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Reflections on Pierre Lassave

Notes autour du dernier livre de Pierre Lassave
Algunas reflexiones sobre el libro de Pierre Lassave
Note sul libro di Pierre Lassave
Grace Davie
p. 115-117
Riferimento/i:

Lassave Pierre, La sociologie des religions. Une communauté de savoir, préface de Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Paris, Éditions de l'EHESS, coll. « En temps & lieux », 2019, 408 p.

Testo integrale

1I have much appreciated reading La sociologie des religions. Une communauté de savoir. In this Pierre Lassave seeks to comprehend better the self-understanding of social scientists interested in religion, an enterprise that goes well beyond their approach to religion per se. Rather, it engages a whole series of relationships: between researcher and researched, between generations of researchers, between research contexts (both national and intellectual), and between methodological approaches, all of which can be mixed and matched. Statistical specialists use similar methodologies, but ask different questions of their data and work in very different environments; Europe’s post-war sociologists had much in common with each other, but engaged different issues and bequeathed different legacies to the post-graduates that they trained; in the US things were different again.

2Clearly Pierre Lassave’s analysis is deeply coloured by the French context. He is however not only knowledgeable about communities of scholars in other (Western) societies, but sensitive to their histories and cultures. As a British scholar, I am flattered to find myself amongst his examples and feel considerable affinity with his enterprise, having tried over many years to appreciate fully the sociological approaches of my European and American counterparts. From the days of my doctoral thesis (Davie, 1975), the French case has been central to my interests and – amongst many other things – taught me that every foray into a different society enabled a better understanding of my own. What follows, therefore, finds its initial focus in the British context seen in relation to the French. The later paragraphs are a little different; they move outwards to include a global research project, chosen to highlight the continuing ambiguity between mainstream social science and the sociology of religion. A final note returns to my alma mater: the London School of Economics.

3In terms of generational shifts, the British find themselves in a similar position to that described in the opening paragraphs of the Preface to La sociologie des religions. Bryan Wilson and David Martin stand out as the pioneers of post-war sociology of religion in the UK. Both were born in the 1920s and came of age as the social sciences expanded exponentially in the 1960s; and both are now gone (Bryan Wilson died in 2004; David Martin in 2019). Their early careers ran parallel: it was in the self-consciously secular milieu of the 1960s that Bryan Wilson began his lifetime’s work on sects and new religious movements, and David Martin initiated his pioneering analyses on secularisation, identifying not only the evidence for and against the secularisation process, but the crucial “events” that determined the specific trajectories that emerge in different parts of the world.

  • 1 As Lassave indicates, an initial exchange between Steve Bruce, myself, and Robin Gill took place i (...)

4The differences between them are real but more subtle than many appreciated. They were, moreover, mirrored in the next generation, in a series of debates between myself and Steve Bruce. One of these, entitled “Vicarious Religion” and “Vicarious Religion – A Response”, is covered in some detail by Pierre Lassave in the section of his book entitled “Différends” (see pp. 293-299). The originals can be found in the Journal for Contemporary Religion – a publication that plays a key role in the sociology of religion in the UK and beyond.1 There are two things to note about these articles; first that they exemplify markedly different philosophies of science that lead in turn not only to different methodologies, but different “ways of seeing” on the part of their authors; they are also a British rather than French “conversation”. It is true that my thinking about “believing without belonging” penetrated the French debate (and many others), but this was much less the case with “vicarious religious” – a point that I have discussed on more than one occasion with Danièle Hervieu-Léger. French people, she argues, have a very different understanding of the state, which fills the space very often assumed – in certain circumstances – by the historic churches in other parts of Europe. Interestingly, the moment when vicarious religion might have made its mark in France came later – in the reaction to the fire in Notre-Dame in 2019, which revealed the huge investment of the French population (secular as well as religious) in this iconic building.

5A glance back to the interests of the previous generation in both sects and secularisation, reveals a parallel point: i.e. that similar debates most certainly exist in France as well as Britain but present themselves differently. In the UK, the approach to sects and new religious movements derives essentially from the Anglo-Saxon literature and a commitment to minorities more generally. In France, the discussion was initiated at least a generation later and right from the start was far more politicised, as sects found themselves squeezed between the Catholic Church on one hand and a self-consciously secular state on the other. The secularisation debate is equally revealing. In this case, Britain and France become key exemplars of David Martin’s contrasting trajectories. Both Britain and France, however, are left with the same – as yet unresolved – question: what should their historically dominant churches (of whatever denomination) look like in the twenty-first century, in societies which are not only increasingly secular but increasingly diverse? No longer hegemonic, they seek a new identity, but what should this be? Given the weight of history, they are more, surely, than simply one minority (or sect) among others.

6A key theme in Pierre Lassave’s publication concerns the historic and seemingly inbuilt tension between the social sciences, which emerged from the French Enlightenment, and religion. Put differently European social science was – and in many ways still is – a profoundly secular enterprise that places the autonomous individual in the centre of the frame, a stance with wide-ranging implications for the study of religion.

  • 2 For an introduction to the work and publications of the International Panel on Social Progress, se (...)

7This is well-known, but was forcibly brought home to me when invited in 2015 to take part in the International Panel for Social Progress (IPSP), a consortium of some 200 scholars which came into existence to assess and synthesise the state-of-the-art knowledge that bears on social progress across a wide range of economic, political and cultural questions. The goal was to provide the target audience (individuals, movements, organisations, politicians, decision-makers and practitioners) with the best expertise that social science can offer, and my task was to co-lead the chapter team that dealt with religion. The final report was published in 2018.2

8Setting aside Enlightenment assumptions that progress is somehow built into history, the IPSP sought innovative ways to understand this better. The notion of a compass was deployed as a metaphor in the sense that it sets the line of travel, recognising that the map in question is complex and the destination elusive. What is considered progress in one situation may be differently assessed in another.

9The first meeting of the IPSP authors took place in Istanbul in August 2015. It was a learning experience in every sense of the term. Not only was this the first time that our chapter team (some twelve scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and different parts of the world) came together, it was also the moment when it became clear that significant sections of the social-scientific community were hesitant (to say the least) about including a chapter on religion in a report such as this. Their resistance took two forms: either religion was irrelevant (as a result of secularisation), or it was negatively perceived (thus, by definition, inimical to social progress). The fact that religion was (or more accurately was deemed to be) “back” was therefore part of the problem, not its solution.

10In the two days that we spent together, we worked hard on finding ways to counter these somewhat partial views starting with a clear definition of religion itself. Escaping the limitations of a purely Western perspective was essential. Religion is more – much more – than the broad range of institutions and beliefs traditionally recognised by social science; it is rather a very much larger cultural domain that encompasses the beliefs and practice of the vast majority (over 80%) of the world’s population. Religion, in short, is a lived, situated and constantly changing reality, and has as much to do with navigating everyday life as it does with the supernatural.

11From this starting point we developed an approach to the relationship between religion and social progress. Our task was to scour the available literature in order to document our case, beginning from the belief that neither good nor ill could be assumed from the outset. It was important to look case-by-case in different social and cultural domains, and in different parts of the world, to see what was happening on the ground. Clearly particular forms of religion are perceived negatively, and rightly so; without doubt religion can take forms that are destructive of people and places. Elsewhere, however, religious individuals and religious communities are manifestly associated with the health and wellbeing of their respective societies – an empirically verifiable and entirely positive feature that a report on social progress should note with care.

12A final comment takes me back to the London School of Economics where I was a doctoral student in the late 1960s. In the mid post-war decades – counterintuitively – there were a number of specialists in religion in the Department of Sociology: among them, not only David Martin himself, but Eileen Barker (a specialist on new religion movements) and John Peel (a distinguished anthropologist of religion). Some fifty years later, there are none, just when some (if not all) clusters of social science in the UK are strengthening their expertise in the field as religious debates come increasingly to the fore. Conversely, a new venture has emerged at the School, traditionally one of the most secular places in London. This is the Faith Centre, which “is home to the LSE's diverse religious activities” and offers not only a reflective space for all staff and students but “transformational interfaith leadership programmes”.3 The rationale is clear: a large proportion of the student intake at the LSE comes from overseas. They bring with them a wide diversity of faiths, a quality noticeably less evident among the Faculty. I am privileged to serve on the Advisory Board of the Faith Centre. Could the same thing happen in France? I rather doubt it.

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Bibliografia

Bruce Steve, 2002, “Praying Alone? Church-Going in Britain and the Putnam Thesis”, Journal for Contemporary Religion, 17, 3, pp. 317-328.

Bruce Steve, Voas David, 2010, “Vicarious Religion: An Examination and Critique”, Journal for Contemporary Religion, 25, 2, pp. 243-259.

Davie Grace, 1975, Right Wing Politics amongst French Protestants 1900-1945, with special reference to the Association Sully, unpublished thesis, University of London.

Davie Grace, 2002, “Praying Alone? Church-Going in Britain and Social Capital: A Reply to Steve Bruce”, Journal for Contemporary Religion, 17, 3, pp. 329-334.

Davie Grace, 2010, “Vicarious Religion: A Response”, Journal for Contemporary Religion, 25, 2, pp. 261-266.

Davie Grace, Ammerman Nancy, 2019, “‘A lived, situated and constantly changing reality’: Why religion is relevant to the pursuit of social progress”, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/a-lived-situated-and-constantly-changing-reality-why-religion-is-relevant-to-the-pursuit-of-social-progress/ (accessed 24 November 2020).

Gill Robin, 2002, “A Response to Steve Bruce’s ‘Praying Alone?’”, Journal for Contemporary Religion, 17, 3, pp. 335-338.

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Note

1 As Lassave indicates, an initial exchange between Steve Bruce, myself, and Robin Gill took place in 2002 under the general title “Praying Alone”. See Bruce, 2002; Davie, 2002; Gill, 2002. The second, on “Vicarious Religion”, involved Steve Bruce and David Voas (2010) on one hand, and myself on the other (Davie, 2010).

2 For an introduction to the work and publications of the International Panel on Social Progress, see Davie, Ammerman, 2019.

3 See https://info.lse.ac.uk/current-students/Faith-Centre for more information (accessed 24 November 2020).

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Per citare questo articolo

Riferimento cartaceo

Grace Davie, « Reflections on Pierre Lassave », Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 192 | 2020, 115-117.

Riferimento elettronico

Grace Davie, « Reflections on Pierre Lassave », Archives de sciences sociales des religions [Online], 192 | octobre-décembre 2020, Messo online il 01 janvier 2024, consultato il 19 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/assr/52208 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/assr.52208

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Autore

Grace Davie

University of Exeter – G.R.C.Davie@exeter.ac.uk

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Solamente il testo è utilizzabile con licenza © Archives de sciences sociales des religions. Salvo diversa indicazione, per tutti agli altri elementi (illustrazioni, allegati importati) la copia non è autorizzata ("Tutti i diritti riservati").

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