Comment: Conceptualizing Atheist Identity: Expanding Questions, Constructing Models, and Moving Forward
2013; Oxford University Press; Volume: 74; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/socrel/srt052
ISSN1759-8818
Autores Tópico(s)Religion, Society, and Development
ResumoThe developing social scientific literature on atheism is still working out the social significance, meaning, and processes of atheist identity formation. Scholars are also in the early stages of analyzing and understanding the collective and organizational activities of contemporary self-identified atheists and the relationship of this to theism, religious practice and organization, belief, and other social phenomena that have long been of central concern to sociology. Understanding atheists and their relationship to these social processes and the broader culture will require a clearer picture of how and why some people come to identify with atheism, and in some cases, incorporate this identity as a central component of who they are. Steve LeDrew’s 2013, “Discovering Atheism: Heterogeneity in Trajectories to Atheist Identity and Activism.” Sociology of Religion, article on atheists provides an opportunity to pause on some fairly basic questions about the nature of atheist identities and how best to conceptualize them, in order to advance our knowledge of not just atheists, but of the broader concepts and issues of identity, belief, boundaries, and culture, in empirically relevant, and theoretically useful ways. Here, I discuss some specifics for conceptualizing atheist identities in the contemporary context, and attempt to help clear a path for productive future research in this area.
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