The culture of the body in the media space of postmodern society

Abstract

According to M. Fforde, the era of postmodernity is characterized by a form of cultural collapse, as it reveals many phenomena indicating that contemporary humans are on the path towards ‘desocialization.’ This process represents an overall cultural shift as well as changes in the existing anthropological paradigms. This paper is dedicated to an analysis of the issue of religion as social capital in conditions of increasing societal risks. We work with an hypothesis that sociopathological phenomena are rather determined by cultural and secularization factors. In our article, we argue that desocialization is closely connected with current secularization processes, as well as with the progression of a materialistic view of man in compliance with the models and theories of postmodern anthropologies. We propose that the ongoing social enthropy in the form of desocialization should be dealt with holistically, i.e.,by analyzing the utilization (or the lack thereof) of religious resources for human and social flourishing.