010360 VO Contemporary Approaches to Religion in Sociology and Cultural Analysis (2008S)

This course gives some perspectives on religion found in sociology and cultural analysis with the focus on a specific element of contemporary academic debates - the thesis of de-secularisation or resurgence of religion in modern world. Since Enlightenment and up until 1970s it has been presupposed that religion will dramatically change or even disappear through modernisation. More recently, however, a number of studies in sociology and other academic disciplines showed that religion continues to be a powerful actor in public sphere and an important source of identity formation. Modernity, as Peter Berger pointed out, is a "gigantic step from destiny to choice." It pushed religion from being a factor of birth into a matter of choice. Modern people not just choose their religion but create it by combining bits and peaces from other traditions and cultures. Describing this phenomenon, scholars used the terms "bricollage," "patchwork religion," "drive to heresy," and "believing without belonging." There are also religious communities that survived and even flourished in modern societies without trying to adapt to secular world. This course will lead students through extensive body of contemporary literature dealing with the theory of secularisation and will provide conceptual instruments to analyse the traces of secularisation in various religious contexts.