5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This session welcomes contributions that relate to critical sociologies of religion, whether focusing on theoretical, methodological or epistemological matters. The notion of a critical sociology of religion has been used in various ways. For some, it focuses on the roles religion plays in relation to oppression and emancipation; a value-based approach would weight religion in relation to values such as democracy, freedom, equality, justice and inclusion (Goldstein 2009). For Hjelm (2014), a critical sociology would explore the ways in which it contributes to the reproduction and transformation of inequalities. Altglas and Wood (2018)’s critical sociology of religion aims to break from the beliefs of the religious field itself through a reflexive approach. It also envisages religion as a prism through which to understand the social beyond the narrow description of religion for itself, encouraging sociologists to decompartmentalise the subfield. There may be other critical approaches that allows a reassessment of the sociology of religion, which we are looking forward to hearing about in this session.

Altglas, Véronique and Matthew Wood. 2018. Bringing the Social Back into the Sociology of Religion. Leiden: Brill.

Goldstein, Warren S. 2009. “The case for a critical sociology of religion.” In Crisis, Politics and Critical Sociology, edited by Graham Cassano and Richard Dello Buono, 135-142. Leiden: Brill.

Hjelm, Titus. 2014. “Religion, discourse and power: a contribution towards a critical sociology of religion,” Critical Sociology 40(6):855-872.