“Shoveling fog” is Courtney Bender’s acute phrase for the work of “studying spirituality,” an amorphous term that has suffered much…
social science
Working on individualism
Even the most open-minded social scientists—those who are up for studying almost any social group or activity—tend to find the…
Institutions, discourses, practices… and life-in-the-world
The portraits social scientists create get appropriated by their subjects, used, and fed back to social scientists. Like a Cherokee…
Petraeus, Military Anthropology, and Religion
At PBS' Religion & Ethics Newsweekly site, George R. Lucas Jr wonders whether David Petraeus might “ramp up” efforts in…
Secularism, secularization, and why the difference matters
Several decades ago, well before there had been any concerted effort among historians and sociologists of religion to trash the…
Spirituality, entangled: An interview with Courtney Bender
Courtney Bender is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University and co-chair of the SSRC’s Working Group on Spirituality,…
New answers to old questions
David Smilde and Matthew May’s finding that there is an “emerging strong program” in the sociology of religion is a…
Institutional parochialism and the sociology of religion
Recently, Levitt, Bender, Cadge and Smilde have argued that scholarship in the sociology of religion might become less “parochial” and…
Toward a sociology of social religion
Like many of the other participants in this discussion on the current state of the sociological study of religion, we…
Sybil and the strong, silent type
Appearing at the same time as a manifesto for expanding American sociologists’ approaches to religion, Smilde and May’s report is…