Arabic Sociologies of Religion: Origins, Development, and Current Formations
Arabic Sociologies of Religion: Origins, Development, and Current Formations
Monday, 7 July 2025: 09:00-10:45
Location: ASJE018 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC22 Sociology of Religion (host committee) Language: English
This session will explore the evolution of scholarly disciplines concerned with religion in the Arab world such as sociology/anthropology of religion and religious studies. It will trace their origins in the early writings of the Nahda, through early conscious efforts to introduce these disciplines into Arab universities and Arab thought in the mid-20th C., to contemporary developments and debates about their direction and scope. The session, furthermore, will address different paths of development across the Arab world, placing them within global histories and debates about the genealogies of the sociology of religion and religious studies and their ideological underpinnings. In addition, it seeks to examine how such scholarly endeavors in the Arab world grappled with questions such as the nature of religion (divine vs. social), religious diversity, and the relevance of religion for politics and society in general.
We welcome papers from scholars of all career stages and, next to the discipline of Sociology, also from within Anthropology, Religious Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and History, providing a sociological perspective is present.
Session Organizers:
Oral Presentations
Distributed Papers