The Public Management of Religion: From State Building to New Forms of Minorities’ Mobilization

Francisco Colom-González (CSIC, Spain)

In conventional approaches, modernisation was conceived of as intrinsically connected to secularisation, i.e. as a process in which the religious foundations of political power would be increasingly replaced by alternative and secularised forms of legitimacy. Accordingly, cultural change in modernising societies would induce the privatisation of religious belief, diminish collective religious practice and push for secularised moral and political references. Even in the largely secularised Canadian and European contexts the debate about secularism in the collective self-perception of society, in relation to the display of religious symbols in public spaces, or about the accommodation of ethno-religious minorities, has strongly re-emerged, sometimes around ethnic and multicultural issues. The thesis of modernisation as secularization has therefore undergone a thorough revision in the social sciences without reaching an alternative consensus on the possible meaning of post-secularism.

The aim of this workshop is to gain a broad view on the shifting issues and cleavages that have shaped the public management of religion in Europe and Canada. Accordingly, the seminar will be organized around three main themes:
1) The secularization thesis under review;
2) The relations between state-building and religion; and
3) The accommodation of new religious minorities.

Full Workshop Description
Workshop Final Report

Programme:

Friday October 21st – Workshop Day 1

Session 1 – Secularisation and State-Building: A Conventional Path to Modernity?
14:00 – 18:30
Chair: Riva Kastoryano (CNRS, France)

• Jocelyn Maclure, Laval University, Canada
• Ingvill Thorson Plesner, Norwegian Center for Human Rights
• Massimo Rubboli, University of Genoa, Italy

Discussant: Ángel Rivero, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain

Saturday October 22nd – Workshop Day 2

Session 2 – Beyond Kulturkampf: Shifting Cleavages in Catholic Societies
09:00–12:30
Chair: Peter A. Kraus (RECODE Programme Chair; University of Helsinki, Finland)

• Sean L’Estrange, University College Dublin, Ireland
• Francisco Colom-González, Spanish National Research Council
• François Forêt, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Discussant: Gianni D’Amato, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Session 3 – The Accomodation of New Religious Minorities
14:00 – 17:30
Chair: N.N.

• Denise Helly, INRS, Canada
• Julia Mourao Permoser, University of Vienna, Austria
• Tuomas Martikainen, Åbo Akademi University, Finland

Discussant: Mathias Thaler, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Workshop brought to you with the collaboration of: