RELS 161 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Cultural Diversity, Dialectic, Bullock Cart

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELS 161
• Professor: Ian Alexander Cuthbertson

Document Summary

*peter berger reading - will be on quiz* Family unit of production and basic unit for the reproduction of society. Limited transportation technology = limited community: popularity of travel books/logs. Limited communities = stable identities: strangers not coming in = new ideas not coming in. Craft persons and apprentices = connection with work. Discourse surrounding traditional society (in contrast with modern society) is sometimes nostalgic. The past (and contemporary agrarian societies) viewed as involving a simpler way of life. Modernity can be associated with a certain "malaise" - modern life deemed complicated and dehumanizing: being caught in the gears of a machine we did not make. Science and technology [modern progress] have not given the average human being a greater understanding of the world in which she lives. Science and technology have changed the ways humans understand the world - not by increasing knowledge but by changing what counts as knowledge.