Understanding Secularism

Introduction: Thinking About Secularism

• The book addresses the connection between "the secular" as an epistemic category and "secularism" as a political doctrine, exploring their suitability for anthropological inquiry.
• Contemporary religious movements and scholarly commentary highlight that religion remains significant in the modern world
• The "resurgence of religion" is viewed both as a source of moral guidance and a symptom of irrationality.
• The question of secularism has become a focal point in academic and practical debates
• Progress from religious to secular is no longer straightforward, yet the universal validity of secularism remains a question.
• Abstract separation of religious and secular institutions occurred in medieval Christendom and Islamic empires
• "Secularism" entails new concepts of "religion," "ethics," and "politics," generating varied reactions.
• Secularism is rejected as Western-specific but is also insisted on as globally relevant.
• Charles Taylor argues secularism emerged from Western Christian problems but applies to modern non-Christian societies; this argument is worthy of the attention of all those interested in this question.
• Taylor connects secularism to the modern nation-state’s rise, pointing to legitimization through doctrines consensus among conflicting religions and political ethics independent of religious convictions
• A contemporary model includes an overlapping consensus (after Rawls), with no universally agreed (secular or religious) basis for political principles in heterogeneous societies.
• Taylor agrees with Rawls that a political ethic will be embedded in some understanding or other of the good, but argues against Rawls that background understandings and foreground political principles need not be tightly bound together
• This model of secularism is not only intellectually appealing but also crucial for the modern democratic state.
• Taylor highlights the horizontal, direct-access character of modern society plus Secular homogeneous time to emphasize features of the modern imaginary that belongs to a democratic state, influenced by Benedict Anderson's thought
• Sources of political legitimacy in a modern direct-access, temporally homogeneous state radically differs from traditional ones.
• Payment of taxes/induction into the army relies on state enforcement, not self-enforcement
• "Participation in governance" (Taylor) refers to statistical population measurements, is dependent on political skill in managing populations, not individual self-discipline ethics.
• The statecraft uses "self-discipline," "participation," "law,"/ "economy" as political strategy which I argue to be a distinctive feature of modern liberal governance.
• Modern society's problems and resources differ greatly from those of a Greek polis.
• Modern population individuals do not see participation the way ideological spokespersons (theorize "political legitimacy").
• Politicians recognize system danger when the general population doesn't enjoy prosperity, regime felt thoroughly unresponsive which means policing techniques and an economy that avoids disappointing too many in the general population too seriously are more important than self-discipline as an autonomous factor.
• Strong evidence suggests less direct connection between electorate and representatives in contemporary liberal democracies, which means representatives are less reflective of interests, identities, /aspirations
• Absence of a direct citizen representation reflection isn't made up for through extra-parliamentary governance institutions.
• Pressure groups influence government decisions
• The mass media increasingly cooperate with the state, mediating the public's political reactions and feelings of security/threat.
• Negotiation space in public life is limited to elites
• There is no guarantee the policies a citizen votes will be followed.
• The modern nation’s "imagined community" is mediated through constructed images like national media and national education-charged with cultivating it.
• Transcendent mediation i.e. secularism in an important sense occurs when the modern state makes citizenship the primary principle of identity.
• Secularism isn't just intellectual (toleration question)
• "Premodern" societies mediate local identities without transcendence
• Bureaucracies and market dealings rely on homogeneous time
• Individuals in heterogeneous societies experience immediate and mediated time, reversible and nonreversible, thereby shaping their political responses.
• Liberal democracy does not introduce in a direct-access society
• Modern society mediation certainly differs from medieval ones
• Different countries assign varying roles to Religion (example France has a separate and distinct relationship, while Britain’s and America's secularism has publicly present at the root.
• Toleration between religiously-defined groups varies across countries
• The idea of an overlapping consensus enables differing reasons among people to subscribe to the independent, secular ethic
• Political disagreements are continuous, require negotiated compromise
• Quarreling over core political principles exists
• Generosity motivates Taylor’s answer through negotiation and persuasion, but the nation-states doesn't deal in persuasion.
• Legal action can be used (as an intimidation tactic).
• Exchange of unequal concessions can sometimes occur in a state.
• Principles of equality and liberty become subject to law resulting in citizens feeling although they can be happy, they cannot identify harms.
• The state establishing and defending "core political principles," and it’s courts imposing distinction between them (through violence) can add cumulative disaffection and cause secularism to fail
• Secularism shifts the violence of religious wars into national and colonial wars
• The difficulty of secularism as a doctrine related to war and peace is tied to the system of capitalist nation states.
• Leaders of the American nation like to define ‘good’ in opposition to enemies to it- rooted in religious roots and the belief of global liberty make it likely to occur America seeing ‘enemies not just as ‘opponents but’ ‘as evil.
• Public dissent is denounced as treason, with immigrant groups facing legalized suppression stemming from the foundation and religious origins of the American republic, the intolerance has shifted focus towards secular opponents in the twentieth century.
• America has an exemplary secular constitution
• Intolerance explosions are compatible/ intertwined with modern society's secularism
• There is less sustained public debate on September 11 tragedy and its significance.
• Absence of public debate is to be explained through mediating representations that define the national personality
• India's secular constitution and liberal democracy coexistence with "communal riots" reveal reconstructed high-caste Hinduism that defines who does not fit in as religious minorities.
• Secular state does not guarantee toleration (Ambition and fear do)
• Law seeks to regulate, not eliminate violence.
• Secularism separates private reason and public principle.
• Theoretical, practical problems requires defined categories in order to determine what constitutes a discourse and action which are labeled religious and/or secular.
• The Bible's layout/typography facilitating its reading as "literature" raises the ambiguous sense of "literature"- the intersection that lies between texts with a particular subject, printed matter, and art.
• Reading the Bible as art may be attributed to the historical development of sensibilities and disciplines that made it possible
• The protest against derrogation is itself a secular expression.
• Textually essential distinctions- "Religion" becomes the source of violence and oppressiveness in the West.
• Violence isn't justified on “Qur'an” the scripture
• Governments seldom justify using indiscriminately against civilians appealing to scripture
• The way people engage with multifaceted texts ( sense & relevance) involves personal habit, disciplines, reading traditions, & temperament
• There are underlying assumptions related to Islamic texts that are present such as Muslims are guided by it and Christians and Jews can freely interpret.
• Conflicting position assumptions help taken by orientalists position that the positions is that it carries a magical quality as to be both univocal and infectious (except from the orientalist).
• Support for censoring discource claims violent action lies in “relogious idealology/concerns for the concern in the consenqeutn suffering of that, but if the secularist cares as well.
• Accountance must be given for the theory of motives deals with concepts of character and dispositions/ or is there always one to be a religious act
• Easy to point agents who perpetrated
• The act was not a single or consistent cause but that included diverse desires/sensibilities that involved
• Must have a theory of motives or violence for example one is CIA part took in arming warriors, as their are a variety of desires sensibilites and self-images the outcome.
• Identification of intentions are variably distinguished in modern tradition scholar call is critical.
• Assuptions are themselves practical and political reality in which people commit their actions to it as a modern goal, especially “The West”.
• Unsettled, fragmented cultures will cause societies to have overlapping heterogeneous aspects from origins,circumstance, valencies.
• The media has to unpack assumptions to make assumptions

Title II

• The secular and the religious both differ insignianty
• Secular freedom restrains from that those self discourses of discourses
• "Secular" is conceptually prior to political doctrine- concepts practices make a variety of these come together.
• Genealogy should not be substituted for social history
• Secular life needs to be pursued through the secular shadow

What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like?

• Anthropologists have written much on secularism which is part of a vigorous public debate in many parts of the world
• Contrast that anthropologists pay scarely regard an idea
• Religion is at the domain of the nonratinal and stands in opposition but seeks also has been taken as a goal as well