Research program RELIGION, POLITICS AND IDENTITY

Research topics

This research cluster represents a logical follow-up as well as an up-date in focus and personnel of two previous research clusters: ‘Nation and Religion: A Comparative Study of Colonizers and Colonized’ (1992-97) and: ‘Mentalities and Identities in Transnational Perspective’ (1998-2003). The main theme addressed in this cluster concerns the role of religion in contemporary processes of subjectivation and identity politics. High modernity was characterized, according to modernist social science discourses, by the power of the nation-state to bind citizens into the imagined community of the nation, and to contain religious and ethnic identities in such a way that they would support, or at least not endanger, the national project. Nowadays all over the world, religious (and ethnic) movements have come to play a crucial role in formulating alternative localist and/or transnational identities, which often make deliberate use of modern mass media and induce new politics of belonging with new systems of in- and exclusion. Inspired by and taking part in debates about globalization, this cluster still takes a sceptical stance vis-à-vis an undifferentiated view of globalization as ‘the end of’ the nation-state and rather views it as being reconfigured in response to global processes. Current politics of belonging and identity formation cannot be understood if the dimension of the nation-state is neglected, yet demand new empirical-methodological approaches and concepts.

While it is by now more or less accepted that the master narrative of secularisation is inadequate to grasp the place and role of religion in modern societies, it is still unclear how to theorize religion from a post-secularist perspective, which acknowledges religion’s public presence. The central concern of this cluster is to analyse the role of religions in contemporary politics of belonging by combining detailed historical and ethnographic research with grounded theorizing. Of central interest are questions concerning the public presence and politicisation of religion; the role of religions in inducing particular notions of Self and Other and particular dynamics of  in- and exclusion; the relationship between citizenship and religious identities; the changing role and place of religions in everyday life; and the transformation of religions in the ‘information age’. A comparative perspective is adopted so as to transcend the colonial divide which ideologically separates the West from the ‘non-West’.

Research objectives

• To explore and conceptualize the public and political role of religions as well as their impact on everyday life from a post-secularist perspective.
• To develop a new vocabulary for the analysis of politico-religious phenomena and processes (e.g. rethink notions such as civil society and public sphere, and the opposition of public and private)
• To understand religions’ capacity to adjust to processes of globalization (by deploying transnational networks, using mass media and ICT, relating to consumerism and the market) and address new kinds of religious subjects.
• To address questions of multiculturalism, religious pluralism, and citizenship in contemporary societies and investigate the interference of national and transnational dimensions, so as to develop a more adequate understanding of contemporary identity politics.

The subprogrammes

To specify the research programme of the Cluster, it may be useful to distinguish six sub-programmes. While these overlap in terms of personnel, they can nonetheless serve to indicate the range, but also the cohesiveness of the research work, supervision work, and international networks in hand.

1: Comparative Structuralist and Comparative Historical Perspectives on Religious and Civic Identity/Alterity

This programme builds on past work concerned with comparative multiculturalism and the comparative historiography of the politics of religious and civic identity/alterity. Focus points are: (a) understanding of how the nation-state school continues to function as the prime locus of civil enculturation; (b) the transformations of religious discourse and practice in the western world following the emergence of the modern nation state around 1800, contrasting early-modern and modern Christianity; (c) investigating how nation states since the early 19th century have dealt with religious diversity in past and present and how religious minorities have made attempts to create space in society

2: Muslim Cultural Politics

This programme deals with the politics of culture in Muslim societies through the lens of family and gender relations. Intersecting and interacting with other forms of identification and political mobilization (such as nationality, ethnicity, and class), the family and gender have been and still are crucial categories in contestations about cultural change. Empirical research centers on three fields. The first is that of debates on family law and everyday life. The second deals with migrant domestic workers in the Middle East, and analyses the relations between transnational migration, gendered family dynamics, and the production of new identities. The third focuses on the body politics of representation. And deals with dressing styles and wearing gold, topics central to, yet differently related to Muslim cultural politics.

3: Religion, Violence and the Public Sphere

This programme builds upon past research on urban violence perpetrated on religious or pseudo-religious grounds. Focus points are: (a) the study of the interrelations of state and society, secularism and religion in the public sphere; (b) a detailed comparative analysis, ranging across sixteen countries, of Islamic social movements active in Europe, and it studies in particular their relations with the state and with other religious groups.

4: Localist Identities vs. Intensified Globalization

This programme concentrates on Africa, where processes of democratization and decentralization have led to a drastic weakening of national citizenship and nation-building, so strongly promoted during preceding decades. The undermining of the redistributive capacities of the state and the consequent loss of meaning of the very idea of national citizenship have now created a void that seems to be filled by all sorts of localist identities.

5: Religion in the Public Sphere 

This programme is based on the Pioneer Project: ‘Modern Mass Media, Religion, and the Imagination of Communities’ directed by Birgit Meyer (2000-2006). It seeks to show precisely how new opportunities to access electronic and digital mass media have strengthened the public role and impact of world religions as well as neo-traditional movements, and how they have thus transformed the public spheres of otherwise incomparable societies in Africa, Brazil, Asia, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

 

Cluster director: Thomas Blom Hansen (UvA)

Cluster PhD coordinator: Mattijs van de Port (UvA)

Cluster PhD student committee member: Frank van As (UvA)

 

 

Staffmembers and PhD Students in this Cluster