The aim of this paper is methodological, not substantive. In the first section I shall discuss the familiar problem of how ‘religious’ beliefs can, if at all, be usefully distinguished from beliefs of other kinds (1). In the second, I shall try to suggest what constitutes an adequate sociological explanation of beliefs in general. In the third, I shall illustrate my argument by a direct comparison between Max Weber and fimile Durkheim (2).

A General theory of secularisation is closer to realisation in the sociology of religion than might be expected, in spite of the field being poorly developed. However, the sociology of religion has the advantage of being able to draw in a synthesising manner on neighbouring areas which are more developed, and in so doing will be able in return to suggest broad schemata of interpretation for use in those fields, especially political sociology. No doubt the notion of a general theory of secularisation remains premature, but premature statements do elicit more precise or even alternative formulations incorporating and subsuming wider ranges of material. In any case what follows is less a complete statement of a general theory than a specification of some of its components. Yet in another sense it is a theory, since it could be reduced to sets of overarching propositions and their integrally related sub-propositions, with appropriate qualifications and marginal rubrics.

Viewing a movie can often be a powerful experience, leaving a deep impression. Particularly when that experience is worrying or upsetting, it may challenge people's values. This leads one to question what values movies have, where they acquire them, and whether they are (e.g. inadvertently) making propaganda for violence.

Black students in North American Universities calling for ‘soul’ courses and the official recognition of dialect speech; small underdeveloped nations fearing the cultural encroachment of ‘Americanization’; policy makers wishing to protect village traditions of handicraft from the technology of factory production; planners advocating decentralization and the preservation of regional or neighbourhood groups; minority ethnic group leaders attempting to maintain their religious customs, language and arts—all share one assumption, namely, that folk societies with their characteristic symbolic cultures are viable (1). Some go further and see in these small, homogeneous, proximate groups the last hope that advanced industrial secular societies can be held down to a human scale, can resist the multiple pressures to become, in the pejorative sense of the word, ‘mass societies’ (2).

In this essay two sociological perspectives are used to examine aspects of the mass media. One is derived from Marx's theory of capitalism and the forces and relations of production that determine its structure and development. According to this perspective, the mass media are part of a capitalist society and the content of the media is analysed in terms of class interest and class conflict. The second perspective is derived from Tocqueville's theory of democratic society. In Democracy in America Tocqueville uses two ideal types—of aristocratic and democratic society—to analyse American society and to compare it with European society.

1. The influence of the media has frequently been handled, particularly from a sociological perspective, with the concept of ‘myth’ in mind. The concept, however, has been invoked in a pejorative sense. The target of the word becomes whatever the speaker does not consider ‘his reality’. TV, for instance, is taken as ‘a myth world’ which is sharply divorced from the real world.

To understand and evaluate the cultural orientation of youth in Czechoslovakia today—the structure of their cultural interests, etc.—is impossible in the absence of an understanding of the fundamental social and political changes that have taken place in Czechoslovakia in the post-war period. These have left their impact on the character of each of the generations of this period. Our purpose is not, nor can it be, to present any profound analysis of these changes in the present study, and we can therefore only confine ourselves to giving a rough outline of the more important trends.

Much of the substance of the contemporary debate on the nature and consequences of ‘mass culture’ in Britain is to be found in the work of four English literary critics: T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams (1). Their work is in the Utopian tradition of social and aesthetic critical thought that has been termed “the English Dream: the ideal of the collective, unalienated folk society, where honest men work together and create together” (2); the ideal of the organic community, in short. Such a society is seen as composed of homogeneous, self-sufficient, stable and tradition-dominated communities, comprising a population which shares a common language and culture, and which is typified—but not exclusively bound—by a mentality attached to the tangible, local and known (3).