Religion as a conservative force Flashcards
(7 cards)
What does Durkheim (Functionalist) say around religions being a conservative force?
Durkheim - All societies divide the world into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, helping with value consensus that promotes social order and stability.
What does Malinowski (Functionalist) say around religions being a conservative force?
Malinowski - Religion provides explanation for events that would otherwise be unexplained and provides security in the face of uncertainty.
What does Parsons (Functionalist) say around religions being a conservative force?
Parsons - Provides and underpins core values of culture and norms, while providing a ‘mechanism of adjustment’.
What do Marxists say around religions being a conservative force?
Religion acts as an ‘opium’ of the people - by cushioning the pain of oppression through promising an eventual escape, offering to solutions to problems on earth and explaining inequalities.
It legitimises the power of the ruling class by suggesting inequalities are god-given and cannot be challenged without challenging God.
What does Berger (Interpretivist) say around religions being a conservative force?
Berger - provides a universal meaning which helps people make more sense of the world, creating theodicy but religion is now losing it’s roles as a provider of a universe of meaning in modern society.
What do Feminists say around religions being a conservative force?
Many religions serve to male interests, with beliefs that justify, reinforce and reproduce inequalities.
What do Stark and Bainbridge say about religion being a compensator?
Religion meets the needs of individuals when their sense of social order is disrupted by hardship
e.g death
Religion is a compensator as it is a belief that makes individuals believe they will be rewarded if they act in a certain way - which produces social order.
