The 'Consciousness Reformation' Reconsidered

Abstract

Social scientists often assume that individuals and societies orient themselves with respect to overarching symbolic frames of reference, sometimes called systems. But until the recent publication of Robert Wuthnow's analysis of San Francisco area survey data, evidence in favor of this key theoretical proposition has been lacking. This paper inspects both a new network survey of 1439 respondents and the original data in search of the four competing meaning systems reported by Wuthnow. We find strong evidence demonstrating that traditional religion remains an influential meaning system, producing conventional attitudes and preventing experimentation with radical lifestyles and occult practices. But the three alleged secular meaning systems failed to emerge, even in the original data. These findings undercut the assumption that most persons possess meaning systems, and they support our view that a meaning system is easiest to sustain if it is based on supernatural beliefs and promulgated by formal church organizations and religious social movements.