SOCI 70 Study Guide - Final Guide: Deinstitutionalisation
Week 5 Readings
Love and Marriage
• deinstitutionalization of marriage
o not till death do us part but confluent love (a pure relationship – relationship
entered into for its own sake and maintained only as long as both partners get
satisfaction from it to stick around; trust through communication but possibility of
breakup always looms)
o resulting from modernization and globalization, traditions loose influence
• social norms that define people’s behavior within marriage are weakening
• `rise of unmarried childbearing, changing division of labor, emergence of same sex
marriage create context where people actively question traditional marriage
• carousel of intimate partnerships – results from embrace of two contradictory cultural
ideals: marriage and individualism
• marital resilience perspective, in contrast, contends that changes in family life have
actually strengthened the quality of intimate relationships, including marriages.
• dictate more individualism and a corresponding reduction in the responsibility we take
for those we love or loved “freedom of choice”
• Most people, including young adults, say things to researchers that suggest they hold fast
to the ideal of an exclusive, lifelong intimate partnership, most commonly a marriage.
Yet often people behave in ways more aligned with the “pure relationship”
Religion
• piety: individual belief and participation in formal religious worship
• Conventional Judeo-Christian religious belief remains very high in the United States, turn
to religion because of pain and dilemma
o religious participation has declined (and other civic participation)
• religion is one of the main ways of delineating group boundaries and collective identities
o religion is more broad than deep
• Americans have engaged less frequently in religious activities, but they have continued to
believe just as much in the supernatural and to be just as interested in spirituality
o American trends are similar to those in other advanced industrialized societies:
declining religious activities, stability in religious belief and increasing interest in
the meaning and purpose of life.
• religious movements of our day with the greatest potential for increasing religion’s
influence are not those that simply seek new converts or spur belief and practice, no
matter how successful they may be; movements with the greatest such potential are those
that seek to expand religion’s authority or influence in other domains.
• United States, the most significant contemporary movement to expand religious influence
probably is the effort to shape school curricula concerning evolution and creationism.
o reflect and shape the abiding role of religion in a society in ways that go beyond
the percentages of people who believe in God, pray, or attend religious services. n
• many religiously active people in the US but religion is organizationally separate from
government, economy, and other parts of society, limiting a religions’ capacity to change
the world even with lots of converts
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