SCM Core Text Sociology of Religion. Andrew Dawson
even when in vehement dispute with their respective approaches, social scientists continue to plot a course which takes account of their enduring significance to the sociological terrain.
Each in his own way, Marx, Durkheim and Weber regard religion as both exemplary of prevailing social conditions and an excellent barometer of unfolding societal transformations. As Edles notes:
The study of religion has been at the heart of sociology since it was first founded as an academic discipline in the late nineteenth century . . . Though they used different terms and definitions, Durkheim and Weber, as well as Marxist-inspired theorists . . . all considered religion a fundamental system of meaning. (2002, pp. 25–6)
Ironically, following leads given by these foundational thinkers in respect of the demise of traditional religion within modern society, subsequent generations of sociologists – with few notable (for example, Talcott Parsons) exceptions – relegated religion to the exotic fringe of sociological thought. It is unsurprising, then, that subsequent to the renaissance of the sociology of religion in the 1970s, Marx, Durkheim and Weber have come to enjoy considerable prominence in contemporary debates pertaining to the status, role and future of religion in modern society. Indeed, I think it fair to say that the prominence given to these thinkers by the sociology of religion far exceeds that afforded by other components of the sociological paradigm.
This chapter concentrates upon providing an appreciation of the respective theoretical frameworks within which Marx, Durkheim and Weber situate their treatments of religion. To best understand these respective treatments, some awareness is needed of their foundational presuppositions and core concepts. To this end, the approach to religion of each of these formative social thinkers is prefaced by a brief overview of their most relevant theoretical concerns. While Marx, Durkheim and Weber each prognosticate upon the likely future of religion within modern urban-industrial society, for the purposes of balance and continuity I reserve these observations for use as the introductory section of our next chapter. Suffice to say here that each of these social theorists foresees the decline – if not eventual disappearance – of religion as an important source of social order and collective meaning.
Karl Marx (1818–83)
Technically speaking, Marx was not a sociologist. His contribution to the sociological tradition, however, is beyond dispute. Marx wrote at a time when the first major reverberations of the industrial revolution were being felt across Europe and North America. For a variety of reasons, Marx’s writings were not widely published and became something of a niche concern among radical activists and left-leaning intellectuals. Despite the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, it was not until later in the twentieth century that Marx’s writings began to receive widespread interest. Although already gaining popularity among certain sections of the sociological community, it was the cultural revolutions of the 1960s which established Marx as de rigueur reading for all aspiring sociologists. Now an unquestioned part of the sociological canon, Marx’s work – or theoretical strands thereof – can be credited with informing many of the presuppositions which underwrite the emancipatory approaches (such as feminist theory and postcolonial studies) so popular today (see Chapter 6).
Born in Germany to middle-class Jewish parents in 1818, Marx received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in 1841. Attempting to understand the macro-structural and institutional implications of the widespread and rapid urban-industrialization taking place, Marx employed and/or adapted a range of philosophical, political and economic theories which both articulated and informed his radical social values. Indeed, it was these radical values which resulted in his flight from state persecution in various European countries and his eventual settling in England, where he remained until his death in 1883 (McLellan, 1973).
Up until the late 1840s, Marx engaged in sustained philosophical critique of the political and social implications of particular interpretations of German idealist traditions. Taking their lead from the German philosopher G. W. Hegel (1770–1831), proponents of idealism regarded ideas as the driving force of historical change. In so doing, idealists believed that socio-cultural and economic-political change could be explained and thereby managed through philosophical understanding of both the dominant ideas of an age and the manner in which these ideas express themselves relative to the epoch in question. As they regarded religion (here, Christianity) as a dominant idea which manifests itself through prevailing societal structures – not least those of the state apparatus – idealists believed that the correct understanding of religion would yield an insightful critique of the socio-cultural processes and economic-political structures through which it is expressed. Social critique, then, is founded on philosophical understanding of otherwise abstract ideas, the essence of which can be captured independently of the concrete historical forms these ideas assume in any given time or place.
It was during his engagement with and eventual break from German idealism that Marx wrote most of his sporadic and otherwise unsystematic comments upon religion. Consequently, the majority of Marx’s remarks upon religion are found in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), German Ideology (1845/6) and the co-authored Communist Manifesto (1848). After this time Marx turned his attention to understanding the overarching structural conditions and concrete productive processes allied with the industrial revolution and the age of capitalism (for example privately owned business, wage–labour dynamics and the class structure). Exemplified by the multivolume Capital (1867–), this period has very little by way of explicit religious critique.1
Historical materialism
Once having broken with the German idealists, Marx believed that it was not ideas that drove history forward but rather the relationship (‘dialectic’) between humankind and its material environment. Driven by the instinct to survive and flourish, humankind reproduces itself – physically, socially, intellectually etc. – by appropriating whatever means its material environment provides. Marx calls this mode of appropriation the ‘means of production’. Down the ages, various ‘means of production’ have been employed (e.g. nomadic herding, hunter-gathering, sedentary agriculturalism), the most recent of which is the industrial-capitalism of modern society. Such is the importance attributed by Marx to the means of production that he held all other forms of societal organization (such as macro-structural, mid-range and micro-social) to originate from it. Marx defined these derivative forms of social organization as ‘relations of production’. The means of production of any given society is thereby understood as a foundational base upon which the social superstructure rests and from which it gets its particular historical form. For Marx, then, all social change is driven by transformations in the underlying means of production – the most notable example of which is the agricultural base of medieval feudalism giving way to the industrial base of modern capitalism. The sharp contrasts between medieval rural society and modern urban society are ultimately grounded in the sharp contrasts between their respective means of production.
Situated knowledge
Although most sociologists do not agree with a number of key features of Marx’s account of historical development, two of his most important assertions have nevertheless come to form central components of a good many sociological approaches. The first of these is Marx’s insistence that all forms of human knowledge be understood in relation to the material contexts within and through which they are produced. Echoing his ongoing battle with idealism, Marx argues that:
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men . . . In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven . . . Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. (McLellan, 1977, p. 164)
Most commonly termed ‘constructionism’ or ‘constructivism’, Marx’s view that knowledge should be viewed as something produced within and thereby – to a greater or lesser extent – relative to a given social context is for many sociologists a foundational theoretical assumption which applies