Rural folk religion reinforces group boundaries through local sacred markers

Evidence

In the towns, there was specialization, no trust, and order based on fear. Religion provided an idiom in terms of which the various elements of the total society could communicate with each other. It provided the terminology for both tribal trust and urban fear. It could intermittently help tribal cohesion to extend its scale, and to revitalize the polity by providing a new set of rulers. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2078 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Much the same can be said of the local community. We should avoid the romanticised view of community which has often surfaced in social analysis when traditional cultures are compared to the modern. I mean here to stress the importance of localised relations organised in terms of place, where place has not yet become transformed by distanciated time-space relations. In the large majority of pre-modern settings, including most cities, the local milieu is the site of clusters of interweaving social relations, the low spatial span of which provides for their solidity in time. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

To space-binding cultures he opposed time-binding cultures: cultures with interests in time—history, continuity, permanence, contraction; whose sym- bols were fiduciary—oral, mythopoetic, religious, ritualistic; and whose com- munities were rooted in place—intimate ties and a shared historical culture. The genius of social policy, he thought, was to serve the demands of both time and space; to use one to prevent the excesses of the other: to use historicism to check the dreams of reason and to use reason to control the passions of memory. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 624 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Farm names reflect traditions and social stability in rural communities. — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 225; Religion functioned as a shared communicative idiom bridging tribal trust and urban fear. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2078; Time-binding cultures value history, ritual symbols, and rooted community — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 624 (+8 more)

Related

• Religion functioned as a shared communicative idiom bridging tribal trust and urban fear. (similarity 0.87)
• Urban high religion teaches rule-following rather than group loyalty (similarity 0.84)
• The social scale a religion can bind grows with the deity’s remoteness (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Religion functioned as a shared communicative idiom bridging tribal trust and urban fear. #corroborates (0.82) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2078
• Time-binding cultures value history, ritual symbols, and rooted community #expands (0.80) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 624
• Local place-based relations gave pre-modern communities solidity #corroborates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247
• Farm names reflect traditions and social stability in rural communities. #expands (0.78) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 225
• The ritual view of communication maintains society in time through shared beliefs #corroborates (0.78) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 161
• Urban high religion teaches rule-following rather than group loyalty #expands (0.76)
• Traditional clan elders reasserted leadership through shir peace conferences in the north-west #exemplifies (0.74) — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 621
• Religious ceremonies built community that extended beyond individual plantations. #exemplifies (0.72)