The Sociology of the Symbolic Landscape

The study of meaning is a cornerstone of sociology, but the context-dependence of meaning is also a challenge for sociologists, especially sociologists of race. This article offers the Sociology of the Symbolic Landscape (SSL) as the theoretical solution to the challenge of studying meaning and applying the concept of race within and across contexts. SSL focuses on the relationships between symbolic categories within a context and their positions in the core/periphery distinction. Incorporating insights from Durkheim, Interpretive Sociology, the study of Symbolic Boundaries, Civil Sphere Theory, and Postcolonial Theory, SSL makes it possible to identify and categorize positions, thereby identifying the way meaning acts as a source of constraint and of creative possibilities, and enabling cross-contextual comparison of culture-structures and forms. Through application of SSL to data on categorizations in Sweden, we demonstrate the analytical traction SSL provides. SSL offers a portable understanding of the racial other as “outsider within,” a distinct position of enduring alterity and persistent difference within the symbolic landscape. Unlike outward-looking categories defined on the basis of a pre-existing religious attachment, ethnic group, or non-native nationality, the outsider within is an internally referenced category defined in negation – social membership with problematic and atypical belonging.

From Paganism to World Transcendence

This chapter draws on one of the new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories of religion, religious attachment theory, to explain the emergence of the Axial Age religions of the late first millennium bce. These religions—Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—introduced new kinds of gods into world history—gods that were transcendent and capable of providing release from suffering. Religious attachment theory views religion as providing “substitute attachment figures” under circumstances in which people’s social attachments have been severely disrupted. The basic argument of the chapter is that the new Axial Age gods were responses to heightened levels of anxiety and ontological insecurity that accompanied massive increases in warfare and urbanization in the period between approximately 600 bce and 1 ce. The anthropomorphic pagan gods of the ancient empires had become inadequate in the face of the new religious needs that people began to experience, and thus they came to be replaced.

Rekonstruksi Makna Perceraian Perspektif Masyarakat Muslim di Kabupaten Malang

This article explores the reconstruction of divorce in the understanding of Muslim community in Malang. Marriage in Islam is not only a civil bond, but also as a religious attachment that contains the values of worship. However, many Muslims fail to defend their marriage. Divorce at Religious Court of Malang district is recorded as very high in East Java. The divorce rate in the region of South Malang is the highest, with labor women as the majority population. They looked at divorce as the only way out to end the marriage. Divorce begins with conflicts, disputes and quarrels which negate the hope to live in harmony again in the household. The solution is understood by most of them as a normal thing that does not need to worry. These perceptions arise because of their lack of knowledge about the meaning of marriage and the danger of divorce with all its consequences. Infact, divorce can result in consequences which disturb the emotion of women and their social and economic conditions as the single parent.