Modalities of Social Authority: Suggesting an Interface for Religious and Social History

Abstract

The dominant approaches in Canadian social history have focused, for the most part, upon categories of region, class formation, and women’s experience (more recently informed by theories of gender). Because of the priorities placed upon these “primary identities”, religious experience, both in its social and personal aspects, has tended to form a “neutral” backdrop to the more active dimensions of secular political and social thought. We thus propose two interdependent analytical frameworks through which to explore religious forms and practices as integral elements of social formation: the ongoing function of religious institutions as an apparatus of social regulation; and the concomitant search for cultural authority (and political power) by which both groups and institutions sought to articulate a particular vision of the social order.