Abstract
Fundamentalism is a slippery concept. It seems to me axiomatic that a folk-term that emerges from within a given sub-culture and in a particular historical situation, and then becomes sanctioned by extended usage through mass media and by social scientists, is unlikely to have any great precision or explanatory power. Too often sociologists, for example, have plucked a word from natural language that has gained numerous idiomatic uses, and have then attempted to hack it into shape (in the name of theorising) on their Procustcan beds. The 94 sociological definitions of community (Hillery. 1955. pp. 111–23) remains a salutary lesson for all would-be investigators of the social world.
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© 1987 Lionel Caplan
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Walker, A. (1987). Fundamentalism and Modernity: the Restoration Movement in Britain. In: Caplan, L. (eds) Studies in Religious Fundamentalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08830-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08830-0_10
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