1. Georges Balandier brings to light this shattered, dispersed shifting character of the modern imaginary, in which are inscribed the religious productions of modernity, in Le Détour. Pouvoir et Modernité. Paris: Fayard, 1985.

2. Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

3. Michel de Certeau and Jean-Marie Domenach, Le Christianisme éclaté. Paris: Seuil, 1974.

4. This culture was at once “sacred history, calendar, sacred geography, onomastic, action painting, ethics, hermeneutics, politics, encyclopedia”. Cf. Emile Poulat, “Le Catholicisme comme culture”, in Modernistica, Chap. III. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1982.

5. Max Weber in Le Savant et le Politique. Paris: Plon, 1959; and Essais sur la théorie de la Science. Paris: Plon, 1965.

6. These groups seek to develop unexplored resources of the individual personality, by using diverse techniques of sudden self-awareness and of releasing of inhibitions. A good number borrow simultaneously the therapeutic techniques popularized by a vulgarized psychology, and practices of asceticism and mediation taken from quite diverse mystical and contemplative traditions, above all oriental. Grafted onto these psycho-oriental syncretisms are the less long-standing hygienist and naturopathic currents, esoteric and neo-gnostic networks, training cycles in human relations and transactional psychology, etc.

7. Bryan Wilson, The Contemporary Transformations of Religion. London: Oxford University Press, 1976; Religion in Sociological Perspective. London: Oxford University Press, 1982; and his contribution “Secularization: the Inherited Model” in P. Hammond (ed.), The Sacred in a Secular Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

8. Danièle Hervieu-Léger (with the collaboration of Françoise Champion), “Religion, Modernité, Sécularisation”, in Vers un nouveau Christianisme? Introduction à la Sociologie du Christianisme Occidental, Chap. V. Paris: Cerf, 1986.

9. Emile Durkheim, Les Formes Elémentaires de la Vie Religieuse, Chap. I. Paris: PUF, 1968.

10. Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire. Paris: Gallimard, I: “La république”, 1984; II, III and IV: “La Nation”, 1987.

11. Or “implicite”: cf. Arnaldo Nesti, Il Religioso Implicito. Roma: Editrice Ianua, 1985.

12. I employ the term “belief” in the sense in which it is used by Michel de Certeau in “L'Institution du Croire. Note de Travail”, in Le Magistère, Institutions et Fonctionnement. Paris: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1983. He distinguishes the “belief” which is an act — what the enunciatior, whether individual or collective, makes of the enuciation which he affirms he believes — of “belief” which habitually designates the object of a conviction.

13. For example, the clearly differentiated perspectives of Clifford Geertz and Mary Douglas as to the “englobing” and “founding” character of the religious in primitive societies.

14. E. Buchner, L'Homme selon la Science, Paris, Trad. Letourneau, 1878, cité par J. Natanson, La Mort de Dieu. Essai sur l'Athéisme moderne. Paris: PUF, 1975.

15. Peter Berger, La Religion dans la Conscience moderne. Paris: Centurion, 1973.

16. Max Weber, Le Judaisme antique. Paris: Plon, 1970.

17. This automation of belief and the unlimited individualization of religious belief which corresponds to it produces the dislocation of all social-religious bonds. This is illustrated by “My Mind Is My Church” of Thomas Jefferson, presented by Robert Bellah as “expressions typical of religious organizations of the future”—Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World, p. 43. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.

18. Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion, p. 104. Op. cit. en note 2,.

19. A typical demonstration of this approach to the tradition is to be found in Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative. New York: Doubleday, 1979.

20. Cf. the critique developed by Michel de Certeau of “Mythe des origines” and of the dream of the “retour aux sources” in La Faiblesse de Croire (text established and presented by Luce Giard), p. 53 and following. Paris: Seuil, 1987.

21. Raoul Girardet shows the diversity of realities behind the term “tradition” (political in this case) in “Autour de la notion de tradition politique: essai de problématique”, Pouvoirs, nr 42 (Paris, PUF) 1987. Issue dedicated to La Tradition Politique.

22. Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire. Paris: 1952 (1st edition, 1925).

23. Marc Bloch, “Mémoire Collective: Tradition et Continuité”. Revue de Synthèse Historique, 1925.

24. In particular, those of Annick Percheron, on the political socialization of children and adolescents. Cf. “Socialisation et Tradition: Transmission et Invention du Politique”, Pouvoirs, Op. cit. en note 21.

25. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Tradition,Innovation and Modernity: Research Notes

Abstract