Pierre Bourdieu and the Sociology of Religion

Abstract

The article provided a translation of Bryan Turner's study entitled: "Pierre Bourdieu and the Sociology of Religion." The study contained an introduction that discussed the secularization thesis, a preliminary critique  of Bourdieu's analysis of religion, Bourdieu and the (new paradigm) in the sociology of religion, as well as a conclusion entitled "Using Bourdieu". The study points out that most of the discussion about religion in modern society is dominated by philosophers who usually ignore anthropological and sociological research on religion. Philosophical commentaries on religion such as those made by thinkers such as Richard Rutti and Gianni Fatimo have no sense of the ethnographic nature of modern social scientific analyzes of religion. Bourdieu failed to solve some of the central problems that he himself brilliantly identified.