Leaving church, 'sects', spirituality, church and sexuality, fundamentalism and terrorism – a glance at every newspaper is enough to recognize the importance of the topic of religion in our modern societies. The sociology of religion tries to understand such phenomena by explaining and understanding how people put their beliefs into social action on the one hand and how society influences religion and religious life of individuals on the other hand. In the seminar, we are going to outline the processes of modernity that influence religion since the 1960s (secularization, individualization, globalization, and their counter-processes) and new religious forms by understanding theoretical and empirical contribution to the field. We are going to discuss and explain topics such as spirituality, religion on social media, gender issues in religions, fundamentalism as a counter-movement to modernity, and more fluid forms of religiosity (e.g., esoteric religiosity, popular religiosity, nature religiosity) by text reading, students' presentations, group work, and other methods.
Learning Outcomes
- The participants can understand and explain the basic driving forces of modern societies and how these influence religion and religious life.
- They will get to know an overview of current and cutting-edge topics of contemporary sociology of religion.
- The participants will be able to apply their knowledge to new religious-sociological phenomena that they encounter in everyday life.
This seminar invites primarily students of social sciences of the first semesters, international social science students,but also sociology students of higher semesters, who want to learn how to express their knowledge in English. Literature is going to be announced at the beginning of the seminar.
- Lehrende/r: Sarah Kabogan