theories, and to begin to think hard about the varying social conditions




within which different mechanisms are activated, and to empirically explore the characteristic outcomes produced by different combinations of operative mechanisms. That task is, of course, much more difficult than simply searching for two variables that always correlate. But it is the task that is best matched to the actual reality within which we exist.

Framed in such terms, it suddenly becomes easy to see that the following seven distinct hypotheses might all, in fact, be correct in different contexts and under different conditions:

* Religious pluralism tends to corrode the certainties of traditional faith for believers who previously occupied religiously homogeneous settings.

* Religious pluralism in free religious markets tends to mobilize religious entrepreneurs into promotional activities to recruit more adherents.

* Religious pluralism provides a social setting in which religious groups that possess theological tools to sustain distinction-with-engagement will tend to thrive.

* Religious pluralism tends to exert homogenizing influences that reduce the distinctions between different religious groups, producing organizational isomorphism.

* Religious pluralism creates conditions in which religious organizations tend to differentiate themselves from others in their identity and practice in order to specialize in and target particular niche populations of the religious market.

* Religious pluralism tends to encourage more liberal, open, inclusive, and accommodating forms of religious community and practice.

* Religious pluralism tends to encourage more conservative, traditionalist, sectarian forms of religious community and practice.

In fact, actually, I think that all seven of these hypotheses (and no doubt others) are true and operative in different contexts. Modernity generally increases pluralism, which typically causes a variety of diverse effects. Some of them reinforce each other. Some of them counteract each other. Some may "ricochet" off each other. Some of them may neutralize others, although those others may not neutralize them. And some of them may simply be "indifferent" to each other. The task of a critical realist sociology of religion is to conduct theory-informed research in order, first, to sort through which of these hypothesized causal influences is ever operative and,




second, to then better understand the more specific causal mechanisms that produce such operative effects of pluralism on religion, the specific kinds of social conditions that trigger different causal mechanisms, variance in the effects of different mechanisms on diverse populations and groups within the same contexts, and the configuration of different outcomes that may result from these causal dynamics. By contrast, when we stick to the positivist empiricism form of variables social science, these hypotheses get set up as if they were mutually exclusive competitors and the research that sets out to test them ends up producing inconclusive conclusions and sometimes MAD: mutual academic destruction. (I also recognize that some proponents of positivist empiricism claim that MAD results from misconceptions of that philosophical approach, not its true spirit and best practice.)

Recasting our sociological research on and explanations of religion within a critical realist meta-theoretical framework will require learning new assumptions, ideas and perspectives and un-learning many old presuppositions, beliefs and habits commonly received from positivist empiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. In one sense, critical realism offers a dramatically different approach to social science. At the same time I think critical realism actually only explicitly articulates, explains and justifies the best of what good sociologists already intuitively know and do. Much of the best sociology, in my view, is already de facto critical realist sociology, whether or not anyone knows it. It still, however, makes a big difference when we are aware of exactly why, philosophically and meta-theoretically, we do what we do and what difference that should and does make. Sociological research is much more powerfully governed by acknowledged or unacknowledged philosophical and meta-theoretical commitments than many sociologists are willing to recognize. My appeal here is that we do a much better job of surfacing our operative philosophical assumptions, evaluating them for their real merits, and - I recommend - embrace critical realism as a theoretically and pragmatically superior alternative to positivist empiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. We will, I believe, produce better sociology generally and sociology of religion specifically and better understand and justify exactly why we are doing so.

Condusion

The sociology of religion today faces new and remarkable opportunities to contribute interesting and important knowledge and understanding about the role of religion in social, political, economic and cultural life for scholarly and public audiences. But in order to meet and capitalize successfully upon those opportunities, the field at present needs to shake off some besetting habits of mind, expand its horizons, re-orient its debates,




construct a new agenda for priority investigations, and rethink some of its larger theoretical assumptions, frameworks and paradigms. I have suggested some specific elements of a forward-looking research agenda and two alternative theoretical frameworks for better continued work in the sociology of religion. The following articles in this special section on religion also suggest potentially fruitful ways to move forward. If this helps to prompt a larger, ongoing, fruitful discussion in the field about how better to fulfill our collective scholarly purpose and actual work that carries out the promising directions suggested by that discussion, then I will consider this article and special section of Social Forces a success.

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Documents

[Introduction]