Religion in the 21st Century: Disciplinary Critique, Global Restructuring, Categorical Diversity

Religion as a category and object of study in (Western) academia has undergone a sequence of upheavals over the last several decades, responding to significant transformations in global society and as a reflection of internal disciplinary developments. This paper focuses on such transformations and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Beyer, Peter 1949- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Equinox 2023
In: Implicit religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 24, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 281-304
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religion / Concept of / Change / Religious sociology / Science of Religion / History 1950-2021
RelBib Classification:AA Study of religion
AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B Religious Studies
B Globalization
B Secularization
B recent theories of religion
B sociology of religion
B religions and nations
B Religious Change
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Summary:Religion as a category and object of study in (Western) academia has undergone a sequence of upheavals over the last several decades, responding to significant transformations in global society and as a reflection of internal disciplinary developments. This paper focuses on such transformations and developments principally within the disciplines the sociology of religion and religious studies. After summarizing these transformations, it presents three interrelated arguments: a) Both transformations, in the disciplines and in the larger social context, are the latest versions of very long discussion and development that have their roots in the nineteenth-twentieth century foundation of religion as an analytic category, in the imperial/colonial spread and glocal appropriation of the category of religion, and in the "Westphalian" institutional modeling of religion with the modern nationstate. b) The current transformations in the "religious field" are a reflection of a decline in that modeling, yielding further uncertainty about how religion should be conceived. c) The ideas of religion and secularization should not be discarded, but should be contextualized in a broader diversity of categorization that goes beyond the binary modeling of religion/not-religion (or secular). A systems-theoretical approach informs all three arguments.
ISSN:1743-1697
Contains:Enthalten in: Implicit religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1558/imre.23665