Product Description: The current generation of young adults, at least in the Western world, has shown a marked tendency toward a preference for describing themselves as “spiritual” as contrasted to “religious.” This book seeks to examine the possible meanings and consequences associated with this contrast in terms of the similarities and differences that affect those who use these terms with respect to the everyday practices that they themselves employ or believe should follow from being self-defined as “religious” or “spiritual” – or not...read more

Product Description: This volume consists of a collection of twelve empirical studies that address theoretical and practical issues relating to pilgrimage and tourism activities in late modernity. As a contribution to the Religion and Social Order series sponsored by the Association for the Sociology of Religion, these studies are particularly directed to assessing both the role of religion in the pilgrimage/tourism nexus and the ways in which religious expressions have changed as a result of the technological and social changes of late modernity that affect human behavior in a more general sense...read more

Marking the centennial anniversary of the first publication of Max Weber's "Protestant Ethic" essays, a group of internationally recognized Weber scholars review the significance of Weber's essays by addressing their original context, historical reception, and ongoing relevance. Lawrence Scaff, Hartmut Lehmann, Philip Gorski, Stephen Kalberg, Martin Riesebrodt, Donald Nielsen, Peter Kivisto, and the editors offer original perspectives that engage Weber's indelible work so as to inform current issues central to sociology, history, religious studies, political science, economics, and cultural studies. Available in several English translations, the Protestant Ethic is listed by the International Sociological Association among the top five "Books of the Century." The Protestant Ethic continues to be a standard assigned reading in undergraduate and graduate courses, spanning a variety of academic disciplines.

The global high-tech economy has generated a technological and scientific productive miracle. But along with the miracle has come problems. Social Problems in Global Perspective focuses on some of these problems, including family decline, divorce and single parenting; the gender war- with men and women distrustful and threatened by one another in the workplace, the home, and the bedroom- the moral malaise created by science and religion, the media, and morality. This book presents detailed chapters on the high-tech economy, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and ethnic conflicts. It also includes chapters on homosexuality and AIDS, the world population explosion, and pop culture.

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Product Description: Currently, public religion is in a time of flux and the notion of the common good―once associated with the Protestant voice in America―is openly contested by new religious coalitions seeking to communicate their version of the truth and plant their stake in the public domain...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Icelandic Spiritualism is an engaging social anthropological study of the place of spiritualism in Icelandic church and society during the first half of the twentieth century. Challenging standard theoretical approaches to the study of religion, the book contributes a wealth of data on the history of religion and psychical research, presenting it in a vivid descriptive narrative...read more

Product Description: Drawn from the pages of Sociological Analysis/Sociology of Religion, this collection of original essays demonstrates the complexity of the religious structure of Latin America, discussing interactions among Protestant and Roman Catholic religious movements, and democratic as well as antidemocratic political agendas...read more

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Product Description: This timely collection of 13 essays addresses a variety of aspects of political-religious interaction in the former Eastern Bloc. The studies reported here draw upon both quantitative and qualitative research methods in examining politics and religion in the former Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and in Poland and Hungary...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: In the 1960s many sociologists proclaimed traditional religion to be in its death throes. But, just as secularization gained nearly universal acceptance among scholars, religious resurgence burst forth from many directions - new religious movements and the growth of Islamic fundamentalism for example...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This book is a collection of essays that explore a variety of topics in religious history, both East and West, using theoretical frameworks derived from the comparative-historical sociology of Max Weber. It breaks new ground, offering substantive new research in the historical sociology of religion...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Current social and political theories, which tend to dismiss religious resurgence as a deviant occurrence in the broad sweep of history, do not provide an adequate framework for the study of the dramatic resurgence of religion as a worldwide political force...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Max Weber is surpassed only by Karl Marx in the breadth of his influence as a social scientist. This bio-bibliography presents a complete listing of printed translations of Weber's works into English and a comprehensive, annotated bibliography of the secondary literature in English about Weber and his work...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This collection of seventeen essays presents an interactive discussion of critical issues in sociology and religion. Combining reports from empirical research with discussions of theoretical issues, personal reflections, and applied perspectives, the book offers a thorough examination of the sociology-religion interface...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)