It’s Dangerous Out There

The author lists the book’s key contributions. First, he shows how the distinction between “essential” and “accidental” helps to clarify our understanding of boundaries. He then builds upon practice theory to show how practices matter in the sociology of religion and sociology of culture in three ways: to show how “orthodox” religions are just as practiced as “orthoprax” ones, to show how boundaries are also practiced, and to show how practices help to maintain “external authorities.” External authorities are similar to institutions, except they are experienced as agentic and authoritative, therefore helping to solve “the problem of power” by offloading coercion to something like “the Bible” or “Science” instead of a specific individual making a command. The chapter ends with a description of worries about what students would become after they left the schools, with community members emphasizing the need to ground students’ identities in boundaries and external authorities.