Sociology of Family, Households, Culture, Identity, Feminist Perspectives, and Religion

Sociology of Family and Households

Defining the Family

• A family is defined as a group of two or more individuals connected by birth, marriage, or adoption who reside together. It is a socially recognized group.

Different Forms of Family

• Nuclear Family: Consists of two parents and their children (biological or adopted).

• Extended Family: Extends beyond the nuclear family to include aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc., living nearby or in the same household.

• Classical Extended Family: Three or more generations living together in one household.

• Modified Extended Family: Families living apart but maintaining contact via phone or other means.

• Beanpole Family: A multi-generational family that is long and thin with few aunts, uncles, and cousins.

• Patriarchal Family: A family where men hold the majority of the power and importance.

• Matriarchal Family: A family structure where the female is the head of the family.

• Symmetrical Family: A family where roles and responsibilities are shared equally between partners, both inside and outside the home.

• Step Family: Formed upon the remarriage of a divorced or widowed person, including their child or children.

• Lone Parent Family: Consisting of only one parent and his or her child.

• Gay/Lesbian Family: Families consisting of same-sex couples.

• Single Person Household: Consists of a person living alone in a separate house.

Importance of Family Study

• The study of family and marriage is a crucial area of sociology because virtually everyone is raised in a family context, and the majority of adults are or have been married.

• Family is described as a group of people related by kinship ties (blood relations, marriage, civil partnership, or adoption).

• Cohabitation is increasingly common as an alternative to marriage or civil partnership and is considered a family relationship.

• The family, as an institution, plays a key role in socializing children into the culture of their society.

• Forms of family can vary widely across societies and time periods.

Is the Family a Universal Social Institution?

• George Peter Murdock, in his book Social Structure based on a study of 250 societies, defines the family as:
  >“The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes who have a socially approved sexual relationship, one or more children own or adopted of the sexually cohabiting persons.”

• From this definition, the family is seen as an important institution with key functions in maintaining society and is considered a universal social institution.

• Even though most societies have arrangements for producing, rearing, and socializing children, these arrangements do not always rely on the family or biological parents.

Alternative Arrangements

• Kathleen Gough's study in Southern India found no nuclear family structure before the 19th century.

  • Women had sexual relations with multiple men (up to 12), and the biological father was unknown.

  • The mother’s brother was responsible for the care of the mother and children, rather than the biological father.

• This contrasts with societies where biological parents are primarily responsible for rearing children.

• Among the Nayar, there was no direct link between sexual relations, childbearing, child-rearing, and cohabitation.

• Kathleen Gough defined the family as a relationship between a woman and one or more persons in which a child born to the woman is given full birth status rights.

Communes and Kibbutzim

• Communes that developed in Western Europe in the 1960s aimed for an alternative style of living with emphasis on collective living rather than individual family units.

  • Adults and children lived and worked together.

  • Children were the responsibility of the group rather than biological parents.

• In early Kibbutzim communities, child-rearing was separated from the marriage relationship.

  • Children were kept apart from their natural parents and raised in children’s houses by professional parents (nurse, house mother, and educator).

  • Natural parents had limited interaction with their children.

  • Children were seen as the responsibility of the Kibbutz community as a whole.

  • Children moved through a series of children’s houses with others of the same age group until adulthood.

• The family, as defined by Murdock, did not exist in these communities because family members did not share a common residence, nor was their relationship characterized by economic cooperation.

• Murdock’s definition can be seen as excessively specific.

Alternative Family Arrangements Today

• Single-parent families are increasingly common in Western societies, usually headed by a woman.

• Sheeran (2003) argues that the female carer core is a more basic family unit than identified by Murdock.

  • Sheeran admits that a minority of lone/single-parent households are headed by men.

  • The female carer core is not the basis of every individual family, but it is the basis of most families in all societies.

• Same-sex couples with children are becoming more common.

• Such households contradict Murdock’s claim of the universality of the family.

  • These households do not contain two adults of both sexes but two of the same sex with children.

• Whether the family is regarded as universal ultimately depends on how the family is defined.

• A wide variety of domestic arrangements have been devised by humans, distinct from conventional families of modern industrial societies.

• Diana Gittins: “While it can be argued that all societies have beliefs and rules on mating, sexuality, gender, and age relations, the content of rules is culturally and historically specific and variable, and is in no way universal.”

Theoretical Perspectives on Family

Functionalism

• Functionalists see the family as important for keeping society running smoothly.

• The family teaches children how to behave, supports its members emotionally and financially, and helps maintain order.

• Talcott Parsons said families are great at raising kids and giving adults stability.

• According to functionalists, the family is an important organ in maintaining the ‘body’ of society, similar to how the heart maintains the human body.

• Prerequisites -> basic needs that society must provide for its members to survive.

• Functionalists are interested in how the family fits with other social institutions.

• George Peter Murdock identifies four functions of the family:

  • Sexual: Expressing sexuality in a socially approved context.

  • Reproduction: Providing stability for reproduction and rearing of children.

  • Socialization: Unit of primary socialization. Children learn socially acceptable behavior and culture, building shared ideas and beliefs.

  • Economic: Providing food and shelter for family members.

• Murdock suggests these functions are necessary in any society and the nuclear family universally carries them out.

• Talcott Parsons examined family life in the 1950s and argued two basic functions are found in every society:

  • Primary socialization of children: Learning and internalizing society's culture, such as language, history, values.

    • Society will not exist if the new generations are not socialized into accepting society's basic norms and values.

    • Families are factories producing human personalities, providing emotional warmth and security.

  • Stabilization of adult personalities: Parsons wanted to show how the family stabilizes adult personalities through the sexual division of labor.

    • Women have an expressive role in the family, providing warmth, security, and emotional support to their children and partner.

    • The male partner carries out an instrumental role as the family breadwinner, which leads to stress and anxiety.

    • The wife's expressive role relieves this tension by providing love and understanding.

    • Together, the division of labor into expressive instrumental roles contributes to the stabilization of human personalities.

New Right

• New Right theorists see the traditional nuclear family as the best way to create a stable and healthy society.

• Families should have a clear structure, with a married mother and father raising their children.

• This type of family teaches proper values, like hard work and responsibility.

• They worry that changes like single-parent families can harm society.

• The New Right supports traditional values and institutions, with views similar to the functionalist approach on the role, importance, and functions of the traditional family in society.

• The nuclear family performs important and beneficial functions by:

  • Providing emotional security for children.

  • Socializing children into the culture of society.

  • Establishing respect for others.

  • Promoting conformity to social and moral values and norms.

• The New Right sees the traditional nuclear family (two natural parents with traditional gender roles) as the best means of raising children to become conformist and responsible adults.

• They view the traditional family life as under threat.

  • Social changes like rising divorce rates, stepfamilies, lone/single parents, cohabitation, births outside marriage, civil partnerships, etc., undermine social stability.

  • Rising lack of respect and anti-social behavior among the young, lack of discipline in school and educational underachievement, alcohol and drug abuse, and dependency on welfare state benefits decline traditional family life.

• Murray and Marsland state that the welfare state has weakened personal responsibility and self-help and the importance of support from families.

• Seen that welfare support provided for lone parents encourages single women to have children they could not otherwise afford, leading to a dependency culture and work-shy underclass.

• A return to traditional family values with government policies could include measures to reduce divorce and births outside marriage and reduce welfare state benefits to non-conventional family units will resolve societal issues.

Marxism

• Marxists believe the family helps keep society unequal, benefiting the rich and teaching workers to accept their position.

• Families also prepare people to follow rules, which helps capitalism stay in control.

• Marxists adopt a structural perspective on the family and how it contributes to maintaining society's structure.

• They do not regard the nuclear family as functionally necessary or a universal institution.

• Marxists see the family within the framework of a capitalist society based on private property, driven by profit, and filled with conflict between social classes with opposing interests.

• The nuclear family is concerned with social control by teaching its members to submit to the capitalist class.

• The family reproduces unequal relationships and works to dampen inevitable social conflicts.

• Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) believed the monogamous nuclear family developed as a means of passing on private property to heirs.

  • Couples with monogamy provide proof of paternity, so property is passed on to the right people.

  • A woman’s position in the family was like prostitutes; a financial deal was struck. She provided sex and heirs (kids) in exchange for economic security from her husband.

• Althusser (1971) argues that for capitalism to survive, the working class must submit to the ruling class.

• Althusser suggests the family is one of the ideological state apparatuses.

• The education system and the media are also concerned with social control.

• The ruling class maintains false class consciousness by winning the hearts and the minds of the working class.

• Zaretsky (1996) emphasizes the ideological role of the family in propping up capitalism.

  • The family is an escape route from the oppression and exploitation of work. It is a private place where people (especially male workers) can enjoy a personal life and be valued as individuals.

  • This release in the family helps them live with their daily oppression in the world of work.

• This seems a romanticized view of the family, without conflicts.

• Marxist feminists have pointed out this is a male Marxist perspective, as much of the work that makes the family a haven is done by, and at the expense of, women.

Feminism

• Feminists see the family as a place where gender inequality is reinforced.

• Traditional family roles often put more pressure on women (housework and childcare), while men have more power.

• Feminists want to challenge these unfair roles and make families more equal.

Postmodernism

• Postmodernists see the family as diverse, flexible, and constantly changing.

• There’s no single “normal” family structure because society is more individualistic now.

• Families can take many forms, reflecting personal choices and varying lifestyles.

• Family roles and relationships are shaped by culture, media, and personal experiences.

Culture and Identity

• Culture includes language, beliefs, values, etc., learned and making up people's way of life in any society.

• Culture is passed on from one generation to the next through socialization.

• Different aspects of culture include the dominant culture, subculture, folk culture, high culture, and popular culture.

• Postmodernists believe that the distinction between high culture and popular culture is weakening due to mass markets and consumption patterns.

• People can now pick and mix due to wider cultural choices and products available.

• Global culture results from globalization, where the cultures in different countries become more alike.

• Identity relates to how individuals or groups define themselves and how others see and define them.

• Identity is fluid and changeable, while personality is a more fixed aspect of a person’s character.

• Various sociologists discuss the concept of identity, such as Lawler, Mead, Becker, Giddens, and Stutton

• Types of identities include individual or personal identity, social identity, and collective identity.

• Some people have multiple identities and stigmatized identities.

• The socialization process is a lifelong process from birth to death.

• Primary and secondary agents help in this process.

• Primary socialization happens in early childhood, and secondary socialization takes place beyond the family (e.g., school, peer group, workplace, religious organizations, and mass media).

• Theoretical approaches explaining the role of socialization in forming culture and identity include functionalism, Marxism, and social action approaches.

• Identities people adopt are formed within the cultures and subcultures to which they belong.

• Factors impacting identity include social class, gender and sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity.

• Social class has a major influence on life chances. Classes include the upper class, middle class, working class, and underclass with members sharing common values and similar behavior patterns.

• Gender is an important source of identity. Gender differences are socially constructed by agencies of socialization that guide people toward gender stereotypes and encourage identification with these stereotypes.

• Primary and secondary agents of socialization establish traditional gender roles and mold males and females into hegemonic gender identities.

• Sexual behavior also impacts identity. Normal sexual behavior is part of any society's culture and is established through socialization.

• Ethnicity is a characteristic of a social group relying upon a shared identity formed and transmitted across generations.

• The concept of diaspora-that is the spreading of an ethnic population from its original homeland.

• Nationality refers to stories, images, and symbols that help people construct their national identity.

• National identity is promoted and maintained by heritage tourism.

• Postmodernists argue that social factors like gender, ethnicity, and sex are no longer significant in forming identities.

• Lyotard states these meta-narratives no longer explain adopted identities and differences between them.

• Postmodernists believe the leisure industries, tourism, mass media, and shopping are leaving a greater impact on identity.

• Globalization impacts identity through diversity, international tourism, migration and diasporas, changing youth culture, and the internet.

Feminist Perspectives on the Family

• Feminist approaches have greatly influenced family studies, introducing new areas such as housework, domestic violence, impacts on women’s careers, and inequality.

• Feminists view family and marriage as sources of female oppression and gender inequality.

• Different strands of feminism include liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism, and difference feminism.

Liberal Feminism

• Liberal feminism recognizes how women’s roles in childcare and housework can adversely affect their careers and health.

• The best way to improve women's position is through reform measures, establishing equal opportunities for women and men to make free choices.

• These measures include:

  • Changing socialization and parenting practices.

  • Establishing equality in maternity and paternity leave.

  • Better and cheaper childcare.

  • More sharing of housework and childcare tasks with men.

  • Stronger action against domestic violence.

• Jennifer Sommerville (2000), a liberal feminist, argues that young women today are not sympathetic, though they feel sadness, and that feminists have failed to reward the progress that has been done for women.

• Women have more availability to do a paid work even when they are married and have children and have a choice whether to get married, cohabit, be single mothers, enter lesbian relationships or live on their own.

• Despite all this, Sommerville states that women still feel disappointed with their men’s involvement in family’s responsibilities.

• She does recognize the fact that women might do without male partners especially when they feel that their man are inadequate.

• She says that women can get their sense of fulfilment from their children, but unlike Greer, Sommerville does not believe that living in a metriphocal household would be enough for womens fulfillment.

• She recalls on the high figures of remarriages and argues that motherhood is not an adequate substitute for adult relationship of intimacy and companionship for most women.

• She concludes that what is needed are more policies supporting equality which will help the female cope with practicalities with family life.

Radical Feminism

• Radical feminists focus on patriarchy as the main obstacle to women’s equality.

• Greer argues that many relationships between men and women remain patriarchal and exploitative.

• Radical feminists see the family as a patriarchal institution benefiting men at the expense of women.

• They advocate for women to reject the family and relationships with men and in conclusion see men as being the main cause of female oppression.

Marxist Feminism

• Not only the institution that reproduces future workers for the capitalists but also as that institution which reproduces future workers one obedient and submissive.

• Indeed most Marxists believe families tend to ‘act as a safety- valve’ in providing a place where children can be conceived, born and reared (brought up) in relative safety.

• The family is providing tomorrows labor force, the family is actually leading to the exploitation of women.
  *. Women not only produce children and take care of them but also contributes in the reproduction of attitudes and values that are essential for an efficient work force under capitalism.

• Cooper argues that the family is an institution in which individuals are conditioned to learn, to conform and submit to authority.

• In a way the family is laying the foundations for an obedient and submissive workforce required by capitalism.

• Diane Feeley argues that children are being socialized to accept their place in a class-stratified society, to accept and submit to authority.

Difference Feminism

• They tend to look at variations in family situations of women living in different forms of family life.

• Their theories are based on the existence of increased pluralism in the forms of family life.

• Women in single-parent families are in a different situation than women in two-parent families; women in lesbian families are in a different position than women in heterosexual families; Poor women are in a different position than middle class women etc…

• Believed that if there is more than one type of family, then the idea of the ‘family’ is misleading.

• It is impossible to claim that the family performs particular functions for men and capitalists.

• They believe that the family is antisocial because it is too much idealised so much so that institutions outside the family such as children’s homes, old peoples homes and students residences are seen as unsatisfactory and lack meaning.

• Barret and McIntosh account for the amount of violence and sexual abuse in family life.

• They note that 25% of reported violent crimes occur within the family context between violent husbands and their wives. Also the same goes for rape cases taking place within marriage.

• Finally they recognize the caring relationships within family members but they do not think that such relationships can develop only within the family life.

Post-Modern Feminists

• Believe that contemporary society is rapidly changing and full of uncertainties, with people questioning a whole range of traditionally accepted values, morals and norms.

• Individuals are rejecting ideas about the traditional family as a main stay of social order.

• Contemporary society have become fragmented into a mass of individuals who are making their own choices about what they choose to believe in and how they live their daily lives.

• Two key features of post modern society are are diversity and consumer choice.

• Diversity and consumer choice are the result of the disintegration of traditional family life.

• People no longer feel bound by traditional ideas and expectations about marriage, life long monogamy, parent hood and family life.

• Rising divorce rates, cohabitation, multiple partners, serial monogamy and birth outside marriage all reflect the way people are adopting new lifestyles and ways of relating to one another suited to their own needs, rather than being constrained by traditional norms.

Relationships

• Relationships are difficult and filled with anxiety. Desire for freedom and escape.

• Post modernists see all the above changes as simply reflecting individuals making their consumer choices.

• Individuals pick and choose and mix and match relationships.

• The rise of alternative family units such as cohabitation, multiple partners and more diversity in sexual relationships, with greater tolerance of homosexuality make the notion of the traditional family as the social institution redundant, as it has been replaced by a huge range of ever changing personal relationships and household arrangements in which people are choosing to live.

• More Working Parents

• Smaller Families

• Rise of Single-Parent Families

• More Diverse Family Structures

Diversity and change in family households

• In the past intimate relationships, people’s personal lives and the life course of individuals where strongly influenced by traditional social norms and customs.

• The life course basically refers to the sequence of events and actions in an individuals life history, the choices they make and the meaning they give to significant stages and transitions of their life such as the transition from childhood to adult hood or events such as marriage or cohabitation, retirement, divorce etc.

• The life course was infect compulsory as there were strong social norms prescribing that this was the proper and expected way that people should live their lives.

• Since the late 1960s and early 1970 s there has been a serious of major change sin peoples life courses.

Individualisation thesis

• The traditional social relationships, bonds, customs, values and beliefs that used to strongly regulate peoples lives in the narrowest detail have been losing more of their meaning and influence.

• This means the traditional rules governing peoples personal relationships have weakened and became more fluid, unclear and uncertain.

• According to Bauman in this world of growing individualisation uncertainty and constant change, kinship networks are weak and people are constantly searching for security.

Individualization

• The underlying causes of growing individualisation lie in developments in modern medicine such as contraception and artificial insemination which enable sexuality and reproduction to be separated from each other.

• Another factor has to do with the growing equality of women particularly in education and employment, which has reduced women’s economic significance.

• The growth of individualisation has also meant it is no longer clear who or what is part of the family. People no longer talk of husband and wives but of couples, partnerships, relationships, life companions etc.

Diversity

• In the 1980s, Rapoports et al. (1982) argues that families in Britain today are in transition from coping in a society in which there was a single overriding norm of what a family should be like to a society in which a plurality of norms are recognized as legitimate and indeed desirable.

  • Organizational diversity

  • Cultural diversity

  • Class diversity

  • Life course diversity

  • Cohort diversity

  • Sexual diversity

Divorce Rate

• For many centuries in the west and other parts of the world marriage was regarded as virtually indissoluble.

• A divorce was granted only in very limited cases such as the non-consummation of marriage. Today however legal divorce is possible in virtually all of the industrialised and developing societies of the world even in malta is legally recognised.

• A)Changes in the law, b) Changes in society

• Around two thirds of divorce petitions are initiated by and granted to women.

• women’s expectations of life and the quality of their relationships have risen during the course of the last century.

Family and Household statistics include:

• Gay and Lesbian partnerships

• Remarriage

• Step families

• Cohabitation

• Staying in and Kinship relations

• Beanpole families

Growing secularisation

• Greater availability of a more effective contraception

• Increasing life expectancy and changing patterns of marriage

• A) Changing roles of women

Cohabitation

• Young people are more likely to cohabit than older people. This reflects the evidence that older people, compared to younger people are more likely to think that living together outside marriage is always wrong This may partly be the result of growing secularisation.

• Individuals are less controlled by traditional structures and institutions and there is less loyalty and commitment demanded by the social norms of marriage and family life.

• According to Lavin enable couples to pursue the intimacy of being in a couple but at the same time preserve their individual autonomy and identity.

Kin Relations

• Families have been getting smaller as the number of births have been dropping, with women having fewer children and delaying having them until they are older and more women choosing to remain childless.

• Single parent household with dependent children is overwhelmingly a female.

• Greater economic independence of women, improved contraception, reproductive technology is available to women, changing social attitudes etc.

• Research shows that a lot more divorced men remarry than divorced women.

Family Diversity

• Gay/Lesbian partnerships – “families of choice” has sometimes been applied to gain partnerships to reflect the positive and creative forms of life that homosexual couples pursue together. Civil partnerships are legally recognised unions between two people of the same sex

• Women tend to do more of the housework and childcare in heterosexual marriages but there are no such expectations than homosexual partnerships.
  Remarriage

Step Families

• There is usually a biological parent living elsewhere whose influence over the child or children is likely to remain powerful

• Cooperative relations between divorced people are often strained when one or both remarry. If the non resident parents insist that children visit them at the same time as before the marriage, the tensions involved in mixing such a newly established household can be worsened.

• There are a few established norms which define the relationship between step parent and step child.

Cohabitation

• When two people live together in a sexual relationship without being married.
  Staying in (living alone)

• There are several factors which explain the increase in the number of people living alone in modern western societies. One is a trend towards later marriages and another is the high rate of divorce. There is the growing number of older people in the population whose partners have died.

• Being single means different things at different periods of the life course. Is part of the societal trend that values independence at the expense of family life.

Bean-pole families

• Julia Brannen compared contemporary families to a beanpole.

• That today there are few links between those from the same generation for example siblings and cousins and more links between generations. This means that contemporary families are now long and thin just like a bean pole.

• As older social structures of class, religion and gender become weak multigenerational family bonds are strengthening.

Gender Inequality

• Segregated vs joint segregated rules Young and Willmot argue that the modern family is what they called a symmetrical family. Both partners share household chores, childcare and decision making and both partners are more likely to be involved in paid employment.
  Inequalities in the domestic division of labour

• Women still performed the majority of domestic and childcare tasks around the whole even when they have paid jobs themselves.

• Three fourths of households now have dual incomes and both partners work but she found that women still take responsibility for most of the housework, women still take time off to look after sick children besides Harkness found that working women with children put twice as many hours into housework as their partners and mothers working full time in dual earner faced long working hours with the burden of unpaid housework and childcare responsibilities increasing the time pressures for many women.

The nature and value of domestic labour

• Housework is the second largest cause of domestic roles, after money. It is women who are most likely to have to make sacrifices if money is tight to buy the children clothes and to make sure other family members are properly fed.
  According to Shelton, women are already working in the paid sector, and this extra work amounts to a second shift.

The emotional side of family life

• Research shows that women take the major responsibility for emotional labour and managing the emotional side of family life.

Unequal distribution of household tasks

• rooted in the assumption that men and women operate in different spheres of life which leads to gendered expectations of their duties. All this reinforces traditional gender roles learned during early socialization.
  Intimate Violence

• Domestic violence, elder abuse and the abuse of children are the most disturbing aspects.
  Abuse of Children

• Child sexual abuse exists at all levels of the social hierarchy, as well as in institutional settings such as residential care, educational establishments and churches.
  Domestic Violence can be defined as physical abuse directed by one member of the family against another or others.

Religion and Sociology

• Sociology of religion examines diversity of beliefs and rituals, requiring sensitivity to believers' convictions while maintaining detachment.
  Religions are commonly defined as a belief in God or gods and perhaps an after life, but they also involve worship in religious buildings such as temples, churches, Mosks and during religious things such as praying or eating or not eating certain foods etc.
  Sociology studies social reality through various theoretical perspectives.
  Macro-level studies view religion as a fundamental social institution. Micro-level studies focus on everyday interaction processes.

Inclusive definition

• Functionalist in orientation. Provides people with answers to enduring questions of existence, offers hope and helps to bind people together in solidarity.
  Exclusive definition

• Rejects the functionalism of inclusive ones and instead they look into defining religions by reference to the substance of their varied beliefs.
  Definition in use

• social constructionism and social constructionists look at how the meaning of religion has changed over time, how people use the concept for their own purposes and whether that use is increasing or diminishing.

Religion Theories

Approach and View

• Sociologists avoid influencing research with personal beliefs, focusing on solidarity, acknowledging religion as both a source and a factor of social destruction.
  Did not delve into that much detail in their discussion about religion, however they all thought that traditional religions would be gradually destroyed as science and reason are providing lots of answers to questions of abstract meaning.

Karl Marx:

• Believes it alleviates alienation of labor by capitalism; he considers the purpose or function in society.

Emile Durkheim:

Max Weber:

• Protestant work ethic encourages capitalism, examines eastern cultural influence (eastern and western religious views are greatly different).

Secularization

• In sociology of religion, secularization describes religion's waning influence in various social spheres.

• Religious beliefs have not fallen quite as dramatically as church attendance, which might support the characterization of western Europe as a region of ‘Believing without Belonging’ (Davie 1994).

*Bruce and Voas (2010) argue that this does not give any insight into how those who are not involved in organised religion actually perceive religion.

Secularization can be evaluated on several aspects or dimensions.

Aspects and Dimensions:

A)Quantitative measures This has to do with the level of membership of religious organisations. Statistics and official records show how many people belong to a church or other religious body and attend services/ceremonies. 2) social influences Wealth and prestige concerns how far churches and other religious organisations maintained with influence, wealth and prestige.
***C) ***beliefs and values (religiosity) we need a better understanding of the past to see how far religiosity has declined. Supporters of the the secularisation which is the center of life. Opponents of the thesis contest this idea which is an example of lukewarm.

The French sociologist is Maffesoni suggests an alternative assessment of secularisation and the process which people less are with collective bodies and even family etc etc.

Robert Bellah’s study’s state that America has seen a long term movement away from unified, public form of religion, which help individuals that do not do religion.

Conclusion: In a long term perspective, traditional religion in most western industrialized is lessening, but with less secularisation and is something that can improve to follow in this regard.

Organizations that are Theological and the Religious Theories

• Max Weber describes organization continuum based on convection. Charms (like conventional and well established churches).
  Some scholars have argues that they should be seen as a response to the proves of liberalisation and secularisation. People who feel that traditional religions have become ritualistic and devoid of spiritual meaning may find comfort and a greater sense of community in religious movements. Quantitative Measures This has to do with the level of membership of religious organisations. with a well organised system.
  Religious movements

  religious movements Tend to pass through certain phases of Development:

1st phase – In the first phase, the movement derives its life and cohesion from a powerful leader. Max These leaders are considered to have inspiration qualities and that leader inspires other to proclaim new messages.
2nd phase – The second phase occurs following the death of a leader to create rule and laws.

Those leaders might question their teachings setting up and brake away
Barker notes that new religious movements may be seen as those that have Risen to since 19
A world affirming is that movement of therapy groups ,the name Suggests world affirming movements do not reject those values. Ex scientologist ( Tom Cruise and John ) through training our mind become supernatural and be given great favor.
In view of quantitative research the pattern of decline.
Social influences of these organizations. Believe in religious values for greater understanding.
Conclusion: In a long term perspective, religion is most most has a noticeable action and has much been secularised.