Transcript Document

The Institutional Order
Societal goals
External
Sovereignty
Internal
Supremacy
Hierarchy
Legitimacy
Polity
Law
Kinship
Economy
Religion
Education
NOTE: This is NOT a causal model.
Countries bombed by the U.S. after World War II
China: 1945 – 46
Cambodia: 1969 – 70
Korea: 1950 – 53
Laos: 1964 – 73
China: 1950 – 53
Grenada: 1983
Guatemala: 1954
Libya: 1986
Indonesia: 1958
El Salvador: 1980s
Cuba: 1959 – 60
Nicaragua: 1980s
Guatemala: 1960
Panama: 1989
Vietnam: 1961 – 73
Iraq: 1991 – ?
Congo: 1964
Sudan: 1998
Peru: 1965
Yugoslavia: 1999
Guatemala: 1967 – 69
Afghanistan: 1998, 2002 – ?
Polity
Any society’s polity is a complex hierarchy of leadership
that utilizes power to enforce decisions made by those at
the top of that hierarchy. Legitimacy is achieved through
four bases of power*.
*The Four Bases of Power
1. Symbolic: appeals to ideology, patriotism, racism, etc.
2. Coercive: direct force, police and military
3. Administrative: legitimacy via bureaucratic process
4. Material: subsidies, citations, bribes, tax breaks
Elements of Religion
Beliefs about supernatural forces and pantheons (narratives
about protagonists in realms having supernatural qualities).
Highly formulated and articulated values.
Rituals affirming socially constructed realities.
Cult Structures:
homogeneity.
communities based on religious
The Evolution of Institutions
Hunting & gathering
Horticultural
Pastoralist
Agrarian
Industrial
Post-Industrial
World-economy
States/Empires
Classical
Chiefdoms
Archaic
Bands/Tribes
Primal
Modern
Types of Religious Structures
Cults: Small, innovative, radical, high tension, anti-status
quo
Sects: Smaller, newer, more tension, integrative
Denominations: Larger, less flexible, less tension
Kierkes/Ecclesia: Large, stable, inflexible, low tension,
pro-status quo
Size
Tension
Secularization
Functions of Religion
1. Religious beliefs alleviate the anxiety and
emotional complexity that results from experiences
that call to mind mortality.
2. Religious rituals reinforce norms critical to the
perpetuation of traditional authority.
3. Rituals also can be vehicles of social change,
although these usually only take place in cults and
sects.
Trends in Religion
Potential conflict between religious and secular
leaders.
Religious organizations find themselves in
competition with each other as well as with science,
consequently engaging in secular activities (car
washes, bake sales, use of secular language &
music, etc.)
Lure of power keeps religion bound to polity & law.
Media revolutionizes missionary industry.
Civic Religion (Faith in the State)
Priestly classes create the first religious hierarchies, creating
conditions for secular thought, which leads to military
superiority.
Secularization decreases the amount of social functions of
archaic (Aztec, Græco-Roman, Egyptian, Mayan, Norse) and
classical religions (Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism,
Confucianism, Christianity, Islam), giving them a lesser role in
economic, military, and legal affairs.
Civic religion (or secular humanism) prevents pre-industrial
ideologies from interfering in the political agendas of
contemporary states. China, the US, France, Cuba, Russia,
Angola, and the Netherlands are almost entirely secular states.
Bhutan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, the
Vatican, and Armenia are not.