Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism by Dimitrios Methenitis

Author:Dimitrios Methenitis [Methenitis, Dimitrios]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Comparative Religion, Reference, Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000007336
Google: rqybDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-03T04:13:09+00:00

From the above it becomes clear that the interconnection of theory and praxis regarding religious systems is fundamental. For this reason the emphasis on both theory and praxis will be examined together from the perspective of systems theory and field theory alike in this chapter.

As a social system of meaning, Luhmann argues, religion has an important interpretative function (Luhmann, 1977). According to Systems Theory religious belief systems are a variant of social systems, one of the more or less complex in society’s possible systems. The social dimension of systems, including those based on religious grounds, exists in the sense that action takes place within a system via communication. While Weber conceived social action as a type of action oriented towards calculation or value, Parsons, unsatisfied by Weber’s theory, went so far as to claim that action is the system, in the sense that social action is only possible within socially pre-defined norms. Luhmann by comparison, considers that the fundamental element of a system lies on communication. In fact, communication is a process for reducing the complexity that needs action for it to succeed, or rather it needs to be separated and reconstructed in actions (Luhmann, 1995). So it is not actions that construct social systems but rather social systems that need to be separated into actions in order to function. When we speak of communication, we mean not just the transfer of information from a source to a recipient, but rather a selective process of meaning (Pace, 2008b). Luhmann strongly emphasizes the role of meaning in social systems. Meaning is a way of processing the experience of events that are read and interpreted on the basis of the states of a system, selecting some rather than others so as to be able to cope with the event that questions the system. Luhmann gives the term ‘information’ to that which constitutes the elementary unit of the relational process between system and environment. Being an event, it is also configured as an experience of something that is, by definition, unrepeatable. Luhmann stresses that if the meaning of such information is repeated there is no longer information. For complex systems (that is psychic and social systems), which have a capacity for self-analysis, this information is not the experience of something that happened beyond the boundaries (the environment) of a system. This influx from outside increases the system’s self-analysis and self-determination. This can be translated, with a positive effect on the system, into an increase in complexity compatible with its internal balance, or else the information may have a negative, conflictual and contradictory dimension that the system has difficulty in assimilating, because the information introduces a possibility not previously entertained in the system’s hitherto ‘calm and clear’ horizon of meaning (Pace, 2011). Luhmann argues that social systems are defined by difference, manifested in different codes of communication. Similarly, Appadurai also emphasizes the role of differences in his discussion of culture. Culture should not be regarded as a substance but rather a dimension of phenomena that tends towards situated and embodied difference.

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