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Article: Clio goes to church: revisiting and revitalizing historical thinking in the sociology of religion.(2006 Association for the Sociology of Religion Presidential Address)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Sociology of Religion
- Article date:
- March 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Association for the Sociology of Religion. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To be a member of any human community is to situate oneself with
regard to one's (its) past, if only by rejecting it. The past is
therefore a permanent dimension of the human consciousness, an
inevitable component of the institutions, values and other patterns of
human society. The problem for historians is to analyse the nature of
this "sense of the past" in society and to trace its changes and
transformations.
--Eric Hobsbawm (1997a:10)
After all, the only reason for life or a story is "What Happened
Next?"
--Jack Kerouac (1995:266)
On the occasion of his presidential address to the American Sociological Association more than forty years ago, the ...