The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology

George Ritzer, J. Michael Ryan, George Ritzer, J. Michael Ryan

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781405183529, 9781405183536
• eBook ISBN: 9781444392647
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This concise encyclopedia is the most complete international survey of sociology ever created in one volume.

• Contains over 800 entries from the whole breadth of the discipline
• Distilled from the highly regarded Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, with entries completely revised and updated to provide succinct and up-to-date coverage of the fundamental topics
• Global in scope, both in terms of topics and contributors
• Each entry includes references and suggestions for further reading
• Cross-referencing allows easy movement around the volume

S

sacred

The Latin word sacer, from which the term sacred is derived, denotes a distinction between what is and what is not pertaining to the gods. In not a dissimilar fashion, the Hebrew root of k–d–sh, which is usually translated as “Holy,” is based on the idea of separation of the consecrated and desecrated in relation to the divine. Whatever the specific expression of the sacred, however, there is a fairly universal cultural division where the sacred constitutes phenomena which are set apart, revered, and distinguished from all other phenomena that constitute the profane or the mundane. However, in Hinduism there has long existed the belief that the sacred and the unclean both belong to a single linguistic category. Thus, the Hindu notion of pollution suggests that the sacred and the non-sacred need not be absolute opposites; they can be relative categories; what is clean in relation to one thing may be unclean in relation to another, and vice versa.

The interest of sociologists in the social significance of the sacred is largely derived from the concerns of the subdiscipline of the sociology of religion. However, considerable disagreement exists as to the precise social origins of that which is designated sacred. Hence, an understanding of the sacred is frequently intimately bound up with broad definitions of religion itself, the categorization of certain social activities as religious, and particular sociological approaches to the subject. Such concerns have subsequently ensured that sociological perceptions of what constitutes the sacred as a social manifestation are subject to constant change and have led to a divergence of thought as to its nature.

While early anthropological accounts of the nature of the sacred have informed sociological theorizing, it was in turn heavily influenced by the work of Durkheim. In the opening chapter to The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915) Durkheim summarized and rejected earlier definitions of religion. Durkheim argued that by sacred things we should not understand simply those things which are called gods or spirits – a rock a tree, a river, a pebble, a building – which are frequently held as sacred, as displaying inherent sacred qualities. The totem is the emblem of the clan, but is also at once the symbol of the sacred and society, for the sacred and society are one. Thus, through worship of god or the totem, human beings worship society – the real object of religious veneration. It is a relationship of inferiority and dependency. Durkheim argued that it is easier for human beings to visualize and direct feelings of awe towards a symbol than such a complex thing as a clan. This is what gives the totem, hence society, its sacred quality.

SEE ALSO: Durkheim, Émile; Primitive Religion; Religion, Sociology of; Sacred/Profane

SUGGESTED READINGS

Berger, P. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Doubleday, New York.

Freud, S. (1938) Totem and Taboo. Penguin, London.

STEPHEN HUNT

sacred/profane

The significance of the sacred/profane distinction in sociology is to be most directly credited to Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, where he defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all who adhere to them” (1915: 47). The sacred thus involves things set apart and forbidden. Everything else is profane. As a result, “profane” is always easy to define: it is anything within a society that is not sacred. To come to this conclusion about the sacred and its role in establishing a “single moral community,” Durkheim read anthropological works, specifically on the Australian aborigines and particularly the role of totems among clans or tribes of what were considered “primitive” peoples. This is the significance of the word elementary in the title of his book. Durkheim, like many other early sociologists, believed that by studying the maintenance of social organization among these peoples significant insights could be obtained about core processes that enabled societies to develop and maintain themselves – and, as a corollary, what changes in the transition to modernity might explain the emerging social problems of his day. The distinction had an enormous direct effect in the sociology of religion, but also powerfully influenced the broader sociological theoretical paradigm of functionalism, especially through its integration into Talcott Parsons's The Structure of Social Action (1938).

In the Parsonian synthesis that popularized and standardized Durkheim's definition for an especially formative generation of sociologists, the notion of “church” in the original Durkheimian formulation of the definition of religion was gradually secularized into “society” – that is, whereas Durkheim spoke quite specifically of a moral community “called a Church,” later generations came to identify the moral community with society or in other cases with virtually any other ongoing social group. Rather tautologically, in fact, social scientists began to look for “the sacred” in groupings and structures that one would not normally associate with religion – ranging across as wide a spectrum as the flag and related patriotic paraphernalia in the USA and the tombs of Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union to Babe Ruth's bat as sacred to baseball. This understanding of sacrality had a twofold effect on the study of both society and religion: On the one hand, it made religion an essential social institution: no religion, no society. On the other hand, it also said that while religion was good (functional), it was not true. That is, it reduced the end point of religion (the divine, in whatever name or form) to a social construction.

Durkheim's sacrality proposition led in at least two directions in the study of religion. The positive outcome was a corpus of work on political religion that flowed freely and broadly from a seminal essay by Parsons's former student Robert Bellah, “Civil religion in America” (1963). This concept refers to a “transcendent religion of the nation” and resonates well with the functionalism of both Durkheim and Parsons. A move away from functionalism generally in sociology beginning in the late 1960s brought in its wake first secularization theory, and then a reaction against the Parsonian-Durkheimian formulation as an adequate understanding of religion. Secularization theory hence led to anti-secularization theory, which amounted to a rethinking of both religion and sacrality in the Durkheimian context.

SEE ALSO: Durkheim, Émile; Sacred

REFERENCES

Bellah, R. (1963) Civil religion in America. Dædalus 96: 1–21.

Durkheim, E. (1915) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Allen & Unwin, London.

Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Swatos, W. H., Jr. (1999) Revisiting the sacred. Implicit Religion 2: 33–8.

WILLIAM H. SWATOS, JR.

safer sex

Safer sex emerged as a strategy to prevent the spread of disease with the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, two gay New Yorkers, first outlined the theory and application of safer sex in their 1983 tract, “How to have sex in an epidemic.” As an alternative to the confusing, all-or-nothing early approaches to HIV prevention, safer sex offered a practical strategy. People were going to have sex. As such, it was best to do it in a safe, mutually satisfying, caring manner. Berkowitz and Callen presented a harm-reduction approach now recognized around the world as a model that allows for both intimacy and protection. The result was a revolution allowing for personal and political protection, both for sex and for the movement that liberated it. With time, safer sex practices spread around the globe as a theoretical and practical approach to preventing the spread of HIV. Safer sex became the model for sex-positive discourses that rejected the politics of sexual shame, temperance, and prohibition.

Future research will need to contend with the problems of safer sex and explore alternative technologies, such as microbicides, which can serve as substitutes for latex. In the two and a half decades since the birth of safer sex, new practices of safer sexual activity have emerged. These include community-based approaches such as “jack off” clubs, where men meet to have the safest type of safe sex – mutual masturbation – and more distant approaches such as telephone sex and cybersex.

SEE ALSO: AIDS, Sociology of; Sex Education; Sexual Practices

SUGGESTED READINGS

Berkowitz, R. & Callen, M. (2001) [1983] How to have sex in an epidemic. In: Bull, C. (ed.), Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation. Thunder's Mouth Press, New York.

BENJAMIN SHEPARD

Saint-Simon, Claude Henri (1760–1825)

A self-taught philosopher, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, helped inspire sociology, socialism, technocratic approaches to social organization, and the idea of a united Europe. He called for the refounding of knowledge, including the study of society, on the basis of the sciences, which he believed held the key to intellectual order and thus social stability after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Based on his analysis of history, he predicted that society in the future would be scientific and industrial. It would be a workshop in which everyone would take up useful activities. A perceptive analyst of modernity, Saint-Simon left a significant legacy.

Taking a holistic approach to society, Saint-Simon was important for ascertaining that intellectual, moral, social, political, and economic developments were closely interrelated. He saw that society was undergoing a profound, all-encompassing transformation, going from a feudal, Christian system marked by the consumption needs of a privileged class to a scientific, industrial system characterized by production and the rise of new classes. He influenced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who developed modern socialism from his ideas of tracing class conflict throughout history; organizing economic and social life for collective, non-militaristic ends; and reducing the role of government to meeting the needs of the poor. After Saint-Simon's death, Auguste Comte developed positivism (the scientific philosophy encompassing all knowledge) as well as sociology, which he viewed as a kind of social engineering in the interest of social stability and harmony. Many businessmen during the Second Empire were attracted to Saint-Simon's stress on industrial productivity, efficiency, utility, and technocracy. Others who were influenced by him and the Saint-Simonian movement include John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Herbert Spencer, Heinrich Heine, Alexander Herzen, and Charles Lemonnier. The latter's work inspired the idea of the League of Nations.

SEE ALSO: Comte, Auguste; Marx, Karl; Socialism

SUGGESTED READINGS

de Saint-Simon, C. H. (1975) Henri Saint-Simon, 1760–1825: Selected Writings on Science, Industry, and Social Organisation, ed. and trans. K. Taylor. Holmes & Meier, New York.

de Saint-Simon, C. H. (1976) The Political Thought of Saint-Simon, ed. G. Ionescu, trans. V. Ionescu. Oxford University Press, London.

MARY PICKERING

same-sex marriage/civil unions

Same-sex marriage refers to a union by two people of the same sex that is legally sanctioned by the state, where identical rights and responsibilities are afforded same-sex and heterosexual married couples. The term “gay marriage” is popularly used to refer to same-sex partnerships or cohabiting relationships that are formally registered in some way as a “civil union” (variously known as civil partnerships, registered partnerships, and registered cohabitation), although the latter are in fact legally distinct from marriage. The term is also sometimes employed to talk about unregistered same-sex couple cohabitation or partnerships acknowledged through commitment ceremonies. A growing number of states currently afford same-sex couples the opportunity to participate in marriage. As of late 2010 these include Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina. In addition, same-sex marriages are recognized in Mexico City, Mexico and in the USA in Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia. Same-sex marriages from other countries are honored (though not for domestic citizens) in Israel, Mexico (though they are performed in Mexico City), as well as in the USA in New York, Maryland, and Rhode Island (see the following websites for detailed information on changing status in different countries: www.marriageequality.org; www.samesexmarriage.ca; www.stonewall.org.uk). Civil unions, civil partnerships, and registered cohabitation, which include some exemptions from the automatic rights and responsibilities afforded heterosexual married couples, are the most common forms of legal recognition. They offer some of the symbolic and material advantages associated with marriage, but with more limited legal status. At a global level, most same-sex partners must currently rely on “do-it-yourself” affirmation and commitment ceremonies, or seek religious blessings where available.

Same-sex marriage and civil unions have become high-profile political issues in many countries since the early 1990s. In Europe the number of states that have extended, or are planning to extend, legal recognition to lesbian and gay relationships through civil unions has increased steadily since the first civil partnership legislation was passed in Denmark in 1989. Elsewhere, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa, and other countries have either nationwide or regional legal facilities for the recognition of same-sex partnerships or cohabiting relationships. In the United States, the issue of same-sex marriage has been an especially contentious one. While some states have introduced legislation to recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions, other states have enacted constitutional amendments that explicitly forbid same-sex marriage, or have passed legislation that bars civil union-type recognition. This points to the strength of support and opposition that the issue of same-sex marriage can generate in the US and most other countries where the issue is debated. On the one hand, some constituencies see same-sex marriage and civil unions as an ultimate marker of social and political tolerance. On the other hand, some groups view the issue as indicative of the decline in religious and moral values in an increasingly secular world. Amongst conservative religious and social groups especially, same-sex marriage is often interpreted as an attack on the primacy and “naturalness” of the heterosexual married bond that is assumed to underpin a stable society.

A number of social developments have influenced the current focus of lesbian and gay politics on same-sex marriage. AIDS, some theorists argue, was a catalyst in mobilizing a new lesbian and gay relational politics in the 1980s. This was initially focused on the recognition of same-sex partners' caring commitments, and protecting “rights” in relation to property and next-of-kin issues. Community responses to AIDS facilitated the institution building and political confidence that made same-sex marriage seem like a realizable political objective. Since the 1980s new possibilities have opened up for lesbian and gay parenting (through self and assisted insemination, surrogacy, fostering, adoption, and so on) and a growing number of same-sex couples are choosing to parent. Same-sex marriage is seen as a crucial strategy for recognizing and protecting co-parenting commitments.

Another social d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Timeline
• Lexicon
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y
• Z
• Index