Intellectuals, Sacred and Post-secular: A Case Study on the Significance of Utopian Socialism

This paper argues that a sociology of intellectuals is best explored within the conceptual framework of the post-secular and grasped via elements of civilizational analysis and historical sociology informed by genealogical analysis. The case of Robert Owen’s British 19th Century Utopian Socialist movement in a North of England town is found to display forms of belief and organisation that can be characterised as at least having elements of a new humanist religious movement. This suggests that the common demarcations between the secular and the religious, in respect of the analysis of beliefs and ideologies, can be misleading or oversimplified and this can be better understood within a post-secular context.