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As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become

disenchanted (...) and (...) simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything.

As a consequence, there is a growing demand that the world (...) be subjected

to an order that is significant and meaningful (Max Weber)

 

The ‘truth’ of a theory does not boil down to its reliability but also involves

the nature of its selective perspective on the world (Alvin W. Gouldner)

 

Dick Houtman (Utrecht, 1963) is Professor of Cultural Sociology at the Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is member of the editorial boards of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Politics and Religion, Sociologie, and Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, the programme committee of NWO's The Future of the Religious Past, and the board of the ESA Research Network for the Sociology of Culture (European Sociological Association). With Susanne Janssen, he co-directs the research master Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts, a joint initiative by researchers from Erasmus University’s Departments of Sociology (Faculty of Social Sciences) and Media and Arts and Culture Studies (Faculty of History and Arts).

 

Dick Houtman’s principal research interest is cultural, political, and religious change in contemporary western society, in particular the emergence of a new political culture, central to which are cultural rather than class issues (with Peter Achterberg, Willem de Koster and Jeroen van der Waal) and processes of religious purification and revitalization (with Stef Aupers and Johan Roeland). With Peter Pels, Ineke Noomen, Stef Aupers, and Dorien Zandbergen, he collaborates in the NWO-funded research programme Cyberspace Salvations: Computer Technology, Simulation, and Modern Gnosis and with Liesbet van Zoonen, Rosa van Santen, Rens Vliegenthart and Peter Achterberg in the research programme Popularisation and Personalisation in the Dutch Democracy, funded by NWO’s program Omstreden Democratie [Contested Democracy]. 

 

As a cultural sociologist, Dick Houtman advocates a purification of sociology, aimed at exposing intellectual quests for 'true' meaning, solidly grounded beyond culture and history, as moral discourse disguised as science. He considers himself neither a theorist, nor a methodologist, but firmly believes that the cross-fertilization of theoretical ideas and empirical research provides the only feasible road to socially relevant and theoretically meaningful sociological knowledge. As to teaching in higher education, his philosophy is simple enough: students should not be made to reproduce other people’s ideas, but trained to think for themselves and conduct empirical research.

Last updated in August 2010