Posts Tagged ‘secularity’
November 17th, 2010
posted by
The Editors
On November 18-19, dozens of scholars, religious leaders, business people, and intellectuals will gather in New York for the public launch of a new, multi-year project called “Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim, Secular.” Based on the premise that Catholic, Muslim, and secular modernities each bring distinctive resources to the task of illuminating and resolving an array of characteristically modern problems, the project will examine the dynamic co-existence and competition of these “multiple modernities”—as well as the conflicts and contentions among them—with the aim of opening “new paths for constructive engagement between and among religion and secular people and institutions.”
In anticipation of the launch of this new project, we asked a distinguished group of scholars: What is gained by framing research on religion, secularity, and modernity in terms of “multiple” or “contending” modernities, and what “new paths for constructive engagement” might such a frame afford?
Tags: Catholicism, Islam, modernity, modernization, secularity, secularization
Posted in off the cuff | 2 Comments »
November 15th, 2010
posted by
Charles Hirschkind
Is there a secular body? Or, in somewhat different terms, is there a particular configuration of the human sensorium—of sensibilities, affects, embodied dispositions—specific to secular subjects, and thus constitutive of what we mean by “secular society”? What intrigues me about this question is that, despite its apparent simplicity, the path toward an answer seems not at all clear. For example, are the scholarly sensibilities and the modes of affective attunement that find expression here elements of a secular habitus? What would be indicated by calling such expressive habits “secular”?
Tags: anthropology, critical study of secularism, modernity, philosophy, science, secularism, secularity, Talal Asad, the body, William Connolly
Posted in Rethinking secularism | 7 Comments »
July 15th, 2010
posted by
Jonathan Sheehan
Pondering a bit the posts so far in Notes from the field—those focused on the theoretical side of the secularization question, anyhow—it is not clear to me how much daylight there actually is between, say, Justin Reynolds’s position and my own. My interest in my initial foray was not so much to liberate secularization or the secular for an appropriately contextualized present (i.e., one that has taken on board both the historical dynamics of modern religious transformation and the critiques of secular reason that abound in our contemporary moment). Rather, it was to offer some kind of hope for something else “after secularization,” something other than the repetition of the same.
Tags: After secularization, eschatology, history, secularity
Posted in Rethinking secularism | 1 Comment »
June 28th, 2010
posted by
Jake Alter
Conventional wisdom states that the Czech Republic is the least religious society in the West. At The Guardian, Dana Hamplová discusses the historical origins of the Czechs’ famed secularity, which reach back before Communism, and highlights the abiding forms of religious activity in the former Soviet satellite.
Tags: alternative religions, belief, Catholicism, Czech Republic, Evangelicalism, Protestantism, secularity
Posted in here & there | No Comments »
December 4th, 2009
posted by
The Editors
In a recent symposium held by the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, the Social Science Research Council and the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West came together to discuss the project of “rethinking secularism.” Today we are posting audio and a transcript of the discussion that took place between Butler and West, moderated by Eduardo Mendieta, in which the two leading thinkers exchange thoughts on the ethics and limitations of citizenship, as well as temporality, memory, and the problematics of progress. (Listen to the paper presentations that preceded this discussion here and add your own voice to the discussion here.)
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Tags: citizenship, Cornel West, Eduardo Mendieta, immigration, Judith Butler, modernity, politics, power of religion, secularity, Walter Benjamin
Posted in Rethinking secularism | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
posted by
Jessica Polebaum
At Miller-McCune, David Villano explores the recent publication in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology of a study by independent researcher, Gregory S. Paul, which indicates a correlation between prosperity and secularity at the national level. Paul found that amongst a group of develped nations, those that were least religious were also the most prosperous.
Tags: economics, secularity, social science
Posted in here & there | No Comments »
April 1st, 2009
posted by
Ward Blanton
In short, I agree with Wolterstorff that, while there is no theory in this extremely diverse array of biblical texts, readers may “nonetheless sense a certain rhetorical unity pervading the great bulk of these writings.” We just disagree about what this narrative unity is. What if we said that the “red thread” (so to speak) which unites these tales is not a “frame” guaranteeing rights but rather the clear and repeated indication that humanity is faced with traumatic contingency, surprise, and uncertainty, and that they are at times (for this very reason) subjects of remarkable, even Promethean moments of invention?
Tags: Bible, human rights, justice, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Nicholas Wolterstorff, philosophy, secularity
Posted in justice | No Comments »
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