Download or read book Bringing order to the mess A critical re examination of the core concepts of secularization theory written by Matthias Deininger and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Sociology - Religion, grade: 6 (entspricht 1 in Dtschld.), University of Bern, course: Religionssoziologie, language: English, abstract: Despite Rodney Stark‟s postulate “to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories“ (Stark 1999:22) or David Martin‟s demand “towards eliminating the concept of secularization” (Martin 1965), the discourse on secularization seems to be as alive as ever. Indeed, from its beginnings to present the idea of secularization lies at the very core of sociological imagination. Hardly any other subject caused as much controversy among scholars as to if and how processes of secularization interrelate with the emergence of “modernity”. This has led to a multitude of publications over the last decades, all redefining, defending, refuting or even rejecting secularization theory altogether. One of the main difficulties resulting from this ever expanding literature on secularization is the diverse and often undifferentiated usage of categories such as “the secular”, “secularization” and “secularism”. Similar to other social-scientific macro concepts the term “secularization” is multidimensional. Depending on the context and academic discipline, it is applied very differently, thus leaving the door wide open for manifold possibilities of interpretations and meanings. This especially poses problems to any empirical researcher; as such an amorphous term with respectively different meanings and ambiguous possibilities of interpretation is hard to operationalize (Casanova 1994: 12). The aim of this paper is therefore, to critically review the main concepts of secularization theory. For this purpose, I will analytically distinguish between “the secular” as a theological category of Western Christendom, “secularization” as a historical process referring to state-church relations and “secularization” as an analytical conceptualization of modern world-historical processes. By doing so, I hope to identify some of the core problems that inevitably appear when trying to apply seemingly self-understanding concepts about the “secular” to other parts of the world.
Download or read book Religion in Secular Society written by Bryan R. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after its publication, Bryan Wilson's Religion in Secular Society (1966) remains a seminal work. It is one of the clearest articulations of the secularization thesis: the claim that modernizations brings with it fundamental changes in the nature and status of religion. For Wilson, secularization refers to the fact that religion has lost influence at the societal, the institutional, and the individual level. Individual secularization is about the loss of authority of the Churches to define what people should believe, practise and accept as moral principles guiding their lives. In other words, individual piety may still persist, however, if it develops independently of religious authorities, then it is an indication of individual secularization. Wilson stresses that the consequences of the process of societalization in modern societies and on this basis he formulated his thesis that secularization is linked to the decline of community and is a concomitant of societalization. Revised and updated, Steve Bruce builds on Wilson's work by noting the changes in religious culture of the UK and US, in an appendix on major changes since the 1960s. Bruce also provides a critical response to the core ideas of Religion in Secular Society.
Download or read book A General Theory of Secularization written by David Martin and published by . This book was released on 1978-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Critical Examination of the Underlying Sociological Theory of Secularization in the West in the Work of Charles Taylor written by German F. McKenzie and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly debate on secularization in the West has been largely developed in sociological terms. Two extreme positions in the conversations are those I label as "orthodox" and "counter-orthodox", with several authors taking middle stances. "Orthodox" theorists affirm that modernity necessarily erodes religion, whereas "counter-orthodox" ones --also known as Rational Choice Theorists (RCT)-- see secularization as a self-limiting process within modernity. As the debate between these views has somewhat stalled, other perspectives have caught the interest of researchers. An important contribution among them is that made by Canadian thinker Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age (2007). This dissertation analyses the sociological basis of Charles Taylor's account of secularization in order to elucidate what new insights he brings to the debate on the issue. It relies on textual analysis of all the pertinent works by Taylor, as well as his classical and contemporary sociological influences. As a sociological framework, it relies on the scholarship of British sociologist Margaret Archer, particularly on her views about the relationship between social and cultural structures and human agency, as well as about social change. My claim is that it is possible to uncover a consistent "Taylorean sociology" in his work. This particular sociological approach finds its roots in Taylor's philosophical anthropology, his critique of mainstream social science, his position on the problem of human agency in sociology, and his affirmation of the inextricable linkage between the social and cultural realms. In this light, secularization in the West is better understood as the change of religion due to social movement dynamics which relocates the place of religion in society and in individual experience. This change has entailed the decline of some religious forms and the appearance of new ones, a process which is not linear but more of a zigzag-shape. In spite of some shortcomings, Taylorean sociology's account of religious change is consistent with an important body of empirical data. It supersedes important theoretical and methodological problems within "orthodox" and RCT-inspired explanations. In regard to the former, this is not surprising since such views have been marginalized by the most part of scholars today. However, in regard to the latter, criticisms advanced by Taylorean sociology are more interesting because of RCT's prevalence, particularly in North America's scholarship. Among the most important of them, is the inadequacy of considering structures as closed systems --something crucial for RCT, the diminished role given to cultural structures as compared to that of social structures in religious change, and the inadequacy of RCT's view of religious choice as one between options that appear before the human agent all at the same time and in a clear fashion. Among the new paths opened by Taylorean sociology for the study of secularization, the more important are its integration of human agency and structure, and its focus on our contemporary conditions of belief, particularly its view of the "immanent frame" as our given cultural context in the West, the notion of a continuum that goes between exclusive humanism and transformative religion, two extreme positions which fragilize each other and between which a myriad of unstable intermediate positions that are taken by many Westerners.
Download or read book Secularization written by Karel Dobbelaere and published by Peter Lang Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an epoch in which religion has explicitly and sometimes violently returned to the forefront of the global public scene, the process of secularization that has fundamentally marked Western and particularly European societies demands attention and analysis. This book, written from a sociological perspective, takes up that challenge. The author distinguishes three levels of secularization. Societal secularization which is a typical consequence of the processes of modernity, and of programmes of - laicisation promoted by political parties. Individual secularization that is manifested in the decline of church commitment; occurring as individuals re-compose their personal beliefs and practices in a - religion a la carte; and as the individual's meaning system becomes compartmentalized and religion is separated from other areas of life. A third level, organizational secularization, covers the incidence of the adaptation of religious bodies to secularized society. The entire work is marked by meticulous description and analysis of numerous theoretical and empirical studies, and by due recognition of the intricate relationship between levels of secularization and the impact of various actors in the many conflicts over religion's roles."
Download or read book Rethinking Secularization written by Gary Gabor and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Secularization: Philosophy and the Prophecy of a Secular Age provides a philosophical appraisal of secularization in light of the recent re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. It explores the adequacy of classical theories of secularization, and, rooted in historical and conceptual analysis, what might be offered in their place today. Responding to the once dominant theories of a global, world-historical emancipation from an inherited religious past to a modern secular age, the volume also considers the extent to which philosophy itself has inspired and nourished such prophecies. As a result, a more sophisticated view of secularization emerges, both more interesting and complex than the simple linear process it is often thought to be. From the conceptual origins of secularity in the writings of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to the contemporary secularization theories of Hans Blumenberg, Marcel Gauchet, and Charles Taylor, Rethinking Secularization considers philosophy’s own relationship to the concept of secularization. It reflects the trend in contemporary philosophy to rethink the relation between religion and modernity, and includes systematic contributions to the debate. The book would appeal to a wide range of readers in philosophy, sociology, religious studies, and intellectual history.
Download or read book Revisiting Secularism in Theory and Practice written by Seda Ünsar and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a philosophical and macro-historical analysis of secularism, supported by an investigation of various contemporary cases. Starting with an in-depth theoretical discussion of the meaning of secularism, it subsequently presents a historical study on the secularization of norms and identities in Europe. The respective case studies cover topics such as the epistemologies of secularism, liberalization and embedded secularism, the relationship between modernity and secularism, the socio-anthropology of secularism, Turkish modernization as a cultural revolution, the political economy of secularism in Turkey, and the secular rationale of the EU neighborhood policy.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Secularism written by Phil Zuckerman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-28 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As recent headlines reveal, conflicts and debates around the world increasingly involve secularism. National borders and traditional religions cannot keep people in tidy boxes as political struggles, doctrinal divergences, and demographic trends are sweeping across regions and entire continents. And secularity is increasing in society, with a growing number of people in many regions having no religious affiliation or lacking interest in religion. Simultaneously, there is a resurgence of religious participation in the politics of many countries. How might these diverse phenomena be better understood? Long-reigning theories about the pace of secularization and ideal church-state relations are under invigorated scrutiny by scholars studying secularism with new questions, better data, and fresh perspectives. The Oxford Handbook of Secularism offers a wide-ranging and in-depth examination of this global conversation, bringing together the views of an international collection of prominent experts in their respective fields. This is the essential volume for comprehending the core issues and methodological approaches to the demographics and sociology of secularity; the history and variety of political secularisms; the comparison of constitutional secularisms across many countries from America to Asia; the key problems now convulsing church-state relations; the intersections of liberalism, multiculturalism, and religion; the latest psychological research into secular lives and lifestyles; and the naturalistic and humanistic worldviews available to nonreligious people.
Download or read book The Sociology of Secularisation written by Peter E. Glasner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Secularization written by David Martin and published by Ashgate Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subjects covered in this volume include Christian language and its nature, and the engagement of Christianity with politics, war and peace.
Download or read book A General Theory of Secularization written by David Martin and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1978 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Secularism Or Democracy written by Veit-Michael Bader and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policies dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states—as well as the established institutions that enforce those policies—are increasingly under pressure. Politics and political theory are caught in a trap between the fully secularized state and neo-corporate regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religion. This volume proposes an original, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary approach to problems of governing religious diversity—combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology, and religious anthropology. Drawing on such diverse scholarship, Secularism or Democracy? proposes an associational governance—a moderately libertarian, flexible variety of democratic institutional pluralism—as the plausible third way to overcome the inherent deficiencies of the predominant models.
Download or read book Islam and the Trajectory of Globalization written by Louay M. Safi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the growing tension between social movements that embrace egalitarian and inclusivist views of national and global politics, most notably classical liberalism, and those that advance social hierarchy and national exclusivism, such as neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and national populism. In exploring issues relating to tensions and conflicts around globalization, the book identifies historical patterns of convergence and divergence rooted in the monotheistic traditions, beginning with the ancient Israelites that dominated the Near East during the Axial age, through Islamic civilization, and finally by considering the idealism-realism tensions in modern times. One thing remained constant throughout the various historical stages that preceded our current moment of global convergence: a recurring tension between transcendental idealism and various forms of realism. Transcendental idealism, which prioritize egalitarian and universal values, pushed periodically against the forces of realism that privilege established law and power structure. Equipped with the idealism-realism framework, the book examines the consequences of European realism that justified the imperialistic venture into Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in the name of liberation and liberalization. The ill-conceived strategy has, ironically, engendered the very dysfunctional societies that produce the waves of immigrants in constant motion from the South to the North, simultaneously as it fostered the social hierarchy that transfer external tensions into identity politics within the countries of the North. The book focuses particularly on the role played historically by Islamic rationalism in translating the monotheistic egalitarian outlook into the institutions of religious pluralism, legislative and legal autonomy, and scientific enterprise at the foundation of modern society. It concludes by shedding light on the significance of the Muslim presence in Western cultures as humanity draws slowly but consistently towards what we may come to recognize as the Global Age. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003203360, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book Is Critique Secular written by Talal Asad and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume interrogates settled ways of thinking about the seemingly interminable conflict between religious and secular values in our world today. What are the assumptions and resources internal to secular conceptions of critique that help or hinder our understanding of one of the most pressing conflicts of our times? Taking as their point of departure the question of whether critique belongs exclusively to forms of liberal democracy that define themselves in opposition to religion, these authors consider the case of the “Danish cartoon controversy” of 2005. They offer accounts of reading, understanding, and critique for offering a way to rethink conventional oppositions between free speech and religious belief, judgment and violence, reason and prejudice, rationality and embodied life. The book, first published in 2009, has been updated for the present edition with a new Preface by the authors.
Download or read book We Have Never Been Modern written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.
Download or read book Politics of Nature written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.
Download or read book Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism written by Karen Barkey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that situates and furthers contemporary debates around the prospects of democracy in diverse societies within and beyond the West. Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism examines the relationship between the functioning of democracy and the prior existence of religious plurality in three societies outside the West: India, Pakistan, and Turkey. All three societies had on one hand deep religious diversity and on the other long histories as imperial states that responded to religious diversity through their specific pre-modern imperial institutions. Each country has followed a unique historical trajectory with regard to crafting democratic institutions to deal with such extreme diversity. The volume focuses on three core themes: historical trends before the modern state's emergence that had lasting effects; the genealogies of both the state and religion in politics and law; and the problem of violence toward and domination over religious out-groups. Volume editors Karen Barkey, Sudipta Kaviarj, and Vatsal Naresh have gathered a group of leading scholars across political science, sociology, history, and law to examine this multifaceted topic. Together, they illuminate various trajectories of political thought, state policy, and the exercise of social power during and following a transition to democracy. Just as importantly, they ask us to reflexively examine the political categories and models that shape our understanding of what has unfolded in South Asia and Turkey.
