 This is a study guide for Chapter 8 of Sociology for Optimists by Mary Holmes published in 2015. The chapter is called Enchantment. Please note that these study guides are meant to point out some important concepts of interest to introductory students. These are not designed to be thorough or provide an in-depth discussion. Material will be skipped or barely discussed while other concepts will be given more emphasis than the chapter may have given them. Also note that the purpose of this book is to look at the ways in which sociology can provide a basis for optimism. So discussions of pessimism and optimism will be central to this guide. Max Weber spoke of the disenchantment of the modern world due to the replacement of faith and awe with the rational and scientific. Modernity, as he called the contemporary world, was holding science over religion, reasons above emotions, and efficiency above connectivity. This could be seen especially in the ways in which states have disconnected from religious roots and become secularized. Weber did not see this as a totally bad thing, but he did believe that an unintended consequence of this would be alienation. Weber also saw this in the rise of bureaucracies as a supposed rational way to organize groups of people. While the values of equality and meritocracy seemed like a good thing, the impersonal and mechanized methods within bureaucracies led to a breakdown of community. Off-sided as support for Weber's disenchantment is the decline of religion and secularized mostly Western countries. There is some evidence of this and the decline of religious affiliations through membership and attendance at formal religious organizations. There is also evidence of this in the way nation-states have regarded religion as separate and individualized rather than cultural and central to national identity. Another often cited evidence of the decline of religious or faith-based enchantment is the rise of individualism that is every person for themselves and the popularity of self-care over civic life. Many have also lamented disenchantment by noting the ways in which the rationalized system contains and seeks to control imagination and creativity. The rise of entertainment as a form of escapism rather than the imagination of how things could be. The commodification of experiences, while all the daydreaming one might do, is turned into a ticket price at places like Disney World. Or, I should note, since we live here, the Las Vegas Strip. For a price you can experience worlds that are usually the realm of imagination and you can buy merchandise to take home to remind you of the experience. The popularity of celebrities also is seen as disenchanting as the roles they play seems more shallow and less meaningful than the heroes and deity they have replaced. Amid all the evidence of disenchantment, there are signs of enchantment. Religion may be declining, but this may be transformation, not disappearance. One trend that supports the idea of transformation is that while attendance is low, belief is not. Many people still profess a belief in a higher power, but do not see organized religion as the way to express that belief. The secularization of nation-states has not really eliminated religious values as much as it has diversified them. Most western nation-states have diverse populations with migrants from other backgrounds arriving. Secularization can be seen as a form of tolerance rather than loss. Individualization and self-care also carry with them a message of resistance to the control of organized religion and the bureaucratic control of the organized state rather than simply a loss of connectivity. One way to look for enchantment is to look for the extraordinary. Travel and holidays may be commodified and prepackaged, but travelers often learn about the cultures of the places they visit and make connections to those places. Travel can be seen as undermining the impersonal system of their daily lives. Imagination as escape may have been commodified, but some sociologists argue that the very nature of social interaction means that we must imagine the other. We anticipate each other all the time and not just out of habit or ritual. We must put ourselves in the place of those with whom we interact, and we must imagine how we will be seen by the other. This keeps our imaginations active and undermines efforts to disconnect us because we are rewarded when we do well at this. Migration also shows imagination is alive because people who migrate for a, quote, better life, close quote, must imagine that better life in order to pursue it. Many would put romantic love in the category of enchantment, but there are many forms of love besides romance, and these kinds of love are a basis for connectivity. Familial and brotherly love are often cited as a basis for connection, but one kind of love that is gaining more interest could be expressed as neighborly love. Being a good neighbor is more and more necessary in our multicultural world. Where is the optimism? What does sociology have to contribute? Please note that Holmes doesn't directly mention these three terms, but she discusses these viewpoints that can be summed up by these three terms. Contact Hypothesis. The more contact we have with people who seem different from us, the more commonality we find. That commonality reduces prejudice and encourages enchantment by being open to differences. The stranger is closely related to the contact hypothesis because how quickly strangers become friends depends upon how soon we find that commonality. We need imagination to achieve this, and once it is achieved it can enrich our world. The imagination mentioned above that allows us to interact is the imagination we cultivate as children learn and develop. Just think about how enchanted the world appears to a child.