EXC 212 A10 - Framing the Religious within Important Current Sociological Narratives of Modernity

Basic data for this project

Type of project: Subproject in DFG-joint project hosted at University of Münster
Duration: 01/04/2009 - 31/10/2012 | 1st Funding period

Description

Hardly any other term serves as the central pivot of the formation of sociology as a science trying for a description of contemporary society the way the term “modernity” does. It can be observed here that this term is no longer used carelessly in the current socio-scientific discussion to describe and analyse contemporary society. The different narratives of modernity, which today refer not only to Europe but also to other regions of the world and which aim at defining the characteristics of contemporary society and at identifying possible trends, face new challenges such as wars, new forms of violence, growth problems, globalisation, the crisis of the national state, conflicts about cultural deviation as well as increasing social inequality. The forms of dealing with these challenges base themselves above all on a criticism of the term of modernity which is frequently associated with a reassessment of the religious. The understanding of the religious is closely implied with the classical term of modernity, according to which it is seen as a secularised area among several others, and it is thus being revised more and more explicitly. Therefore, it is not as clear how contemporary sociology conceives the relationship of religion and society as the classical model of modernisation theory suggests. Accordingly, the research project focuses on the knowledge sociological question of how different sociological modernity narratives thematise the religious.

Keywords: Modernitätsnarrativen