SOC 105 01: RELIGION AND SOCIETY
Spring 2015 / Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:35 A.M. – 11:00 A.M.
Room: BROWER HALL 203
Instructor: Konstantinos Ardavanis
Email: Konstantinos.ardavanis@hofstra.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to help you learn about the Sociology of Religion, with special attention paid to contemporary issues in religion and society in the United States. This course will set out to explore the various rituals, values, and customs that a society embraces, and through this, find the hidden meaning behind the cultural knowledge that these values, rituals and customs provide. While people use these values, rituals, and customs to interpret the world around them, it will be our job to discuss the implications and unconscious assumptions that these interpretations provide using a number of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

TEXTS AND READINGS
REQUIRED

• Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (2nd edition) by Kevin J. Christiano, William H. Swatos Jr., and Peter Kivisto, ISBN 978-0-7425-6111-3

• Additional readings to be posted to Blackboard

SUGGESTED

• Durkheim, Emile. 1965. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

• Marx, Karl and Frederich Engels. 1978. "The Communist Manifesto" and “the German Ideology,” in The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert Tucker. New York: W.W. Norton.

• Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner.

• Weber, Max. 1978. "Religious Groups (The Sociology of Religion)". Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

• Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Religion as a Cultural System." In The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books, p. 87-125.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Association of Religion Data Archives: http://www.thearda.com/