Occupation: Sociologist Birth: March 17, 1929
Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the oth….
The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.
To be located in society means to be at the intersection point of specific social forces. Commonly one ignores these forces one also knows that there….
The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of religious substance.
In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.
It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from ….
In science, as in love, a concentration on technique is likely to lead to impotence..
So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market ec….
Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without demo….
One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism.
I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in communities in….
There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mai….
Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.
An economy oriented toward production for market exchange provides the optimal conditions for long-lasting and ever-expanding productive capacity bas….
Capitalism has been one of the most dynamic forces in human history, transforming one society after another, and today it has become established as a….
I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secula….
On the one hand, man is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is, man….
The human organism is thus still developing biologically while already standing in a relationship to its environmont. In other words, the process of ….
If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes.
Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is ….
Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values….