Howard G Schneiderman

Biographic Data

ID178426
NAMEHoward G Schneiderman
GIVEN NAMESHoward G
FAMILY NAMESchneiderman
SIGNATURESCHNEIDERMAN H G
AFFILIATIONSLafayette College
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS47
TOTAL CITATIONS12
AUTHOR COUNT45
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1988
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2020
H-INDEX2

  • Sociology of Religion: An Historical Introduction

    Howard G Schneiderman, Laura Ferrarotti et al.BOOKSociology of Religion2020

  • Folkways

    Open AccessHoward G SchneidermanOTHERThe Blackwell Encyclopedia of…2020

    The term “folkways” was coined by Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner in his 1906 book of that name. “Folkways” is a term that describes norms, rules, and symbolic social controls that determine, shape, and regulate individual as well as institutional behavior in a society. Folkways are norms that include subsidiary prescriptive types such as mores, customs, traditions, rituals, fads, fashions, manners, and etiquette, all of which specify appr…

  • Judgment and Sensibility: Religion and Stratification

    E Digby Baltzell, Howard G SchneidermanBOOKJudgment and Sensibility2018

    Judgment and Sensibility is the second volume of the collected essays of E. Digby Baltzell, one of the keenest observers and analysts of America's upper classes since Thorstein Veblen. Spanning four decades of writing, these essays cover a wide range of topics, including contemporary politics, democratic elitism, Puritanism, Judaism, higher education, urbanization, and the U.S. Supreme Court, among others.

  • Freud (1856–1939): The Psychic Dimension of Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Sigmund Freud worked in a historical and cultural period that was particularly fertile for the study of religious phenomena. At the beginning of his career he deepened the knowledge of psychoanalytic issues through weekly meetings with other colleagues and scholars, which later led to the foundation of the Psychoanalytic Society of Vienna and to the International Psychoanalytic Association. The religious and private character of the obsessive neu…

  • Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998): Religion as Function

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    German sociologist Niklas Luhmann was a coherent systemic functionalist who wrote about religion. The basic objection to Luhmann, who taught at the University of Bielefeld, concerned the comprehensive character of his theory. His main point is that religion, as a social system, regulates the relationships of people with the world in a comprehensive and ultimate meaning. Naturally, society is the essential condition for being in the world in a mea…

  • Bergson (1859-1941): Religion and “Élan Vital”

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Henri Bergson was well aware of the developments of French philosophy during the nineteenth century. Religion as social feeling is a distinctive feature of Bergson&s;s stimulating and illuminating thought. The French thinker preferred a philosophical perspective that later underwent various developments, given its metadisciplinary character. In the essay La pensee et lemouvant , Bergson stated that a new science is always dogmatic. Since this new…

  • The Macrosociological Approach

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    According to Talcott Parsons who shared Durkheim&s;s perspective religion is a more or less integrated whole of beliefs about sacred or supernatural entities, which are extraordinary and thus can be manipulated. Beliefs are mutually related to the practices and the institutions that develop in each society. Religion is thus used as a device to relieve the frustration and to comfort the dissatisfied individual who is not able to realize his aspira…

  • Tocqueville (1805-1859): Religion and Democracy

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville is the well-known author of Democracy in America , published between 1835 and 1840 in Paris, almost at the same time as Comte&s;s Cours . According to Tocqueville, religion in particular sets the conditions for the creation and preservation of a stable society based on freedom. As a consequence, Americans were probably influenced by religion to make good use of democracy. Also their habits and customs fo…

  • The Socioanthropological Perspectives

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Will Herberg suggested the triple distinction of American religions: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. The three religions used to comprise the largest religious affiliations in the United States. In Herberg&s;s view, affiliation with a specific religious denomination somehow established a way of life by directing many individual and collective actions and interactions. J. Milton Yinger&s;s best-known work, Religion, Society, and the Individual ,…

  • North American Trends

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Guy E. Swanson, a social psychologist, did not exercise a great influence on American sociology of religion. His scientific marginality, however, does not justify neglecting his intellectual contribution to the study of religion. Like Bellah, Swanson considered ultimate values as key concepts for the sociological interpretation of religious facts. Richard K. Fenn had been an Episcopalian priest and then the supporter of a new sociology of religio…

  • The Historical-Philosophical Background

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    The beginning of a scientific approach to the study of religious phenomena originated a long time ago and developed at a rather slow pace. Baruch Spinoza&s;s historical-critical method was directly linked to political questions designed to achieve a freer society, which would be open to new solutions, including a secular approach to religion. The beginning of the sociology of religion can be traced back through various paths. However, the develop…

  • William James (1842-1910): Psychosocial Perspective

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    William James offered a crucial contribution to the empirical analysis of the religious phenomenon. He first dealt with general studies concerning psychology, then moved on to research on the psychology of religion with an empirical outlook. Moreover, James viewed religious belief as a path that went beyond simple evidence, as a genuine and strong will to believe so that even an indecisive stance as far as believing was concerned revealed a negat…

  • Religion as Universal

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Lucien Levy-Bruhl was an atypical expert in the realm of the social sciences. He was a philosopher like Comte and shared with him the same interests in ethics. He undertook various interdisciplinary experiences and participated in the first debates about the issues of the individual and society. He could well be defined as an anthropologist who was also interested in sociological issues. According to Levy-Bruhl, myth and rite were two elements th…

  • August Comte (1798-1857): The Universal Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    The French philosopher Auguste Comte has been the most important figure in positivist social science. Comte, who coined the term "sociology," strongly believed in the possibility of science solving all the problems of humanity, which he defined as the "Great Being," and he proclaimed himself the "high priest" of science. In fact, metaphysical philosophy is devoted to a subjective perspective, while theological philosophy subordinates real life to…

  • The New European Perspectives

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    In the history of socioreligious thought, sociologist Joachim Wach has been undervalued. This is probably because he dealt with different disciplines at the same time. After moving to the United States in 1935 as an exile from Nazi Germany, like his colleagues of the Frankfurt School, Wach wrote an essay on the sociology of religion. From religion as an object to be studied, Wach became more and more interested in religion as it was lived by peop…

  • The Sociological Definition of Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    The slow and uneven development of theory and methods in the general field of sociology affected the development of the sociology of religion, but the latter has also benefited from increasing precision and scientific validity in the general field of sociology. When the sociology of religion first got started, substantive definitions were prevalent; later—particularly with the debate on secularization—functional approaches became more influential…

  • The New Religious Movements

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Eileen Bartan Barker teaches at the London School of Economics. She is very well known for her study New Religious Movements . As far as the religious movements are concerned, Barker adopts a neutral, social science approach; she respects the different behaviors and rituals, and is far from promoting any kind of antimovement campaign. Barker&s;s book contributes in a fluent and understandable style to disproving prejudices, and provides useful in…

  • Simmel (1858–1918): Religiosity and Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    German sociologist Georg Simmel differentiates religiosity from religion in the following way: He defines religiosity as the inner form of human experience, which thus precedes religion. Religion then is nothing but the empirical transposition of religiosity, a realization at the organizational level through the various modalities of church, sect, denomination, and movement. In Simmel&s;s social-religious approach, the parallelism between religio…

  • Robert Bellah (1927-2013): Civil Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Robert N. Bellah, who is often quoted for an article he wrote on civil religion in America and for another one concerning religious evolution. It is a fact that Bellah&s;s challenges have succeeded in stimulating the field of contemporary sociology of religion. Bellah considers the following dimensions: the symbolic religious system, religious action, religious organization, and their social implications. In archaic religion, the symbolic religio…

  • Religious Pluralism

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Thomas Luckmann is interested both in the sociology of knowledge and in the sociology of religion. His best-known book is The Invisible Religion which, despite a controversial concept of religion, has the merit of indicating new directions. The invisible religion hypothesis has generally caused more criticism than agreement among contemporary sociologists of religion. However, some sociological insights can emerge from it. After working initially…

  • Secularization

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Sabino Acquaviva, a sociologist at the University of Padua, was among the first social scientists to write, in 1961, about the crisis of the sacred, using a statistical documentation of religious practice at the international level. David Martin has contested the utopian uses of secularization and stated the necessity of its correct use on the basis of classical sociological thinking from Durkheim to Parsons, from Weber to Berger. Martin again ta…

  • The Historical-Cultural Dynamics

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Lutheran theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, who had been influenced by Dilthey, developed a typology of church and sects. A church is usually conservative and adapts itself to worldly demands by aiming at mass support rather than at an elitist kind of loyalty. Some scholars have incorporated Troeltsch&s;s category of mysticism into the concept of cult because of the loose and weak bonds existing among its members, and because of the low …

  • The European Trends

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Emile Poulat is one of the few French sociologists of religion sufficiently known throughout the world. He can be considered one of the most important contributors to the Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions if for no other reason than his detailed reviews of books and for his collaboration in the publication of the journal as well as being a member of its reading committee. The Ecclesiosphere is for Poulat a "sphere of influence of the Ro…

  • The Frankfurt School and Religion

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    The scholars of the Frankfurt school did not seem to favor the study of the religious factor of twentieth-century society, particularly after their "critical theory of society" and the "negative dialectic." Erich Fromm was representative of the Frankfurt school. However, after his departure for the United States, he moved away from the positions of his German colleagues. Indeed, Psychoanalysis and Religion was the title of a short book Fromm publ…

  • Durkheim (1858-1917): Religious Forms

    Roberto Cipriani, Laura Ferrarotti et al.CHAPTERSociology of Religion2017

    Emile Durkheim contributed to the growth of a whole current of socioreligious studies that had started long before him and that aimed at the establishment of the sociology of religion as an autonomous discipline. Durkheim&s;s work was influenced by Robertson Smith, and Fustel de Coulanges influenced him to consider religion as an essential part of social life. Religion and family ties were two important elements in Durkheim&s;s childhood. Religio…