"Theorizing Cultural Religion"
Seminar Series MPI Fellow Group „Governance of Cultural Diversity – Socio-Legal Perspectives“
- Date: Jun 8, 2016
- Time: 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Avi Astor (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
- Location: MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 12, Göttingen
- Room: Conference Room
For more details please contact buethe(at)mmg.mpg.de.
In recent decades, scholars have dedicated increasing attention to the intersection of religion, culture, and politics in European and other Western contexts due to a variety of developments, including the resurgence of ethno-religious identifications in post-communist societies, the intensification of debates over the place of religion in the public sphere, lingering questions regarding the basis of European identity, and controversies related to rising levels of Muslim immigration. Some have highlighted instances in which sacred religious symbols or structures have been secularized and framed as national heritage or tradition. Others have focused on how secular civic values and principles have been sacralized and mobilized to define the requisites of citizenship and the boundaries of national belonging. Although both of these literatures draw attention to processes similar to those highlighted by scholarship on “civil religion” during the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little dialogue between scholars studying cultural manifestations of religion or religious manifestations of culture from distinct theoretical and empirical vantage points. This presentation aims to clarify the theoretical terrain and to establish a ‘conceptual division of labor’ that offers greater analytic precision in the analysis of contemporary intersections between religion, culture, and politics.