Society and Religion in Non-Western Societies

Reconciling the societal differences between the Western world and Asia--particularly with respect to China, Korea, and Japan--may never be a possibility. The divide is not so simple as the distinctions between mere Christianity, Confucianism, or communism, nor is it reducible to simple philosophical terms such as capitalism, liberalism, or Marxism. Indeed, the inherent dissimilarities between Eastern and Western cultures are as likely the result of the forced separation due to geography and the consequence of limited contact over the millennia.

As Rozman insists, the failure of social science to investigate national heritage as the fulcrum of societal differences, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, belittles "the enduring consequences of historical factors." Further, (Western) political scientists and social scientists find separate explanations for the varying inclinations of Eastern societies toward dictatorial or democratic regimes, socialist or capitalist development. And none of them may satisfactorily explain how heritage influences and shapes the "unusual dynamism" which propels Eastern societies:

The way people interact at home, school, and their workplace, the way they view their government and their own society's place in the world, affects their rate of modernization. Even if, for a time, the foreign impact seems to be displacing more and more of the traditional behavior, a process

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Davis views the secularization of Japanese religion as part of this modernization process/decline, although he takes the position that such decline is neither inevitable nor impossible, and is, therefore, reversible. Davis cites the growth of a money economy as "the greatest secularizing influence on Japanese religion," which had the effect of disrupting both class relationships and family ties. Nevertheless, Davis believes that the so-called decline of traditional religion in Japan will ultimately give rise to a new religious "self-understanding, or perhaps even to a new civil religion." Korea, regarded by some to be one of the "three little Chinas" (together with Hong Kong and Singapore), only as recently as the eighteenth century is considered to have become "a normative Confucian society" even though its first exposure to Confucianism can be dated to the second century B.C.E. According to Haboush, Confucianism required practices which frequently conflicted with native customs. It was an alien value system, and it proceeded to develop in a distinctive manner due largely to the indigenous Korean social and familial structures which included rigid class distinctions, a greater importance of women in the family (than i
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Adoption Confucian, De Vos, East Asian, Ebrey Confucian, Robert Bellah, Eastern Western, Daniel Kulp's, According Lee, Indeed Korean, According Weber, east asian, ancestor worship, korean society, east asia, nineteenth century, confucian heritage, university press, nj princeton university, chinese religion, princeton university, princeton nj princeton, press 1991, university press 1991, princeton university press, east asian studies,
Approximate Word count = 6222
Approximate Pages = 25 (250 words per page)

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