Meredith B. McGuire

Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the Human Body in the Social Sciences of Religion

The social sciences of religion could be transformed by taking seriously the fact that humans are embodied. A new conceptualization of a mindful body has the potential to lead to profound shifts in how we view our subjects and their worlds. Our research strategies need to take into account that believers (and nonbelievers) are not merely disembodied spirits, but that they experience a material world in and through their bodies. Greater awareness of the social and political uses of human bodies should guide our research and theory. The human body probably seems like the most unlikely imaginable theme for a presidential address to this society, but this focus may lead us to some considerations that are central to social sciences and to religion today. Let me begin with an apocryphal creation tale:

Alternative health care : medicine, miracle, or mirage?

Acknowledgements 1. The Emergence of Alternative Medicine 2. Victims of Medicine 3. The Core of Alternative Medicine: Age Old Wisdom Made New 4. Medicine and the Spirit 5. Is There Really an Alternative Medicine? 6. The Politics of Alternative Medicine: Personal and Practical 7. Alternative Medicine, Mainstream Markets 8. The Future of Alternative Medicine Notes Bibliography Index

TOWARD A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE "CATHOLIC PENTECOSTAL" MOVEMENT

This investigation describes a cluster of seven Catholic Pentecostal groups, focusing especially on non-university prayer groups. The evidence suggests several factors at this period in the development of American Catholicism and American society that account for the attraction of the Pentecostal movement to stable middle-class, educated, active Catholics. All of these factors center around the relative need for security: perceived crisis in society and in the church, felt need for a strong authority, anomie, dualism, ambiguity about ones personal salvation, discomfort with social and religious change, and escapism. The Catholic Pentecostal groups serve important socio-psychological functions for their members, particularly the maintenance of a dissonant definition of reality. These functions for members serve to support the plausibility of the religious worldview of this cognitive minority, which is not unlike any religious worldview in its minority status visr--vis the dominant worldview of modern Western society. As such, the Pentecostal movement among American Catholics may be seen as one response to certain very basic problems of belief in contemporary society.

An Interpretive Comparison of Elements of the Pentecostal and Underground Church Movements in American Catholicism

The underground church and the Catholic Pentecostal movement are very differentfrom each other in the substance of their dissent from the rest of the church and society, yet both groupmovements are both middle-class in their appeal-thus defying standard sociological explanations based on social and economic deprivation. This comparative study attempts to find and interpret the differences between the underground church movement and the Pentecostal movement in American Catholicism. A longitudinal research of sixteen underground groups in Northern NewJersey was conductedfrom 1969 to 1973, andfive pentecostal groups in the same area were studiedfrom 1971 to 1973. Thefocus of the comparison was upon economicfactors, social statusfactors, and attitudinal and social-psychologicalfactors. There were few-if any -economic or social statusfactorsfound to differentiate the two movements. Social-psychological aspects (especially differential responses to ambiguity and change) appeared to be far more important explanations for the dissimilarity between the two types of groups.

Popular Religion and Modernization in Latin America: A Different Logic

This landmark work constitutes a complete historical, sociological, and political view of religion as a cultural expression in the genesis of modern-day Latin America.