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The subject of reflection in the article is a discussion about secularization. There are two theoretical approaches, which in a different way interpret nowadays religious changes. The representatives of the secularization paradigm assume that religion is marginalized in contemporary societies, and this weakening is associated with social and economic changes. On the contrary, the representatives of the economic paradigm claim that it is hard to observe the secularization process nowadays, even among highly developed countries. In the text, the statistic model is presented. It enables us to identify which approach is correct.
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The article discusses the concepts of the secularization of Hans Blumenberg (Legitimacy of the Modern Age) and Charles Taylor (A Secular Age). According to Blumenberg, the Modern Age is not a secular transformation of the initially religious contents. It dismisses the accusations of the Modern Age in illegitimacy. When Blumenberg tells this story of the emergence of the Modern Age, he tries to create an image of revolutionary change in the understanding of the world and human beings. This story of the Modern Age told by Blumenberg, is supported by the recently (2003) published book of the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann: The Mosaic Distinction or The Price of Monotheism. According to Assmann, the birth of monotheism is accompanied by the emergence and development of religious intolerance: there appears the idea of the true religion which opposes itself to false superstitions. Assmann calls this radical opposition and differentiation the “Mosaic Distinction”. This distinction, on the one hand, creates an insuperable distance between a transcendent God and the world, and, on the other hand, gives theological (transcendent) justification to the fundamental principles of human practices. Assmann tries to prove the secular origin of the idea of justice and law. In this sense, the secularization of the Modern Age has to be understood as a quite legitimate process, as a manifestation of the negative potential, inherent in monotheism. In this context I want to suggest in this article two important arguments: (1) Assmann’s and Blumenberg’s stories could be fruitfully confronted with the history of secularization as stated in the book A Secular Age by Professor Taylor. Secularization should not be described as a necessary process (the theory of subtraction Entzauberung, rationalization etc.); (2) After an identification of the one-sidedness of Blumenberg’s and Assmann’s narratives, I want to return to the question of the legitimacy of the Modern Age. I select two examples: the concept of the personality (its absolute and universal validity) and the concept of human rights. My position is to show that the validity of these concepts cannot be proved in terms of immanent legitimation. This shows the limitations of secular rationality and is a good argument in order to realize the importance of religion and faith in contemporary practical and philosophical discussions.
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In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor presents a narrative interpretation of modernity that dispels common myths about the decline or regression of religion in the modern age propagated by anti-religious negative narratives popular within the social sciences. An important part of Taylor’s critique centres on the terminology employed by these narratives and their lack of substantive definitions. This paper examines the substantive and functional definitions of ‘secularisation,’ ‘secularity’ and ‘religion’ which Taylor presents in A Secular Age, and demonstrates how Taylor attacks the anti-religious negative narratives of modernity through his analysis of the meaning of these terms.
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The paper deals with the problem of meeting and mutual translation of science and new spirituality in postmodern discourse. The analysis focuses on the three examples: New Age movements, scientific and technological approach to the sacred and phenomenon of minimal spirituality that has been observed during in-depth interviews conducted by the author. In those cases spirituality gives up its attempts to compete with science and, instead, enters the scientific field and initiates the process of translation. This process seems to end with osmosis of the sacred and the profane languages. A specific sacred appears, which both lies within the limits of nature and goes beyond them, which is expressed in terms of science, but does not lose its mysticism. Considering mechanisms of this osmosis, the author comes to the conclusion that this must be mechanism of paradox. It is rooted in multiple loyalty of postmodern man, which allows him to create a “holographic” whole consisting of fragmented or even conflicting senses.
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Peter L. Berger, one of the most important theorists of secularization, became also one of the most mindful critics of this theory. In the introduction to the book published in 1999 under the significant title The Desecularization of the Word. Resurgent Religion and World Politics he wrote: “The assumption that we live in a secularized world is false.” In the article of 2012 “Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity” he proposed the introduction in the place of a theory of secularization of a “theory of pluralization”. Berger’s idea seems interesting enough to be applied also to Polish reality.
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Fundamentalists reaching for terrorist violence believe that they are pursuing theology of the end of time and are a tool for God’s judgment directed against the sinful world. According to the theory of Rene Girard’s eschatological violence fundamentalist religious stereotyping passes three phases: the crisis – the perpetrator – victim. In the political theology of Al-Qaeda it is hard to find a rational (in the Weberian sense) political agenda. In addition to a strong expression of hatred for Western civilization combined with the non-recognition of the UN system and international law, we find only demands of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula and the destruction of Israel and the vague idea of the revival of the caliphate following the Islamic revolution in Muslim countries. These demands are vaguely remaining in the sphere of religious-political utopia rather than a realistic political strategy.
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The last two decades have witnessed a shift in the conversation on secularism and secular identities. The debate that religious identities have decreased and that religious thinking, religious practices and religious institutions were once at the core of the life in western societies, is now redirected. At a time when multi- -faith societies and institutions are largely recognized, the need for reconstructing the meaning and the role of religion and belief rises. Drawing from current research undertaken by the author in the UK, this article aims to depict the role of religion in contemporary professional practice and the attitude of the religious literacy of health care professionals, through an overview of the history of religion in the UK.
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It is a sort of truism in the sociology of religion that since the late 1970s the world has been witnessing the great return of religions, and religion has emerged as a key variable in understanding modern societies. After Peter Berger’s groundbreaking “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview” (1999), the notion of desecularization has gradually displaced secularization theory from papers describing global religious trends and the interweaving of religion and politics. Yet, while there is little doubt that religion has indeed resurged and the conception of desecularization is possible to live with, not much has been done to reveal the ways desecularization changes domestic politics, the ethno-social, identity forging etc. processes. This article explains why and how religion that was not considered by the forerunners of Ukrainian nationalism as the “Ukrainian navel” (borrowing from Ernst Gellner’s metaphor), has been resurrected as a powerful component of the post-Soviet stage of Ukrainian nation-building.
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The article deals with the dynamics of national policy formation in Russia with respect to the indigenous peoples of the North. On the basis of the juxtaposition of the consequences of the USSR protectionist policy and living conditions during the post-Soviet period one can see contemporary trends within the transformation of family–marriage values: family relations that affect the numbers of these peoples and the maintenance of their culture. Based on a comparison of the data on fertility and marriage in Russia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, among specific ethnic groups of indigenous peoples, researchers have drawn the conclusions that not only are questions about preserving the rights of indigenous peoples relevant, but it is also important to pay attention to the preservation of traditional gender roles, family traditions and the formation of responsibility towards the creation of marriage. As an example we present the data of the 1989, 2002 and 2010 censuses in Russia, as well as materials from a specific sociological study carried out in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Grants RHF RHF N 12-03-00546a (2012–2013) “Socio-cultural youth types of modern Russia: ethnic and regional aspects”, RFH number 08-06-00613a (2008–2010) “Models of ethnocultural youth adaptation in terms of the intensification of industrial development in the North (The Republic of Sakha [Yakutia] )”, RFH 07-06- 18025e (2007) “The Youth of the Indigenous Peoples of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in a modern industrial city: problems of socio-cultural adaptation”, RAS integration project 2006–2008 № 6.26 “The Socio-cultural adaptation of students in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the conditions of modern transformations (on the example of Yakutsk)”.
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The number of people in the world keeps growing, even though the rate of growth is slowing down. The increasing world population causes apprehension among some scholars and members of the public. Anxieties arise, on the one hand, over the possibilities of feeding the world, and, on the other hand, over the burden on the environment caused by human activity (including the production of food). The aim of the article is to highlight major issues underlying the debate on the prospects of feeding the population of the world, considering, in particular, the still prevalent phenomena of hunger and malnutrition. The focus is especially on the causes of the latter phenomenon which persists despite the fact that the Earth’s resources are sufficient enough to sustain an even significantly larger number of people than there are today.
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The question I formulate in the paper and to which I try to find an answer concerns animalism understood as a phenomenon that threatens society. Based on the thought of Nietzsche, Scheler, and Arendt I formulate a conception of subjectivity to which the threat becomes real. “Dialogue” of these philosophers provides a basis to express a warning against animalism, which does not manifests in inhumanity, cruelty or immorality, but in being passive and thoughtless. To draw the latter conclusion I adopt Agamben’s considerations.
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In contemporary sociology researching the body is undoubtedly one of the most prominent and growing research areas. This paper discusses power relations executed through bodily practices. Therefore Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory is an appropriate starting point for an enquiry into this subject because of its ability to overcome the sociologically grounded opposition between an individual and structure, and between the mind and the body. When analysing the phenomenon of power the French sociologist focuses on its symbolic aspect – the ability to remain both arbitrary and misrecognised (ergo, hidden and socially accepted) even by the ones subjected to it. Bourdieu proves that by assimilating arbitrary qualities the body internalises domination, and it is this phenomenon of somatization of power that causes its unrecognizability. This process may be best exemplified by relations between sexes, through the analysis of conditions leading to the submission of female body and explanations of difficulties in liberation from male domination. Importantly, in Bourdieu’s theory, the body is both the carrier of symbolic meanings and a fully material being. That means that body is also an indicator of social class, while being a type of resource called physical capital, which may be used to gain and maintain social status. Therefore, the paper depicts symbolic power as the ability to enforce the way of defining the body and its appearance by dominant classes. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory is widely illustrated by the findings of other social scientists.
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The article addresses the issue of the pictoriality of the human body in contemporary visual culture in the context of the influence of the images of the body created by it and the manner of its perception on the way the body is experienced by a modern man. The article is a theoretical attempt to explain the aforementioned influence in terms of a pictorial plasticity of the body and its perception – media plasticity. The first part of the article is a reasoned theoretical perspective; the second part – an explanation of the category of media plasticity; the third one – a description of its particular form in medical practice.
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Following the development of the sociology of medicine as a subdiscipline of general sociology and observed changes in the theoretical frameworks and areas of sociomedical studies, special attention has been paid to the evolution of the sociology of illness and disability. The role of chronic somatic conditions significantly influencing the health-related quality of life of people has been presented, as well as the development of sociology of mental disorders in relation to trends observed in the general sociology have been analyzed.
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The article presents women’s ageing process in Poland as a biological, health, psychological and sociocultural process. It also points out some of the differences in relation to men’ ageing. The object of a detailed study is the situation of women in the age group of 51–60, i.e. in the period when women of “mature age” start to transform to “elderly ones”. This period is particularly interesting both because of the women’s feelings and the social pressure to which they are subjected.
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