Advancing knowledge in public administration: why religion matters

IF 1.6 Q3 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration Pub Date : 2023-01-02 DOI:10.1080/23276665.2022.2155858
E. Ongaro, Michele Tantardini
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

This editorial makes the case that religion is a significant influence on public administration (PA) and religious factors should usefully be considered in researching PA, for purposes of both advancing knowledge and drawing practical implications. The starting point for our argument is the assumption that context does matter for PA, and religion is a neglected part of the context. Religion – broadly defined as a set of coherent answers to the core existential questions that confront any human group and pertain to the relationship of the human to the divine and their codification in creedal forms, and involving a ritual dimension and piety – is interwoven with societal, cultural, political and administrative elements, which constitutes the context that affects PA in a given jurisdiction. Including religious factors in PA studies would therefore contribute to the advancement of the field. The influence of religion has so far been overlooked in PA research. It is worth examining why religion has been overlooked in PA, at least the English-language literature, for a better understanding of the contribution that can derive from encompassing religious factors into theory and empirical research about PA. One reason lies in narrow interpretations of secularisation, which has at times been seen – in the West – as an irreversible trend in history. This consideration may have driven away the attention of PA scholars to religious factors. We would counter that these narrow interpretations do not consider that, first, processes of secularisation have occurred in a differential way around the world. Societies in the Asia Pacific region, for instance, may have secularised less than the West. In addition, secularisation may flow and ebb over time rather than linearly growing. Second – and more crucial, is that secularity is compatible with religion and religiously informed consciences still playing a role as social forces. Another reason for overlooking religion is that religious factors may fit problematically into certain epistemological approaches, like forms of neo-positivism, which have been ascendant in recent decades. We counter that this need not be the case, and that there is room in the field of PA – which is interdisciplinary and characterised by epistemological and methodological pluralism – for researching the influence of religion on key aspects of PA through a multitude of approaches and methods. Thus, the influence of religion on PA could and should be investigated more systematically, thereby adding to our capacity of generating knowledge to address PA-problems. In a recent contribution to this purpose (Ongaro & Tantardini, 2023 to our knowledge, the only book-length scholarly work devoted to this topic, although a number of journal articles and book chapters have been published that address different specific theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between religion and PA), we work out a theoretical framing of the relationship between religion and PA, and organise available ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 2023, VOL. 45, NO. 1, 1–6 https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2022.2155858
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推进公共管理知识:为什么宗教很重要
这篇社论认为,宗教对公共行政(PA)有重要影响,在研究PA时应有效地考虑宗教因素,以促进知识和得出实际意义。我们的论点的出发点是假设环境对PA很重要,而宗教是环境中被忽视的一部分。宗教——广义上被定义为对任何人类群体所面临的核心存在问题的一套连贯的答案,这些问题与人与神的关系以及它们在信条形式中的编纂有关,涉及仪式维度和虔诚——与社会、文化、政治和行政因素交织在一起,这些因素构成了影响特定管辖范围内PA的背景。因此,在PA研究中纳入宗教因素将有助于该领域的发展。宗教的影响在PA研究中一直被忽视。为了更好地理解将宗教因素纳入到关于PA的理论和实证研究中所能产生的贡献,有必要研究一下为什么宗教在PA中被忽视了,至少在英语文学中是如此。原因之一在于对世俗化的狭隘解读,在西方,世俗化有时被视为历史上不可逆转的趋势。这种考虑可能已经把PA学者的注意力转移到宗教因素上。我们会反驳说,这些狭隘的解释没有考虑到,首先,世俗化进程在世界各地以不同的方式发生。例如,亚太地区的社会世俗化程度可能不如西方。此外,世俗化可能会随着时间的推移而起伏,而不是线性增长。第二,也是更关键的一点,世俗主义与宗教是相容的,而宗教信仰的良知仍在发挥着社会力量的作用。忽视宗教的另一个原因是,宗教因素可能与某些认识论方法(如近几十年来兴起的新实证主义形式)相矛盾。我们反驳说,情况并非如此,在个人关系领域——这是跨学科的,以认识论和方法论多元化为特征——有空间通过多种途径和方法研究宗教对个人关系关键方面的影响。因此,宗教对个人情感的影响可以而且应该进行更系统的调查,从而增加我们产生知识来解决个人情感问题的能力。在最近对这一目的的贡献中(据我们所知,Ongaro & Tantardini, 2023年,这是唯一一本书长度的学术著作,致力于这一主题,尽管已经发表了许多期刊文章和书籍章节,讨论了宗教与PA之间关系的不同具体理论和实证方面),我们制定了宗教与PA之间关系的理论框架,并组织了可用的ASIA PACIFIC journal of PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 2023, VOL. 45, NO。1,1 - 6 https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2022.2155858
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CiteScore
4.50
自引率
20.70%
发文量
25
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