Using the tools of sociological theory, Robert Brenneman seeks to discover why a pot-smoking, gun-wielding "homie" gang member would want to trade in la vida loca for a Bible and the buttoned-down lifestyle of an evangelical hermano (brother in Christ) - and to what extent this strategy works for the many youth who have tried it.
Robert Brenneman provides a razor-sharp awareness of the Kurds roots in the Middle East as well as their massive urban migration and the resulting cultural upheaval. Based on long-term research, this richly layered ethnography takes readers on a journey from the mountains of Ararat, the alleged resting place of Noahs Ark, to urban environments in a megalopolis like Istanbul, Turkey. Brenneman, who lived among the Kurds in both Iraq and Turkey, conducted fieldwork in such places as refugee camps, destroyed mountain villages, and tea gardens in Istanbul. He examines core and changing aspects of Kurdish culture, including human rights, ethnic identity, womens roles, family and community, religious practices, and the transition from oral tradition to literacy. In addition to providing insight into the worldview of the Kurdish people from antiquities to current events, the author points to key lessons that can be drawn from the ongoing dilemmas they face.
As physical structures that shape and constrain human interaction, religious buildings play a formative role in human communities across the globe. Yet social science has typically paid them little regard. This book applies a sociological perspective to the way religious buildings are shaped by the communities that conceive of and build them and how the same buildings act back on those human communities. Applying theoretical insights from the sociology of architecture, the sociology of religion, and interaction ritual chain theory, the authors examine religious buildings as profoundly social structures with lasting consequences for the persons and groups who designed, built, or adapted them and for those who gather inside them as well as those who live near them"--
The social sciences have mostly ignored the role of physical buildings in shaping the social fabric of communities and groups. Although the emerging field of the sociology of architecture has started to pay attention to physical structures, Brenneman and Miller are the first to combine the light of sociological theory and the empirical method in order to understand the impact of physical structures on religious groups that build, transform, and maintain them. Religious buildings not only reflect the groups that build them or use them; these physical structures actually shape and change those who gather and worship there. Religious buildings are all around us. From Wall Street to Main Street, from sublime and historic cathedrals to humble converted storefronts, these buildings shape the global religious landscape, "building faith" among those who worship in them while providing a testament to the shape and duration of the faith of those who built them and those who maintain them. Building Faith explores the social impact of religious buildings in places as diverse as a Chicago suburb and a Guatemalan indigenous Mayan village, all the while asking the questions, "How does space shape community?" and "How do communities shape the spaces that speak for them?
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