Blog
Sociology on Tour
18th July 2009
Apologies for the silence from this blog, but I’m on holiday in the USA and its taken me a bit to get my netbook working with the wireless access.
Anyway, I’m on holiday in California and finding lots of interesting cultural differences and points of sociological interest. Of course one thing many Brit visitors notice about the USA is the different attitude towards religion. Like all hotel rooms though I guess, mine has a copy of the Bible tucked away in a drawer, in case you get bored of American TV. I wonder what Steve Bruce and the secularisation theorists would say about that? Here I am in one of, if not the, most technologically sophisticated and economically developed countries in the world, and that’s my comforting reading material. Interesting. Out on the streets here in LA, there is likewise, no shortage of temples, churches, and people handing out leaflets offering spiritual salvation. It’s an amazing mix of beliefs and styles, but secularized? I don’t think so. And for the Durkheimians amongst you, everywhere you go, you see evidence of the tenacity with which Americans hold to a belief in the values of their own society. At last night’s baseball game, watching the LA Dodgers - in indifferent form - we were treated to the US national anthem as well as a chorus of ‘God Bless America’ . For us Brits - take comfort - it was 60s night and all the pop music was British!
All for now.