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Issues in Comparative Secularism & Democracy
POLS G8432y
Credits:3 pts.
SYLLABUS
Instructor permission required before registration. Empirical predictions and normative prescriptions about secularism once dominated many of the foundational works in social science, particularly in modernization theory. However, recently scholars as diverse as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in political theory, Peter Katzenstein in international relations, and Stathis Kalyvas, Ronald Inglehart, and José Casanova in their comparative work have been engaged in a fundamental rethinking of religion, secularism, and desecularization. Some of the issues we will explore in the seminar are the following. In a lecture series, five scholars over the course of the semester will argue that some of the fundamental categories used in IR theory and in comparative politics make religion almost impossible to study. Are they right? If so, what new approaches might be called for? How can social science survey analysis help us explore issues of religion and politics? Most religions have been at times restrictive of full womens rights. What can we learn from successful patterns of contestation in this area? Can we identify, from the perspective of democratic theory, what the minimal degree of freedom democracy needs from religion to function, and the minimal degree of freedom that religion must be allowed if the polity is to be a democracy. If so, what do these twin tolerations say about secularism? Finally, just as we now understand that there are multiple modernities does it make more analytic sense to speak of the multiple secularisms of modern democracies? We will explore this last question by exploring at least four different patterns of state-society relations that actually exist in contemporary democracies; freedom of the state from religion separatism (France and Turkey), freedom of religion from the state separatism (USA), a state with an established religion (most of the Scandinavian countries, UK, and Greece), and the under-theorizedpattern that Rajeev Bhargava (who will participate in the seminar) calls the respect all, support-all, principled distance model for India. Are two of the more successful new democracies in Islamic majority states, Indonesia and Senegal, close to this model? For any given polity can we say anything about what conditions are most, and least, supportive for each model if the goal is democracy and relative peace in a specific polity? Do Holland, Germany, and Switzerland have more in common with the Indian model than they do with separatist or one established religion: model?
Course Sections
Spring
- 2010
Section Number:
001
Call Number:
63247
Course Number:
8432
Section Title:
COMP SECULARISM & DEMOC
Day/Time:
W 4:10p - 6:00p
309 Hamilton Hall
Course Bulletin: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/POLS/G8432-20101-001
Instructor: A. Stepan
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