Society, meaning, religion – based on self-reference

Sociological theory in its present Alexandrian phase seems to be preoccupied with the interpretation of its classical authors.' Doing sociology of religion means doing empirical research on presumably religious persons or institutions; and it means returning to Emile Durkheim or Max Weber for theoretical inspiration. Religion, then, is supposed to work as an integrative factor on the level of total societies and as a motivational factor on the level of individuals. At both levels it supplies the meaning of meaning, a meaningful "ultimate reality". All symbols and values that operate at this highest level of last resources can be qualified as religion -and be it a civil religion in the sense of Rousseau or Bellah. We also know the objections. Religions can stimulate debates and fights. They also have disintegrative effects. Their motivational effect may well be a questioning of religion itself. It may be a social activity, but also a retreat. Statements about the function of religion resemble proverbs. They always need counter-proverbs to be operationally useful. Years ago Clifford Geertz (1966:1) aired the same complaint about dependence upon classical authors with respect to anthropological research. It may have been a mere accident that his lines were written in an essay on the cultural system of religion. But if this coincidence happened only by chance, it still was a significant accident. In fact, systems theory, at that time, was hardly able to deliver the goods. Parsons himself had started be presenting his classical authors. He attempted to show that the difference between society and individual, between social and motivational factors, and between Durkheim and Weber does not matter very much; and that it cannot matter very much in the field of sociology where this very difference is the core problem of theory. This preoccupation with a historical problem, with the split paradigm of individual and society, led Parsons to look for a solution by unfolding the framework of the general action system which could assign appropriate places to the personal system, the social system and other systems as well. He had to pay foreseeable costs. He had to present his generalizations as a purely analytical framework, based on an analysis of the components of the concept of