74 Grace Davie
concept of fundamentalism itself and, second, the range and location of the case studies
which form the heart of the empirical project.
The great variety of movements that are considered under the heading of “fun-
damentalism” display what the authors call “family resemblances” – leading to the
creation of an “ideal-type” (in the Weberian sense) of fundamentalism, against which
any particular case can be measured. Not all examples will meet all the criteria set out,
but in order to be included they need to meet a minimum number. Several subtypes
emerge within the overall concept. The important point to grasp, however, is the no-
tion of fundamentalism as a “heuristic device,” which enables us to examine – not, it
is important to remember, always to approve – a wide variety of religious movements
currently active in the modern world.
The associated case studies are taken from all the major world faiths and from almost
all parts of the globe. What, however, is striking from the point of view of a chapter
concerned with the different contexts of sociological development is, once again, the
relative absence of examples from Europe, although not in this case from America. The
three potential candidates for Europe are the following: Traditional “Lefebvre type”
Catholicism, Ulster Protestantism, and the Italian-based youth movement –Commu-
nione e Liberazione(already mentioned in connection with global Catholicism). In terms
of the ideal-type of fundamentalism, however, none of the three fit the criteria com-
pletely or convincingly. The first is closer to traditionalism than a reactive fundamen-
talist movement, the second is more of an ethnic nationalism than a social movement,
and the last has been described by Italian commentators (Pace and Guolo 1998) as a
“fondamentalismo ben temperato”; it is, in other words, a partial illustration of fun-
damentalism, displaying some of the “family resemblances” but lacking, in particular,
any sustained reference to a sacred text.
The American case raises rather different issues, some of which connect very directly
with the rational choice paradigm introduced in the previous section. Conservative
forms of Protestantism (and perhaps of Catholicism, too), whether these are full-fledged
fundamentalisms or not, quite clearly form an important part of the American religious
market. One of the most successful applications of rational choice theory, moreover,
has been to explain the relative popularity of conservative (high cost) as opposed to
liberal (low cost) choices in the religious life of the United States (Iannaccone 1992a,
1994). Rather more problematic, however, are the attempts to apply the same type of
theorizing to forms of fundamentalism found outside America – in places, for example,
where the concept of the market has virtually no resonance. In such cases, additional
factors have to be taken into account to understand the reactive, high cost, and, at
times, violent nature of religious activity.
Bearing such complexities in mind, how should the sociologist of religion working
at the beginning of the new century proceed? First, surely, by acknowledging the ur-
gency of the task – we need to understand what is happening given the salience of the
religious factor in geopolitics of the modern world. Then, perhaps, by returning to the
essentially Weberian statement invoked in the introductory paragraphs of this chapter,
namely that sociological thinking, like the world it tries to explain, is contingent. With
this in mind, it is very unlikely that one theoretical frame – be it European or American
or another – will fit all cases. This does not mean that either secularization theory
or rational choice theory should be totally abandoned; they should however be used