Новите религиозни движения и призванието па социологията
New Religious Movements and the Vocation of Sociology

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the different kinds of social constructions of reality about the new religious movements (NRMs) in Bulgaria drawn by the author after nearly seven years of observations both of new religious movements and of the different social actors related to their problems. The driving values and concrete appearances of different constructions of reality offered by new religious movements themselves, media, public administration, human rights advocates, traditional religions, anticultists, relatives of members of NRMs, nationalists, lawyers, therapists are studied emplically. The constructions discussed have been compared to the construction of reality characteristic for academic sociology. The advantages of sociology in the social construction of reality of NRMs are based on sociology's value free approach, as well as on its deep cognitive abilities, possibilities for analytical combination of theoretical concepts with empirical research methods, flexibility of qualitative research methods, possibility of direct communication with NRMs in their "terms" during participant observation. A distinction is also drawn between the analytical approach to NRMs of academic sociology and concrete examples of speculative demoscopic polls offered as "sociological" to the non-sociological public.

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