Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

273

Religion in the Public Sphere. Part II

RC22 Sociology of Religion (host committee)

Language: English

Persistence of religion in the modernity, although successive foreshadowings of fading away, challenges some conceptions of religion brought about by the social sciences in the spirit of modernity. The main conception related with this fact is that religion would become more and more a private business. Nevertheless, religions presently occupy the public sphere in politics, science, non-religious art, cyberspace and the market place. This happens not without tensions with the traditional public squares’ actors, and with internal conceptions that restrain external relationships and ostensive presence. 
For this session, in order to build a global frame, we welcome proposals that include concrete cases of these tensions in different religious groups and countries. By and large, the public sphere is not only the political field, but also the science, the secular manifestation of art, the cyberspace and the market place.
For example, in politics, churches are trying to impose their religious conceptions in law, defending certain candidates, or fighting for public policies. In science, we can see the use of scientific tools by religious groups, and the study of religion by science not only as an object of study but also as a source of reflection. In secular art we can quote the presence of artists eager to demonstrate their religious affiliation. Religion in the cyberspace represents a new frontier with great transit of religious actors in the public square, and in the market place with the intense commercialization of products with religious motives. Posters: