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Peter Beyer has been a central figure in the debate about religion and globalization for many years, this volume is a collection of essays on the relation between religion and globalization with special emphasis on the concept of religion, its modern forms and on the relation of religion to the state.Featuring a newly written introduction and conclusion which frame the volume and offer the reader guidance on how the arguments fit together, this book brings together ten previously published pieces which focus on the institutional forms and concept of religion in the context of globali

The volume collects articles that present the current state of the English-language discussion on religion and globalization, especially from sociological and anthroplogical perspectives. A first section consists of theoretical contri-butions which inform the interpretations of the predominantly empirical studies that make up the second section. Overall, the selections show how the develop-ment of global society has contributed greatly to religious transformation; and how in various ways religion has been a significant force in the historical emergence of global society itself. - Content: Introduction, Peter Beyer: English-Language Views of the Role of Religion in Globalization; Section I: Theoretical Statements: Roland Robertson: The Globalization Paradigm: Thinking Globally; John W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez: World Society and the Nation-State; Frank J. Lechner: Cultural Aspects of the World System; John H. Simpson: 'The Great Reversal': Selves, Communities, and the Global System; Arjun Appadurai: The Production of Locality; Peter Beyer: What Counts as Religion in Global Society? From Practice to Theory; Section II: Empirical Applications: Peggy Levitt: Local-Level Global Religion: The Case of United States - Dominican Migration; George Thomas: A World-Polity Interpretation of U.S. Religious Trends Since World War II; Rijk A. Van Dijk: From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses on Transsubjectivity in the Ghanian Pentecostal Diaspora; José Casanova: Globalizing Catholicism and the Return to a 'Universal Church'; William R. Garrett: Religion, Law, and the Human Condition; Peter Beyer: The Islamic Revolution in Iran

AbstractReligion in our world is not just a contested category, it is also one which does political work, having implications for the distribution of power in society. Classifying social action and symbols as religion or as something else, above all culture or spirituality, has political implications and is used to carry out political struggles. Starting from two concrete contemporary examples drawn from the Canadian context having to do with smudging and the crucifix, the article argues that the historical form that religion has taken functioned in earlier modern centuries as a way of favourably distributing power to religion's carriers; but that with the progressive development of secular forms of power, religion has progressively been moving towards become a form that is mostly neutral in terms of social power distribution but can also be a source of power loss, these through interrelated processes of privatization, pluralization, and voluntarization. In current circumstances, therefore, in order for what is or was religious form to preserve or regain its erstwhile function for privileged power distribution, one sees attempts in various instances to dissolve religion into other categories and forms; here the prime instances are (national) culture and (instrumental) spirituality. If this process continues and counter-movements do not succeed, then this points to the progressive deinstitutionalisation of religion in the future, its dissolution into collective culture and personal spirituality, while maintaining its religious form in smaller local and transnational organizations and movements.

The article argues that what is performed and understood as religion in global society has in the course of the modern centuries come to be increasingly dominated by the idea that religion is something distinct and differentiated, something distinct from what is not religion, namely the secular. It manifests itself principally as a plurality of identified and performed religions. Towards the latter half of the 20th century, however, that dominant understanding of religion has come to be increasingly challenged by alternative ways of 'sensing religion', alternative ways that are to some extent a reflection of new developments in this domain of religion in global society. They are also indicative of a reassessment of alternative ways of understanding and doing religion that have always accompanied the dominant sense. This reassessment allows the 'hidden' and 'ignored' to appear as religion and be recognized as such without negating the hitherto dominant form. The first of these developments is analyzed as the construction of a Westphalian system for religion; the reassessment and transformation is discussed under the contrasting idea of a post-Westphalian circumstance.

Current debates in sociology are questioning not only the secularization thesis, that religion is inevitably declining under conditions of modernity, but also the notion of the secular and its relation to religion. Beginning with a brief look at six representative scholars who have been prominent in this debate, this interpretative essay seeks to contribute to it on the basis of a distinction between a 'Westphalian' and a 'post-Westphalian' way of understanding and structuring religion and the secular, above all in the form of the state. The argument is illustrated with three examples, India, Turkey and Canada.