The enchantment of sociology

the long version

This book is an unusual sociological study of the link between theology and culture that addresses the pursuit of enchantment in a culture of postmodernity. It involves a novel reading of Simmel, Bourdieu and the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar to respond to Weber's fears regarding disenchantment in contemporary culture. The notion of charisma is related to Bourdieu's concept of habitus in the context of sociological self-understandings embodied in the term 'reflexivity'. Sociology is applied to sociology itself to discern its own domestic response to theological readings of culture and to map out a new model for understanding. This gives a novel turn to debates on postmodernity and the sociology of culture, one that argues against assumptions of secularisations. It seek to give theologians a sociological means of understanding culture which they have hitherto lacked. This is a controversial book that should open out new debates on the connection between theology, sociology and culture.