"Multiple Secularities and Global Interconnectedness" - Second Annual Conference of the Centre for Area Studies

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"Multiple Secularities and Global Interconnectedness" - Second Annual Conference of the Centre for Area Studies

Organizer
Centre for Area Studies, the Centre for the Study of Religion, and the “Multiple Secularities”-Project of the University of Leipzig
Venue
Location
Leipzig
Country
Germany
From - Until
13.10.2011 - 15.10.2011
Website
www.uni-leipzig.de/cas/conference
By
Middell, Matthias

Critical examinations of secularism and secularity play a key role in current debates in the social sciences on the predicament of contemporary societies. In this context, scholars have moved beyond the critique of secularization and modernization theories to investigate the multiple reinterpretations of secularity and their normative implications. While it is clear that the transformations and the rethinking of secularity are critically shaped by processes of globalization and civilizational encounters, such issues have to a great extent been unaddressed.

In this conference, we further the debate on secularism and secularity by focusing on the challenges arising from globalization and different forms of interconnectedness. Discussing these challenges from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, the conference addresses, amongst other topics, path dependencies and their transformations; vernacular secularities and the vexing question of translatability and interculturality; the usefulness of the “Multiple Modernities” approach as well as the complex interfaces between secularism, colonialism and post-colonial culture. Concentrating on European post-communist societies, East Asia, Africa, the Arab World, India and the West, the multiple understandings and interpretations of the secular are explored. In this context, the conference reflects upon the many ways in which interconnectedness has reshaped the role of major religious traditions as well as the various forms in which they interact in attempts to secularize societies and state.

The conference is based upon the cooperation between the Centre for Area Studies at the University of Leipzig, which brings together the many disciplines examining different world regions under the global condition, and the recently founded Centre for the Study of Religion (CSR) at the University of Leipzig, which focuses on comparative studies of the role of religions worldwide as well as a project on “Multiple Secularities” funded by the Saxon State Ministry for Science and the Arts.

The conference is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as well as by the Saxon State Ministry for Science and the Arts.

The conference will start with an opening session on Thursday, 13 October, at 18:00.
It will end with a plenary session on Saturday, 15 October, at 17:00.

Programm

Preliminary Programme
Thursday, 13 October

Alte Handelsbörse, Leipzig
18:00 Welcome
18:30 Opening Lectures

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig): The Concept of Multiple Secularities
Matthias Middell (Leipzig): Area Studies and the Study of Secularities

Friday, 14 October
9:00 – 11:00
Panel 1: Secularity and Secularism in India: Between Indigenous Development and Western Heritage

Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi): Indian Secularism: How Should We Deal with Religious Diversity

Barry Kosmin (Hartford): Secularism and Secularity among India’s Scientific Elite: Balancing the Political, the Professional and the Personal in the 21st Century

Sebastian Schwecke (Goettingen): The Secular and the Other: On the Manifold Uses of Identity in South Asian Political Economies

Chair: Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig)

Panel 2: The Sacred Secular: Did Socialist Societies Produce a Specific Form of Secularity?

Wilfried Spohn (Warsaw): Religion, Secularity and Secularization in European Postcommunist Societies: A Historical-Sociological Perspective

Klaus Buchenau (Munich): Socialist Secularities: The Diversity of a Universalist Model

Chairs: Wolfgang Höpken & Steffi Marung (Leipzig)

11:30 – 13:00

Panel 3: Africa: Colonial Secularity vs. African Religiosity?

Paul Landau (College Park): The Making of the Secular or the Criminalization of the Secular? African Politics in the Colonial Framework

Rijk van Dijk (Leiden): After Pentecostalism and the New Faith in Intellectualism in Africa: Comparative Examples from Botswana and Ghana

Discussant: Adam Jones (Leipzig)

Chairs: Geert Castryck & Marian Burchardt (Leipzig)

Panel 4: Post-Secularity? Empirical Explorations in Light of Philosophical Debates

Cecelia Lynch (Irvine): Religious Humanitarian Ethics and the Politics of Post-Secularity

Massimo Rosati (Rome): Towards a Post-Kemalist Turkey? Multiple Secularisms in the Symbolic Turkish Value System

Discussant: Roman Vido (Brno)

Chair: Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York City)

14:30 – 16:30 Panel 5: Multiple Modernities – Multiple Secularities: Conceptual and Empirical Questions

Philipp Gorski (Yale): The Secular Modern: Historical Genesis and Global Diffusion

Ann Swidler (Berkeley): African Affirmations: The Religion of Modernity and the Modernity of Religion

Marian Burchardt & Ute Wegert (Leipzig): Multiple Secularities and Post-colonial Refractions: South Africa and India

Chairs: Monika Wohlrab-Sahr & Marian Burchardt (Leipzig)

Panel 6: Global Interconnectedness and Secularity

David Lehmann (Cambridge): Secularism: A Concept in Need of Reappraisal

Mark R. Mullins (Tōkyō): Secularization, Deprivatization, and the Reappearance of ‘Public Religion’ in Japanese Society

Peter Beyer (Ottawa): Questioning the Secular/Religious Divide: Canada, Turkey, and India in a Post-Westphalian World

Discussant: Johann Arnason (Prague/Melbourne)

Chairs: Matthias Middell & Elisabetta Porcu (Leipzig)

17:00 – 18:30 Plenary Session

Saturday, 15 October

9:00 – 11:00 Panel 7: Path Dependencies and their Transformation: Varieties of Secularity in the West

Hugh McLeod (Birmingham): Six Paths to Secularity in Modern Europe

Matthias Koenig (Toronto/Goettingen): The Global Expansion of Judicial Power and the Transformation of Historical Church-State-Relations

Discussant: Detlef Pollack (Muenster)

Chair: Thomas Schmidt-Lux (Leipzig)

Panel 8: Vernacular Secularities and the Problem of Translatability

Hatem Elliesie (Berlin): Statehood and Constitution Building in Somalia’s Clan-based Islamic Society

Michael Lestz (Hartford): The Dao of Secularism in China’s Era of Reform (1978-2011)

Chair: Martin Heckel (Leipzig)

11:30-13:30
Panel 9: East Asian Secularities

Ian Reader (Manchester): Secularisation RIP? Nonsense! Japan and the Death of Religion

John K. Nelson (San Francisco): Rogue Secularities and the Demise of Japanese Temple Buddhism

Elisabetta Porcu (Leipzig): Religion and the Secular in a Japanese Urban Setting

Discussant: Paul R. Katz (Taipei)

Chair: Philip Clart (Leipzig)

Panel 10: The Muslim World: Is Secularity an Alien Concept?

Reinhard Schulze (Bern): Islam, Religion and Secularity

Martin Lau (London): Secular Form, Religious Norm: Offences Against Religion and the End of Secularism in Pakistan

Gudrun Krämer (Berlin): Modern But Not Secular: The Ambiguities of Islamic Reform

Chair: Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig)

15:00 – 17:00
Plenary Session/Final Discussion

Contact (announcement)

Prof. Dr. Matthias Middell
Centre for Area Studies
E-mail: middell@uni-leipzig.de
Phone: +49 341 97-30232

Prof. Dr. Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
Institut für Kulturwissenschaften / Multiple Secularities
E-mail: wohlrab@uni-leipzig.de
Phone: +49 341 97-35678

www.uni-leipzig.de/cas/conference
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Published on
03.09.2011
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