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A Mistake about Error

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Ian Hamnett
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In a recent stock-taking essay on the current state of the sociology of religion, Richard Fenn writes:

The functionalist synthesis in the sociology of religion has disappeared ... Functionalism provided a privileged methodological stance from which the sociologist could interpret and transcend the accounts of groups and individuals. As a trained interpreter. the sociologist could provide a coherent text of a community’s beliefs, but as one skilled in delving below surface appearances the sociologist could also identify ‘latent’ functions and, in the process, call into question a community’s account of its own life. These methodological approaches are still adopted, but the sociologist does not enjoy a privileged position from which to put them together. The result is parallel and competing perspectives without a single viewpoint (Fenn 1982:101).

Later, Fenn goes on to assert that

To abandon functionalism is therefore to abandon a privileged methodological stance and a synthetic theoretical viewpoint. Some might therefore argue that sociologists of religion have exchanged their functionalist birthright for a mess of ethnomethodological and philosophical pottage. It is unlikely that sociologists of religion will abandon the search for a privileged standpoint from which to improve on the accounts that others, lay or professional, give bf their religious activities. The claim that a sociologist’s account of a given religious group or practice is an improved and not merely adequate translation of that group’s own experience and understanding rests on the sociologist’s more direct and complete access to common sources of knowledge (1982:123—4).

Most of what I want to say accords with Fenn’s account of what has happened, but presents a case against the conclusions he draws.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 67 , Issue 788 , February 1986 , pp. 69 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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