The sacred canopy

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Berger, P. (1967) The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Anchor Books.

1. Religion and world-construction

Society as dialectic

• A human product that acts back upon its producers (4)
• Constructed of "human meanings" externalized into objects (8)

Three steps to "empirically adequate view" of society:

• Externalization: human output
• Objectivation: othering of that output
• Internalization: reappropriation of the object by humans

Humans born "unfinished"

• Biological explanation for the social-boundedness of "becoming man" (5)
• Born "underspecialized" in contrast to other animals who have specialized worlds ("dog-world") (5)
• World-building an essential biological function
  • And in doing so, "produces himself" (6)

Human world characterized by instability

• Culture needing to be constantly remade
• Social, collective activity
• Born of subjectivity, once externalized is always objectively outside (9)

Assertion that "society is experienced as given" (11)

• I'm not sure that this is generally true?

Objective reality of externalized human products

• Constraining, regulating (12)
• Roles, artifacts wieldable, wearable (14)

Socialization

• lifelong learning process
• Symmetry between subjective / objective (15)
  • Asymmetry means that the society may not be reproduced (16)
• Asserts a social role, which the "if successful" the person will not wish otherwise (????) (17)

Religion is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established.

• Sacred is a quality of mysterious power, other + related to humans
  • Believed to reside in certain objects of experience
  • Cosmos, including man
  • Sensible, apprehendable, ordered
• Profane is absence of sacred status
• Chaos is the opposite of sacred
  • Terror, anomy
  • Meaninglessness

Religion and world-maintenance

Legitimation is socially objectivated "knowledge"

• Justifies the social order (29)
• They define "what is"
• Norming function
• Nomos legitimates itself by simply being (30)

Religion is widespread, effective legitimation (32)

• Assures reproduction of a given social world
• Designed to hide its "constructed character" (33)
• Parallels between lived experiences and mythology affirm both (34)
  • Microcosm / macrocosm schema
• Locate human phenomena (nomoi) with in a cosmic frame of reference (35)
  • cosmization process
• Religious practice is a remembering process that integrates with everyday life (40)
• Religion explains for ecstacy and death, "marginal" states (44)
  • Explains them within a cosmic/sacred nomos
  • Allows those who experience a marginal state to remain rooted in the social reality

The same human activity that produces society also produces religion (47)

• Not religion as a reflection of society
• Religion persists only when the social reality permits it "plausibility" (49)
  • Nomos of everyday life is "co-extensive" with the religious cosmology