Phillip E. Hammond

Secularization, Incorporation, and Social Relations

Fifty-six small, private American colleges are used as substitutes for total societies in order that a global theory of social change and social integration can be investigated. Schools are classified by degree of secularization and quality, and a number of measures of their cohesion are then observed. High-quality secular colleges and low-quality sacred colleges are found to be similar in cohesion, whereas schools that are either sacred or high quality evidence less cohesion. This pattern is interpreted as the replacement by incorporation of what is lost through secularization.