A conference sponsored by the Pluralism, Politics and Religion Initiative (PPRI)
A common product of twentieth-century processes of state formation in many parts of the world has been a strong discursive emphasis on “secularism” and “secularization”. But since the 1980s, the entry of religion into the public sphere in many parts of the world (the Islamic revolution in Iran; the rise of evangelical Protestantism as a force in American politics; the influence of Hindu nationalism in India or Islamism in Egypt) has unsettled the predictive certainties of secularization narratives. Developments in national politics, such as the entry of new groups into the democratic process (Muslim immigrant groups in Europe; low caste groups in India), have disrupted existing forms of secular consensus. One result has been a proliferation of debates about secularism.
As the certainties of secularization theory fade, it becomes possible to ask new questions about how terms like “secular”, “secularism”, “tolerance” or “religious freedom” are deployed, by whom, and to what ends. Who is authorized to speak for secularism? Who is marginalized in debates over its meaning? What hierarchies or exclusions do particular deployments of “secularism” secure? These questions arise in specific institutional contexts: in controversies over religious expression in public schools; at the intersection of civil courts and Islamic tribunals in matters of marriage and divorce; in debates over obscenity, blasphemy, and free speech in the press or the art museum. But they have broad implications for our understanding of contemporary debates in a “post-secular” age.
Conference Program
Friday, April 9
3:00-3:30pm Opening Remarks
3:30-5:00pm Panel 1: A Post-Secular Age?
- Discussant: James Bohman, Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University
- Philippe Portier, Professor of Political Science, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France
Post-secularism in Habermas' Thought - Jean-Paul Willaime, Director of Etudes à l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France
Secularism at the European Level: A Struggle between Non-religious and Religious Worldviews, Or Neutrality towards Secular and Religious Beliefs? - Ian MacMullen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis
Do Common, Secular Schools Provide the Best Preparation for Citizenship in a MultiReligious Liberal Democracy?
5:00pm Reception
Saturday, April 10
9:00-10:30am Panel 1: Governing Pluralism
- Discussant: John Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
- Patrick Eisenlohr, Professor of Anthropology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Cosmopolitanism, Globalism, and Islamic Piety Movements in Mauritius - Jeff A. Redding, Assistant Professor of Law, St. Louis University School of Law
Dar ul Qazas v. The Courts?: An Examination of a Muslim Alternative Dispute Resolution System and Its Implications for the Future of Secular Legal Systems - Peter van der Veer, Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany
Urban Religion in Mumbai and Singapore: Governing Multicultural Spaces
10:30-12:00pm Panel 2: Envisioning Secularism
- Discussant: Sunita Parikh, Associate Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis
- Cassie Adcock, Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Indian Secularism and Hindu Tolerance - Karin Zitzewitz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and Anthropology, Michigan State University
Forms of the Secular in Modern Indian Art - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Re-narrating Secularism
12:00-2:00pm Lunch
2:00-3:30pm Panel 3: Secularization and the State
- Discussant: James Wertsch, Director of International and Area Studies, and Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
- Marie-Dominique Even, Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, France
Are Post-Communist Societies Secularized? The Case of Mongolia - Yufeng Mao, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Washington University in St. Louis
Finding a Place for Islam in the Modern Chinese Nation-State: A Historical Perspective - Zhe Ji, Resident-Research Fellow at Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Nantes, Postdoctoral Fellow at Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, France
Secularization without Secularism: A Brief Observation on the Political-Religious Configuration of Post-89 China
3:30-5:00pm Panel 4: Debating Secularism and Islam
- Discussant: Seth Graebner, Associate Professor of French and International and Area Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
- Mohamed-Salah Omri, Associate Professor of Arabic, Washington University in St. Louis
(Re)presenting Secularism in the Arab World Today - Asad Ali Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
Pakistan as a Secular State? - John Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
Secularism in an Indonesian Judge's Words
