Carlos Alberto Torres is Distinguished Professor of Education, UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, and Director of the Paulo Freire Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA. He is President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institutes in Sa o Paulo, Buenos Aires and at UCLA, and Past President of the Comparative International Education Society (CIES). CARLOS ALBERTO TORRES is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Widely published in Mexico and Latin America, he is the author or editor of twelve previous works in Spanish as well as numerous articles, reviews, and papers. A forthcomingbook, with Daniel A. Morales-Gomez in English, is entitled The State, Corporatist Politics, and Educational Policy Making in Mexico (New York: Praeger, 1990).

Klappentext

This book provides a critical sociology of religion in Latin America. Its purpose is to discuss the notion of religion as part of social, cultural, and political processes in capitalist societies, drawing on the classics of sociological thought (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Gramsci). Thus, churches are analyzed as organized institutions of religious mediation intimately linked to the production of social, cultural, and political hegemony in Latin America. The Catholic Church, the dominant church in the region, is analyzed in terms of its different faces, changes, and transformations from conquest and colonization through the changing winds of Vatican II to the revolutionary experiences of the popular church in the 1970s and 1980s.

This work will be of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, politics, religion, culture, and sociology. It also speaks to theologians and philosophers working in Latin America.

Inhalt

Preface The Critique of Religion in Marx Religion as a Primitive Phenomenon: Emile Durkheim Religion, Economic Rationality, and Civilization: Max Weber's Theses Religion as Historical Bloc: The Perspective of Antonio Gramsci Religion and Disciplinary Order: On Social Reproduction The Popular Church and the Process of Conscientization: Reflections on Possibilities and Contradictions Internal Tendencies of the Catholic Church: Typologies and Extrapolations Hypothesis for a Theoretical Framework for Religion and Churches in Latin America The Catholic Church in Argentina Bibliography Index