| Abstrakt: |
This article provides a framework for comprehension of the sociology of religions, and synthesizes certain key findings across the studies as a whole. A principal characteristic of social change that people worldwide are experiencing on the threshold of the third millennium has been conceptualized under the rubic of globalization. The term is complex and often ill-defined despite its currency. It refers, however, to the internationalization of capitalist markets and relations, to a diffusion of modern western institutions and norms, to the growing megalopolis made possible by worldwide communication networks, and to the developing awareness that the destiny of the planet is a collective one. The process of globalization has unleashed a set of changes which are affecting the religious field and within it popular religions, including both rural and urban Catholicism. While the modernist thesis postulates that globalization is an exclusively positive process that allows world religions to come together around a more unified spiritual, and ethical stance in the face of dramatic world problems, globalization must in reality be conceived of in dialectic and conflictual form. Globalization has also provoked fundamentalist religious reactions in defense of what is local. |
