Silicon Valley: a case study from the keys of the sociology of religion
Keywords:
sociology of religion; criticism of ideologies; Silicon Valley; secularity; post-secularity; cultural hegemony.Abstract
According to various studies and surveys, religion, far from declining, plays an increasingly important role in the lives of the world's citizens (this article analyses the differences by region, as well as the criteria for considering a society as secular). However, the way in which this influence has become apparent has changed from the past, as new religiosities, other ways of understanding and living spirituality, and some "substitutes" for religion have appeared, acting, nevertheless, with similar tools. The existential void caused by the failure of the great collective enterprises of the 20th century (communism, liberal capitalism, development cooperation, globalisation) led, on the one hand, to an increase in the individualistic search for happiness and, on the other, to a renewed interest in "spiritual matters". The Spirit of Silicon Valley responded to both needs by proposing itself as the solution to all problems. This new narrative, apparently secular, but with many features drawn from messianism, while rooted in the American tradition, is now being exported and consumed worldwide as a way of filling the void left by the lack of spiritual concepts. This article explores both the origins of this ideology of "salvation" and how it has spread around the globe.
Downloads
References
Bellah, R. (1967). “Civil Religion in America” en Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 96 (1), pp. 1-21.
Berger, P. L. (1974). “Some second thoughts on substantive versus functional definitions of religion”. Journal for the scientific study of religion, Vol. 13 (4), pp. 125-133.
Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1995). Modernity, Pluralism and Crisis of Faith. The Orientation of Modern Man. Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers.
Berger, P. (1999). The Desecularization of the World. Eerdmans.
Borroughs, W. (2009). La revolución electrónica. La Caja Negra.
Braunstein, P. and William, M. (2002). Imagine Nation: The American counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s. Routledge.
Casanova, J. (2009). “Religion, politics and gender equality: Public religions revisited” in Report for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, paper number 5.
Casanova, J. (2000). Religiones públicas en el mundo moderno. PPC.
Centro Mundial Bahá’í (2005). Una misma Fe. Arca Editorial.
Díaz-Salazar, R., Velasco, F. y Ginés, S. (2006). Formas modernas de religión. Alianza Editorial.
Duplessy, L. (1959). El espíritu de la civilización. Taurus.
Estruch, J. (2015), Entendre les religions: una perspectiva sociològica. Mediterránea.
Ferguson, N. (2019). The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the freemasons to Facebook. Penguin Books.
Fukuyama, F. (1989). “The end of history?”. The national interest, Vol. 16, pp. 3-18.
Garcés, M. (2017). Nueva Ilustración radical. Anagrama.
García, S. (2016). Desafíos del sistema de seguridad colectiva de la ONU: análisis sociológico de las amenazas globales. Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.
García, S. (Nov. 2018). “Es la tecnología la solución al cambio climático”. En el periódico Periodista digital.
González, H. M., Vega, W. A., Williams, D. R., Tarraf, W., West, B. T., & Neighbors, H. W. (2010). “Depression care in the United States: too little for too few”. En Archives of general psychiatry, Vol. 67 (1), pp. 37-46.
Grames, C. (2011). El puño invisible. Taurus.
Habermas, J. (2011). “The political. The rationale meaning of a questionable inheritance of
political theology”. En E. Mendieta y J. Van Antwerpen, eds. The Power of Religion in
Public Sphere. Columbia University Press, pp. 15-33.
Habermas, J. (2009). Ay Europa. Trotta.
Harvery, D. (1998). La condición de la posmodernidad. Amorrortu.
Huntington, S. (2002). El choque de civilizaciones. Tecnos.
Joas, H. (2008). Do we need religion? On the experience of self-transcendence. Paradigm Publishers.
Joas, H. and Bellah, R. (2012). The axial age and its consequences. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Kerr, C. (2001). The uses of the University. Harvard University Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1985). Marxism and Christianity. University of Notre Dame Press.
McLuhan, M. (1996). Comprender los medios de comunicación. Paidós.
Mills, C. W. (1959). Sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Moghadam, A. (2003). A Global Resurgence of Religion? Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (third edition).
Pew Research Center (2017). “The religious typology: a new way to categorize Americans by religion”. Report on religion and public life (https://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/).
Rakodi, C. (2011). “Revisiting Religion: Development Studies Thirty Years On”. In World Development, Vol. 39 (1), pp. 45-54.
Roldán Gómez, I. (2017). “Lo postsecular: un concepto normativo”. En Polít. Soc., Vol 54 (3), pp. 851-867.
Rosa, H. (2019). “Teoría de la resonancia como concepto fundamental de una sociología de la relación con el mundo”. En Revista diferencias, N. 7, pp. 71-81.
Sadin, E. (2019). La siliconización del mundo: la irresistible expansión del liberalismo digital. Caja Negra.
Sánchez-Bayón, A. (2016). Religión civil estadounidense. Sindéresis.
Sánchez-Bayón, A. (2016). “Una historia filosófica de la identidad estadounidense”. En Bajo Palabra. II Época, Vol. 18, pp. 209-236
Tamayo, J. (2011). Otra teología es posible: pluralismo religioso, interculturalidad y feminismo. Herder.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Sociología y tecnociencia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The journal allows the authors to retain publishing rights. Authors may reprint their articles in other media without having to request authorization, provided they indicate that the article was originally published in Sociología y Tecnociencia.
