Author: John Walliss
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788120829558
Description
In many ways thee is a fundamental link between sociology and religion. The central issues within the discipline, the problem of meaning and social order, are intrinsically bound up with religion. For example religion carries out the 'repair work' when social order breaks down as well as providing the symbols and values that bind a society together.
The aim of this book is to examine the status of tradition in the contemporary world, through a critical engagement with the recent social theory of Anthony Giddens on the emergence of a `post-traditional society`.
Using as a case study, the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, a millenarian South Asian New Religious Movement, this work aims to examine the ways in which forms of tradition not only persist but also flourish in the contemporary world, and the manner in which they are drawn on and (re) created by individuals in their ongoing construction of self - identity.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction-Responding to Late Modernity
1. Beyond Tradition and Modernity
2. Reflexive Traditions and the New Age Religious Life
3. From World-Rejection to Ambivalence: A Genealogy of the Brahma Kumaris
4. The Ascetic and the Instrumental: Two Contemporary Renditions of Raja Yoga
5. Users, Drifters and Searchers: A Typology of Brahma Kumaris, Membership Patterns
6. Manifesting Ambivalence: The Pursuit of the Millennium
Conclusion-in Search of Post-Traditional Religiosity
Bibliography
Index.