Religion, classification struggles, and the state’s exercise of symbolic power

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 50 - Trang 255-281 - 2020
Sadia Saeed1
1Department of Sociology, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA

Tóm tắt

The capacity to classify social groups legally is a central characteristic of modern states. Social groups, however, often resist the classificatory schemas of the state. This raises the following question: how do modern states exercise symbolic power in social fields beset by acute classification struggles? While existing scholarship has demonstrated that states exercise symbolic power, there has not been a concomitant effort to systematize and theorize the various strategies through which they do so. This article addresses this lacuna through examining classification struggles centered on a number of “heterodox” religious groups that have historically been perceived as deviant from mainstream religions. Specifically, it looks at Falun Gong in China, Mormons in the United States, and Baha’is in Egypt. The analysis draws attention to three strategies through which states exercise symbolic power: coercive classification, wherein the deviant group is forcibly fixed as such in law; juridical normalization, whereby the deviant group is allowed to enter the mainstream by shedding “problematic” ritual practices; and legal erasure, whereby the deviant group is kept out of the official classificatory system so that it becomes a legal non-entity. In summary, this article both identifies the religious field as a critical domain in which states of various ideological orientations exercise symbolic power and deploys this analysis to identify distinct strategies through which they do so.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Abrams, P. (1988). Notes on the difficulty of studying the state. Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1), 58–89.

Adams, J. (2005). The familial state: Ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Ahmed, L. (2012). A quiet revolution: The Veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. London: NLB.

Altınordu, A. (2013). Toward a comparative historical sociology of religious politics. In C. Bender, W. Cadge, P. Levitt, & D. Smilde (Eds.), Religion on the edge: De-centering and re-centering the sociology of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Barkey, K. (2005). Islam and toleration: Studying the ottoman imperial model. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 19(1–2), 5–19.

Barman, E. (2013). Classificatory struggles in the nonprofit sector: The formation of the National Taxonomy of exempt entities, 1969–1987. Social Science History, 37(1), 103–141.

Berger, P. (1999). The Desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Bourdieu, P. (2018). Classification struggles. Cambridge: Polity.

Bourdieu, P. (2014). On the state. Cambridge: Polity.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1999). Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), State/culture: State formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The force of law: Toward a sociology of the juridical field. Hastings Law Journal, 38(5), 814–853.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the Judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bowen, J. R. (2008). Why the French Don't like headscarves Islam, the state, and public space. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brookshaw, D. P., & Fazel, S. B. (2007). The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-historical studies. London: Routledge.

Cantini, D. (2009). Being Baha’i in contemporary Egypt: An ethnographic analysis of everyday challenges. Anthropology of the Middle East, 4(2), 34–51.

Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chaves, M. (2004). Secularization as declining religious authority. Social Forces, 72(3), 749–774.

Cole, J. R. I. (1998). Modernity and the millennium: The genesis of the Baha’i faith in the nineteenth-century Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press.

Corrigan, P., & Sayer, D. (1985). The great arch: English state formation as cultural revolution. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dianteill, E. (2003). Pierre Bourdieu and the sociology of religion: A central and peripheral concern. Theory and Society, 32(5), 529–549.

Duara, P. (1995). Rescuing history from the nation: Questioning narratives of modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Edelman, B., & Richardson, J. T. (2003). Falun gong and the law: Development of legal social control in China. Nova Religio, 6(2), 312–331.

Edmunds, G. F. (1882). Political aspects of Mormonism. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 64(380), 285–288.

Euben, R. L., & Zaman, M. Q. (2009). Princeton readings in Islamist thought: Texts and contexts from al-Banna to bin Laden. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Feldman, N. (2008). What is it about Mormonism? New York Times Magazine, January 6.

Finke, R., & Stark, R. (2005). The churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and losers in our religious economy. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage.

Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fox, J. (2008). A world survey of religion and the state. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fox, J. (2015). Political secularism, religion, and the state: A time series analysis of worldwide data. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fox, J. (2016). The Unfree exercise of religion: A world survey of discrimination against religious minorities. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Giddens, A. (1985). The nation-state and violence. Cambridge: Polity.

Go, J. (2008). American empire and the politics of meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Goossaert, V., & Palmer, D. A. (2011). The religious question in modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gordon, S. B. (2003). The Mormon question: Polygamy and constitutional conflict in nineteenth-century America. Journal of Supreme Court History, 28(1), 14–29.

Gorski, P. S. (2003). The disciplinary revolution: Calvinism and the rise of the state in early modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gorski, P. S. (2000). Historicizing the secularization debate: Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700. American Sociological Review, 65(1), 138–167.

Hanna, M. W. (2015). Public order and Egypt’s statist tradition. Review of Faith & International Affairs, 13(1), 23–30.

Hunt, A. (1992). Foucault’s expulsion of law: Toward a retrieval. Law & Social Inquiry, 17(1), 1–38.

Hurd, E. S. (2009). The politics of secularism in international relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Iannaccone, L. R. (1995). Voodoo economics? Reviewing the rational choice approach to religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 76–88.

Jessop, B. (1990). State theory: Putting the capitalist state in its place. London: Polity Press.

Johnson, P. C. (2005). Three paths to legal legitimacy: African diaspora religions and the state. Culture and Religion, 6(1), 79–105.

Joppke, C. (2007). State neutrality and Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany. Theory and Society, 36(4), 313–342.

Kuru, A. T. (2009). Secularism and state policies toward religion: The United States, France, and Turkey. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28(1), 167–195.

Li, J. (2013). The religion of the nonreligious and the politics of the apolitical: The transformation of Falun gong from healing practice to political movement. Politics and Religion, 7(1), 177–208.

Loveman, M. (2014). National Colors: Racial classification and the state in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Loveman, M. (2005). The modern state and the primitive accumulation of symbolic power. American Journal of Sociology, 110(6), 1651–1683.

Lu, Y. (2005). Entrepreneurial logics and the evolution of Falun gong. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(2), 173–185.

Mahmood, S., & Danchin, P. G. (2014). Immunity or regulation? Antinomies of religious freedom. South Atlantic Quarterly, 113(1), 129–159.

Mann, M. (1986). The autonomous power of the state: Tts origins, mechanisms and results. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), States in history. New York: Blackwell.

Mason, P. Q. (2010). Opposition to polygamy in the Postbellum south. Journal of Southern History, 76(3), 541–578.

Mayrl, D., & Quinn, S. (2016). Defining the state from within: Boundaries, schemas, and associational policymaking. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 1–26.

McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miliband, R. (1973). The capitalist state: Reply to Poulantzas. New Left Review, 59, 53–60.

Mitchell, T. (1991). The limits of the state: Beyond statist approaches and their critics. American Political Science Review, 85(1), 77–96.

Mitchell, T. (1999). Society, economy, and the state effect. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), State/culture: State-formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Morgan, K. J., & Orloff, A. S. (2017). Introduction: The many hands of the state. In K. J. Morgan & A. S. Orloff (Eds.), The many hands of the state: Theorizing political authority and social control. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moustafa, T. (2000). Conflict and cooperation: Between the state and religious institutions in contemporary Egypt. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 32(1), 3–22.

Nedostup, R. (2009). Superstitious regimes: Religion and the politics of Chinese modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

Norton, M. (2014). Classification and coercion: The destruction of piracy in the English maritime system. American Journal of Sociology, 119(6), 1537–1575.

Ownby, D. (2008). Falun gong and the future of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ownby, D. (2003). A history for Falun gong: Popular religion and the Chinese state since the Ming dynasty. Nova Religio, 6(2), 223–243.

Palmer, D. A. (2013). From ‘congregations’ to ‘small group community building’: Localizing the Bahá’í faith in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. Chinese Sociological Review, 45(2), 78–98.

Palmer, D. A. (2009). Religiosity and social movements in China: Divisions and multiplications. In G. Guiheux & K. E. Kuah-Pearce (Eds.), Social movements in China and Hong Kong: The expansion of protest space. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Palmer, D. A. (2008). Heretical doctrines, reactionary secret societies, evil cults: Labelling heterodoxy in 20th century China. In M. Yang (Ed.), Chinese religiosities: The vicissitudes of modernity and state formation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Palmer, D. A. (2007). Qigong fever. New York: Columbia University Press.

Phipps, K. E. (2009). Marriage and redemption: Mormon polygamy in the congressional imagination, 1862-1887. Virginia Law Review, 95(2), 435–487.

Pink, J. (2005). The concept of freedom of belief and its boundaries in Egypt: The Jehovah’s witnesses and the Baha’i faith between established religion and an authoritarian state. Culture and Religion, 6(1), 135–160.

Pink, J. (2003). A post-Qur'ānic religion between apostasy and public order: Egyptian muftis and courts on the legal status of the Bahā'ī faith. Islamic Law and Society, 10(3), 409–434.

Penny, B. (2012). The religion of Falun gong. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Poulantzas, N. (1969). The problem of the capitalist state. New Left Review, 58, 67–78.

Rahn, P. (2002). The chemistry of a conflict: The Chinese government and the Falun gong. Terrorism and Political Violence, 14(4), 41–65.

Richardson, J. T., & Introvigne, M. (2004). Brainwashing theories in European parliamentary and administrative reports on cults and sects. In J. T. Richardson (Ed.), Regulating religion: Case studies from around the globe. New York: Kluwer Academic Press.

Saeed, S. (2017). Politics of Desecularization: Law and the minority question in Pakistan. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sanasarian, E. (2000). Religious minorities in Iran. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sarkar, R., & Sarkar, A. (2016). Sacred slaughter: An analysis of historical, communal, and constitutional aspects of beef bans in India. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 17(4), 329–351.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Shirk, S. L. (1992). The Chinese political system and the political strategy of economic reform. In D. M. Lampton & K. G. Lieberthal (Eds.), Bureaucracy, politics, and decision making in post-Mao China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, S. E. (2009). Barbarians within the gates: Congressional debates on Mormon polygamy, 1850-1879. Journal of Church and State, 51(4), 587–616.

Stark, R., & Finke, R. (2000). Acts of faith: Explaining the human side of religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stark, R., & Iannaccone, L. R. (1994). A supply-side reinterpretation of the secularization of Europe. Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 34(1), 76–88.

Steinberg, M. W. (2016). Reconfiguring sovereignty in Foucauldian genealogies of power. Journal of Historical Sociology, 29(4), 476–502.

Steinmetz, G. (2007). The Devil's handwriting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Steinmetz, G. (1999). Introduction. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), State/culture: State formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Sullivan, W. F. (2005). The impossibility of religious freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Swartz, D. (2013). Symbolic power, politics, and intellectuals: The political sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Swartz, D. (1996). Bridging the study of culture and religion: Pierre Bourdieu's political economy of symbolic power. Sociology of Religion, 57(1), 71–85.

Tilly, C. (1985). War making and state making as organized crime. In P. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol (Eds.), Bringing the state Back in. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tong, J. W. (2009). Revenge of the Forbidden City: The suppression of the Falungong in China, 1999–2005. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tyler, I. (2015). Classificatory struggles: Class, culture and inequality in neoliberal times. The Sociological Review, 63(2), 493–511.

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Whittaker, D. J. (1984). Early Mormon polygamy defenses. Journal of Mormon History, 11, 43–63.

Wilde, M. J. (2018). Vatican II: A sociological analysis of religious change. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Yang, F. (2012). Religion in China. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zarrow, P. (2002). The reform movement, the monarchy, and political modernity. In R. Karl & P. Zarrow (Eds.), Rethinking the reform movement of 1898: Political and cultural change in modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Tập 50

255-281

Thông tin tác giả