- Hardcover: 172 pages
- Publisher: OUP USA (24 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195162021
- ISBN-13: 978-0195162028
- Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 14.1 x 1.9 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,755,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture
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"Well written and clearly argued, Moral Believing Animals is both a searching critique of recent social theory and an important first step toward the articulation of a richer model of human personhood, motivation, and culture."--INSight
"A concise book that is enjoyable and easy to read, offering a far-reaching synthesis of a variety of philosophical and sociological approaches.... Smith masterfully situates many of the key current debates while calling attention to their historical origins and implicit assumptions."--Contemporary Sociology
"An admirable model of wide-ranging and rich yet focused scholarship."-- The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
"This is as good as books get: visionary yet rigorous, polemical yet constructive, bold yet careful, engaging yet precise. Smith argues that to be human is to be a moral believing animal interacting with a social and cultural order that is itself a moral order. His discussion, while aimed at his fellow social scienti
Product Description
What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals, Christian Smith offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith's work is based on the assumption (unfashionable in certain circles) that human beings have an identifiable and peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Smith argues that all people are at bottom believers, whose lives, actions, and institutions are constituted, motivated, and governed by narrative traditions and moral orders on which they inescapably depend. This approach - which has profound consequences for how we think about knowledge, culture, social action, institutions, religion, and the task of social sciences - will be of interest to scholars in sociology, social theory, religious and cultural studies, psychology, and anthropology.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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4 reviews
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Cutting Edge Treatment of Religion and Social Science
1 Aug 2003
Format:Hardcover
Sociologists have been waiting a long time
for something like this. Though the sociology
of religion has come a long way, works that
unpack the religious and philosophical
assumptions of sociology have been few
and far between. Besides Peter Berger's Rumor
of Angels and Robert Bellah's Beyond Belief,
I'm not sure that anything comes as close as
Moral, Believing Animals in laying the groundwork
for a dialogue between religion and social science.
for something like this. Though the sociology
of religion has come a long way, works that
unpack the religious and philosophical
assumptions of sociology have been few
and far between. Besides Peter Berger's Rumor
of Angels and Robert Bellah's Beyond Belief,
I'm not sure that anything comes as close as
Moral, Believing Animals in laying the groundwork
for a dialogue between religion and social science.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
insightful thoughts on personhood
26 April 2011
Format:Paperback
This book represents the first attempt of one of the leading minds in the sociology of religion to address the question of what exactly are human persons - one of the central units of analysis in the study of society. With the obvious nod to Alasdair MacIntyre (and his work Moral Reasoning Animals), Smith points out how central to any concept of the human person is the recognition that we are, as the title intimates, moral (in that we have a sense of there being right and wrong things, actions, etc. -though that doesn't mean we share similar moral content!) and believing (ideas and concepts fill and shape the way we view our world). With that in mind, Smith than looks at the consequences of this for how we view motivations, narratives, culture, etc.
This thought provoking work should be viewed as an important transition point from Smith's early substantive work on religion, motivations, and action (Resisting Reagan and the Emergence of Liberation Theology) as well as his work on beliefs, culture and collective identity (American Evangelicalism) toward his most recent tome that draws a more complete and complex picture of the human person (What is a Person?).
This thought provoking work should be viewed as an important transition point from Smith's early substantive work on religion, motivations, and action (Resisting Reagan and the Emergence of Liberation Theology) as well as his work on beliefs, culture and collective identity (American Evangelicalism) toward his most recent tome that draws a more complete and complex picture of the human person (What is a Person?).
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
An understandable and interesting book
26 May 2007
Format:Hardcover
I read this book for a Sociology capstone class and found it very interesting. Smith writes in an understandable way and presents his theory in an organized way. I really like his theory of personhood.
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