Eurocentrism and Anachronism of Multiple Secularities

2021 ◽  
pp. 203-237
Author(s):  
Mitsutoshi Horii
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Secularities

Humanism in Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Schröder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Secular Humanist

This chapter addresses secular humanism in Europe and the way it is “lived” by and within its major institutions and organizations. It examines how national and international secular humanist bodies founded after World War II took up, cultivated, and transformed free-religious, free-thought, ethical, atheist, and rationalist roots from nineteenth century Europe and adjusted them to changing social, cultural, and political environments. Giving examples from some selected national contexts, the development of a nonreligious Humanism in Europe exemplifies what Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt call “Multiple Secularities”: different local or national trajectories produced a variety of cultures of secularity and, thus, different understandings of secular humanism. Apart from this cultural historization, the chapter reconstructs two transnational, ideal types of secular humanism, the social practice type, and the secularist pressure group type. These types share similar worldviews and values, but have to be distinguished in terms of organizational forms, practices, and especially policy.

‘Multiple secularities’: Postcolonial variations and guiding ideas in India and South Africa

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 612-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian Burchardt ◽  
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr ◽  
Ute Wegert
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Multiple Secularities

Religious vs secular nationhood: ‘Multiple secularities’ in post-Soviet Armenia

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian Burchardt ◽  
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Cultural Defense ◽  
Post Soviet Space

This article draws on the notion of ‘cultural defense’ to examine how nationalism shapes contemporary contestations around religion and secularity in Armenia. While clearly relevant, this framework has rarely been used for the analysis of religious change in the Caucasus region as part of the broader post-Soviet space. This article fills this lacuna. Simultaneously, it moves beyond the relatively narrow interest in the degree of secularization or reinforced religious nationalism as social outcomes of cultural defense situations. Instead, we are interested in how boundaries between religion and secular spheres in society are drawn in particular ways, how the resulting religious – secular configurations have evolved since the end of the Soviet Union – of which Armenia was a part – and how concepts of nationhood and nationalist mobilizations have shaped this process.

Beyond Positivism: Building Turkish Laiklik in the Transition from the Empire to the Republic (1908–38)

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-327
Author(s):  
Efe Peker
Keyword(s):  
State Building ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Formation Dynamics ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Turkish Case

AbstractThe literature on the development of secularism in Turkey, or laiklik, often cites the national state builders’ positivist worldviews as a principal explanatory factor. Accordingly, the legal-institutional form Turkish secularism took in the 1920s and 1930s is derived, to a large extent, from the Unionists’ and Republicans’ science-driven, antireligious ideologies. Going beyond solely ideational narratives, this article places the making of secularism in Turkey in the context of the sociopolitical contention for national-capitalist state building. In so doing, the article contributes to the latest “spatiotemporal” turn in the secularization literature, characterized by an increased attention to historical critical junctures, and sensitivity to multiple secularities occurring in Western as well as non-Western geographies. Based on a bridging of the secularization scholarship with that of state formation, and building extensively on Turkish archival material, I argue that the trajectory, fluctuations, and contradictions of secularization can be closely associated with two intertwined master processes: (1) the construction of internal and external sovereign state capacity, and (2) geographically specific trajectories of class formation/dynamics. The Turkish case demonstrates that secular settlements cannot be explained away simply by reference to the guiding ideas of actors. Contentious episodes such as civil-bureaucratic conflict, war and geopolitics, and class struggles/alliances make a significant imprint on the secularizing process.

scholarly journals Practicing Belonging?

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Satoko Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
Village Community ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract This article suggests a way for scholars of Japanese religion to contribute to the international discussion on “nones” or the “non-religious,” who have been characterized as “believing without belonging,” “belonging without believing,” “believing in belonging,” etc. by integrating three different discursive arenas: one on multiple secularities as a context-conscious reexamination of functional differentiation; one on Japanese modernization centered on the idea of ie (household)-mura (village community); and one on a recent Japanese obsession with tsunagari (relationships, connection) and shōnin (recognition). The article argues that Japanese non-religiousness in the 2010s is an updated, self-conscious version of “religion as human relationships,” which can be paraphrased as “practicing belonging.” Moreover, while the current “religion as human relationships” practiced among young people tends to be confined to the intimate sphere, its traditional version regulated the public sphere as well. It was this public sphere of “religion as human relationships” that came to appear secular, as opposed to World Religions as matters of personal choice, in the process of modernization, which included the adoption of the Western concepts of “religion” and “secular.” The article also suggests that a “relationships turn” has been taking place not only in nonreligious rituals and festivals but also in spiritual culture and institutionalized religion.

Formations of Secularity in Ancient Japan?

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 9-45
Author(s):  
Christoph Kleine
Keyword(s):  
Social Structures ◽  
Modest Contribution ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Regulatory Principle ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Starting from the premise that the diversity of forms for distinguishing between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (i.e., multiple secularities) in global modernity is the result of different cultural preconditions in the appropriation of Western normative concepts of secularism, I would like to offer a modest contribution to the understanding of the corresponding cultural preconditions in Japan. I will try to show that the specific—and at first glance, relatively unproblematic—appropriation of secularity as a regulatory principle in modern Japan is to some extent path dependent on relatively stable and durable epistemic and social structures that have emerged in the course of ‘critical junctures’ in history. In this context, I would like to put up for discussion my hypothesis that some decisions taken in the period between the sixth and eighth centuries CE regarding the organisation of the relationship between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ generated path dependencies that were effective well into the nineteenth century.

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