Globalization and Culture, Vol. 2: Globalizing Religions (2010)
- ️https://westernsydney.academia.edu/PaulJames
Related papers
Capitalism and Religion as driving Forces of Globalization: Universalism New and Old
2008
During the last 40 years not only the economy but also religion went global. In particular what the author calls network religions, loose coupled sects, and the old Roman Church that strived for a world state since 1000 years, are the winners of globalization. Yet, the prize is high, and it has to be paid by the nation state that looses control over markets as well as over global religious networks, and the public sphere as a whole. The third winners of globalization are the executive branches of the global state-system. The paper starts with a reflection on secularization and the possible dependency of modern democracy on religious sources of solidarity. Author then discusses the problem how religion internally might hang together with the coming global crisis of democracy. The paper finishes with some systematic considerations of this crisis.
Globalization and Religion in Historical Perspective: A Paradoxical Relationship
Religions, 2013
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expressed by authors like Thomas Friedman, places economics at the center of analysis, skewing focus from the ideational factors at work in this process. By expanding the definition of globalization to accommodate ideational factors and cultural exchange, religion's agency in the process can be enabled. Interestingly, the story of religion and globalization is in some ways the history of globalization, but it is riddled with paradoxes, including the agent-opponent paradox, the subject of this article. Religion and globalization have a co-constitutive relationship, but religious actors are both agents of globalization and principals in its backlash. While some actors might benefit from a mutually reinforcing relationship with globalization, others are marginalized in some way or another, so it is necessary to expose the links and wedges that allow for such a paradox. To that end, the concepts of globalization and religious actors must be defined, and the history of the agent-opponent paradox, from the Buddhists of the Silk Road to the Jubilee campaign of 2000, must be elucidated.
In the course of the twentieth century, the study of religion gradually came closer to social-scientific fields of study. This newfound relationship altered the research agendas popular in the field. For most of the twentieth century, secularization theory assumed the gradual disenchantment of the world, whereas in the early twenty-first century the theory lost its popularity as the central explanatory frame of analysis. Several alternative perspectivesranging from vicarious religion to spirituality theorieschallenged the equation of modernity with secularity. The problematic of globalization emerged gradually in order to offer new accounts that stressed the extent to which religion remains relevant in twenty-first century societies. The experience of fundamentalist movements in modernizing societies shattered the previous generations' presumption that the Third World would duplicate the Western European experience of secularization. Currently, globalization competes with secularization and post-secularization theories as the central explanatory concept in the field. Future trends and directions include the notion of multiple glocalizations of religion, the globalization of secularization and the emergence of post-secular religiosity.
Article Globalization and Religion in Historical Perspective: A Paradoxical Relationship
2013
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expressed by authors like Thomas Friedman, places economics at the center of analysis, skewing focus from the ideational factors at work in this process. By expanding the definition of globalization to accommodate ideational factors and cultural exchange, religion's agency in the process can be enabled. Interestingly, the story of religion and globalization is in some ways the history of globalization, but it is riddled with paradoxes, including the agent-opponent paradox, the subject of this article. Religion and globalization have a co-constitutive relationship, but religious actors are both agents of globalization and principals in its backlash. While some actors might benefit from a mutually reinforcing relationship with globalization, others are marginalized in some way or another, so it is necessary to expose the links and wedges that allow for such a paradox. To that end, the concepts of globalization and religious actors must be defined, and the history of the agent-opponent paradox, from the Buddhists of the Silk Road to the Jubilee campaign of 2000, must be elucidated.
Religion and Globalization in Historical Perspective: A Paradoxical Relationship
Religions, 2013
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expressed by authors like Thomas Friedman, places economics at the center of analysis, skewing focus from the ideational factors at work in this process. By expanding the definition of globalization to accommodate ideational factors and cultural exchange, religion’s agency in the process can be enabled. Interestingly, the story of religion and globalization is in some ways the history of globalization, but it is riddled with paradoxes, including the agent-opponent paradox, the subject of this article. Religion and globalization have a co-constitutive relationship, but religious actors are both agents of globalization and principals in its backlash. While some actors might benefit from a mutually reinforcing relationship with globalization, others are marginalized in some way or another, so it is necessary to expose the links and wedges that allow for such a paradox. To that end, the concepts of globalization and religious actors must be defined, and the history of the agent-opponent paradox, from the Buddhists of the Silk Road to the Jubilee campaign of 2000, must be elucidated.
Globalization and Religion: Analysing the Impact
2020
Globalization is the interconnectedness of people and ideas across the globe. It involves the scaling of borders and the creation of a global society where events in far-flung areas reverberate uninhibited across great distances and geographical locations. Its agents are the information and communication technology (ICT), and the revolution in the modern transportation system. Globalization has affected everything and everybody and changed the traditional ways of doing things such that no region of the world can again boast of impermeability. Accompanying it are the values now known as modernism which includes a preference for change rather than continuity, freedom rather than restriction. This has led to the development of a secular culture which religious enthusiasts view as crude, sacrilegious, unacceptable and socially dangerous, and as threatening the very existence of traditional religious values. This paper attempts an analysis of the interplay between religion and globaliza...
When discussing religion in a globalized world, scholars usually proceed from several standard assumptions. First, they proceed from the modern notion that religion should be separate from the state and, therefore, should not participate in public discourse, limiting its sphere of influence to personal faith and spirituality. Second, scholars often discuss established religious traditions that have evolved over the centuries, paying less attention to new religious movements because their numbers are relatively small, as is their influence on the world stage. Third, they focus their analysis on "religious disrupters," that is, those sects and groups that challenge social norms and pose a threat to civilization. In my essay, I challenge all those assumptions and discuss the impact of the Baha'i Faith and its teaching on the unfolding global social order.
Religion Compass, 2011
The buzzword ''globalization'' has dominated academic discussions in philosophy and the social sciences for almost a quarter century now. But what do, or should, theologians have to say? This article first explores the controversy over the general meaning of the term ''globalization'', then discusses the somewhat recent historical tendency of theologians to contribute largely in a reticent or reactive way to the debates, and finally outlines three strategies by which leaders in the field have productively engaged and which chart a significant future for the field. Such strategies reflect involvement in debates about global justice with specific attention to climate change, money and international finance, and the emergent idea of a new ''cosmopolitanism''. At the same time, in light of current global social economic sea changes, such as the decline of the hegemony of the West and the growing political influence of ''developing world'' nations, theologians are beginning to realize that old-style liberalism and self-condemnatory moralizing about the West's exploitations of the world's peoples and resources needs to be replaced with a sense of a multi-cultural and transnational common purpose in facing the common threats to our entire humanity. What Do We Mean by ''Globalization''? The buzzword ''globalization'' has crowded into every educated person's vocabulary over the past quarter century. Even during that brief period it has gone through roller-coaster alterations in meaning. Immediately after the collapse of Communism almost a quarter century ago, the vision of an emerging ''neo-liberal'' democratic world order cemented by a new, dynamic, transnational, market capitalism held sway and largely determined usage of the term. After Al Qaida's surprise attack on September 11, 2001, along with America's immediate military pushback that came to be known as the ''war on terror,'' the focus gradually shifted the question of cultural and religious particularity, specifically the force of militant religiosity in fostering a new faith-based identity politics that resisted the nascent global economic order. Then, as scientific research and international policy pronouncements amassed concerning the long-postulated hypothesis of climate change, spurred by the output of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through carbon-based fuels, the focus was still altered. And, once again, following the international financial debacle of 2008 and the contagious fiscal crises of the more affluent Western countries, the emphasis became economic once again, migrating from issues of identity to questions of debt imbalances and patterns of wealth distribution among regions and nation-states. Finally, with the so-called ''Arab revolt'' of this past year, which precipitously erupted at the very end of 2010 attention tended to shift to the politics of democratic change throughout the world, although this time with an unmistakable stress on essential matters of human rights as well as social justice. Clearly, the larger consensus about what the term indicates, and what the tasks for scholarship are, ebb and flow with the world crisis de jour that lingers in the headlines.
Globalization, Secularization and Religion – A Changing Terrain? directed by
Economic and demographic changes associated with globalization significantly alter the relations between religion, state and society. This workshop proposes a comparative study of globalization's impact on religious change and the evolution of new identities, struggles and political arrangements. The chief theme is globalization because the economic changes it carries are often associated with a process of sustained secularization, unleashing market forces that are said significantly to undermine previous arrangements involving religion, state and society. Recent accounts of secularization open the way for more nuanced and empirical research of the declining role of religion in society vis-à-vis other systems (political and economic), the role of religion in individual lives (beliefs, practices and values) and the re-assertion of religion in political life. Accordingly, this workshop will engage with different accounts of religious belief and secularization as they relate to economic and demographic changes, associated with globalization, and the way they are translated into political agendas, in the overall context of deepening globalization. Specifically, papers in this workshop will focus on: (a) Effects of globalization-including, economic, demographic, political and cultural ramifications that affect on religious institutions and belief systems; (b) secular struggles related to globalization that affect religion's status in state and society; (c) religious struggles within and against globalization and associated attempts to reassert religion's status in society; and, (d) new political arrangements involving religion, society and state.