This essay discusses in how far we can understand the evolution of secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transimperial and transnational patterns. In the context of the growing comparative literature on the history of secularisms around the globe, I argue for more attention for the mobility of ideas and people across borders. Conceptually, I suggest to capture the diversity of 20th century secularisms in terms of family resemblance and to understand this resemblance less as colonial inheritance but as the result of translocal networks and their circuits of ideas and practices since 1918. I approach these networks through a combination of global intellectual history, the history of transnational social networks, and the global history of non-state institutions. Empirically, I illustrate my argument with three case studies: the reception of Atatürk’s reforms across Asia and the Middle East to illustrate transnational discourses around secularism; the role of social networks in the form of translocal women’s circles in the interwar period; and private US foundations as global circuits of expertise. Together, these illustrations are an attempt to sustain a certain degree of coherence within globalising secularism studies while at the same time avoiding conceptual overstretch.
{"title":"The Transnationality of the Secular","authors":"Clemens Six","doi":"10.1163/9789004447967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004447967","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay discusses in how far we can understand the evolution of secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transimperial and transnational patterns. In the context of the growing comparative literature on the history of secularisms around the globe, I argue for more attention for the mobility of ideas and people across borders. Conceptually, I suggest to capture the diversity of 20th century secularisms in terms of family resemblance and to understand this resemblance less as colonial inheritance but as the result of translocal networks and their circuits of ideas and practices since 1918. I approach these networks through a combination of global intellectual history, the history of transnational social networks, and the global history of non-state institutions. Empirically, I illustrate my argument with three case studies: the reception of Atatürk’s reforms across Asia and the Middle East to illustrate transnational discourses around secularism; the role of social networks in the form of translocal women’s circles in the interwar period; and private US foundations as global circuits of expertise. Together, these illustrations are an attempt to sustain a certain degree of coherence within globalising secularism studies while at the same time avoiding conceptual overstretch.","PeriodicalId":396990,"journal":{"name":"Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and Politics","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124605864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-06DOI: 10.1163/25895850-12340002
K. Stoeckl
Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism surveys the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church has negotiated its relationship with the secular state, with other religions, and with Western modernity from its beginnings until the present. It applies multiple theoretical perspectives and draws on different disciplinary approaches to explain the varied and at times contradictory facets of Russian Orthodoxy as a state church or as a critic of the state, as a lived religion or as a civil religion controlled by the state, as a source of dissidence during Communism or as a reservoir of anti-Western, anti-modernist ideas that celebrate the uniqueness and superiority of the Russian nation. Kristina Stoeckl argues that, three decades after the fall of Communism, the period of post-Soviet transition is over for Russian Orthodoxy and that the Moscow Patriarchate has settled on its role as national church and provider of a new civil religion of traditional values.
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