Revisiting Secularism in Theory and Practice

Revisiting Secularism in Theory and Practice PDF Author: Seda Ünsar
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030374564
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
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.

Revisiting Secularism in Theory and Practice

Revisiting Secularism in Theory and Practice PDF Author: Seda Ünsar
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030374564
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Rethinking Secularism

Rethinking Secularism PDF Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019979667X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This collection of essays examines how "the secular" is constituted and understood, and how new understandings of secularism and religion shape analytic perspectives in the social sciences, politics, and international affairs.

Secularisms

Secularisms PDF Author: Janet R. Jakobsen
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822388898
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
At a time when secularism is put forward as the answer to religious fundamentalism and violence, Secularisms offers a powerful, multivoiced critique of the narrative equating secularism with modernity, reason, freedom, peace, and progress. Bringing together essays by scholars based in religious studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, science studies, anthropology, and political science, this volume challenges the binary conception of “conservative” religion versus “progressive” secularism. With essays addressing secularism in India, Iran, Turkey, Great Britain, China, and the United States, this collection crucially complicates the dominant narrative by showing that secularism is multifaceted. How secularism is lived and experienced varies with its national, regional, and religious context. The essays explore local secularisms in relation to religious traditions ranging from Islam to Judaism, Hinduism to Christianity. Several contributors explicitly take up the way feminism has been implicated in the dominant secularization story. Ultimately, by dislodging secularism’s connection to the single (and singular) progress narrative, this volume seeks to open spaces for other possible narratives about both secularism and religion—as well as for other possible ways of inhabiting the contemporary world. Contributors: Robert J. Baird, Andrew Davison, Tracy Fessenden, Janet R. Jakobsen, Laura Levitt, Molly McGarry, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Taha Parla, Geeta Patel, Ann Pellegrini, Tyler Roberts, Ranu Samantrai, Banu Subramaniam, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Angela Zito

Rethinking Secularism

Rethinking Secularism PDF Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199796742
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents groundbreaking work from an interdisciplinary group of leading theorists and scholars representing the fields of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and anthropology. The volume will introduce readers to some of the most compelling new conceptual and theoretical understandings of secularism and the secular, while also examining socio-political trends involving the relationship between the religious and the secular from a variety of locations across the globe. In recent decades, the public has become increasingly aware of the important role religious commitments play in the cultural, social, and political dynamics of domestic and world affairs. This so called ''resurgence'' of religion in the public sphere has elicited a wide array of responses, including vehement opposition to the very idea that religious reasons should ever have a right to expression in public political debate. The current global landscape forces scholars to reconsider not only once predominant understandings of secularization, but also the definition and implications of secular assumptions and secularist positions. The notion that there is no singular secularism, but rather a range of multiple secularisms, is one of many emerging efforts to reconceptualize the meanings of religion and the secular. Rethinking Secularism surveys these efforts and helps to reframe discussions of religion in the social sciences by drawing attention to the central issue of how ''the secular'' is constituted and understood. It provides valuable insight into how new understandings of secularism and religion shape analytic perspectives in the social sciences, politics, and international affairs.

How the West Really Lost God

How the West Really Lost God PDF Author: Mary Eberstadt
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 1599474298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself. Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before—that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.” In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline both of religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this tantalizing question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the inadvertent result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state—fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well. How the West Really Lost God is both a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it—family and faith—and the real nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.

Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief PDF Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520073940
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly ranging essays in which Robert Bellah interprets the interplay of religion and society in concrete contexts from Japan to the Middle East to the United States. First published in 1970, Beyond Belief is a classic in the field of sociology of religion.

Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age

Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age PDF Author: L. Cady
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230106706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The history and politics of secularism and the public role of religion in France, India, Turkey, and the United States. It interprets the varieties of secularism as a series of evolving and contested processes of defining and remaking religion, rather than a static solution to the challenges posed by religious and political difference.

Powers of the Secular Modern

Powers of the Secular Modern PDF Author: David Scott
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804752664
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This book presents a set of critical engagements by writers from a variety of disciplines with the work of noted anthropologist Talal Asad.

Beyond Religion

Beyond Religion PDF Author: Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547636350
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
"Beyond Religion" is a stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels--including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values.

Is Critique Secular?

Is Critique Secular? PDF Author: Talal Asad
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082325237X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
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.