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Krönika #3 2023
The Revival of Alchemy: The Cumulative Creation of a Tradition
The aim of the recently published anthology Beyond Babel: Religion and Linguistic Pluralism (2023) is to examine the position of languages when faced with religious pluralism (and vice versa). In this volume, scientists from a variety of disciplines explore how religious and linguistic pluralisms “enter into polyphonic relations, how they co-evolve and grow together, and why they clash” (as the editor Andrea Vestrucci summarizes it). For instance, among the discussed subject areas we find analyses of interreligious and Interlinguistic encounters, the religious limits of language, and the ways in which religious identities and scientific notions interact (for example, regarding the impact of AI on beliefs).
My own contribution to the volume is placed under a section dedicated to the relation between scientific codes and religious meanings. While there are different ways to understand the relation between science and religion, my chapter explores how science and spirituality intersected and influenced each other during the “revival of alchemy” that took place in British occultism during the late nineteenth-early twentieth century.
During the Victorian period, branches of science saw major developments and expansions. However, as scientific method took the lead, many people experienced that the impact of Victorian naturalism and scientific materialism was a sense of alienation and isolation. In response, a growing number of individuals —primarily from the middle class—were involved in spiritualism and occult societies such as the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. While invoking ancient traditions and Renaissance magic, these occultists were, to a certain extent, developing a new and potent magical system which sought to interact the fields of science and spirituality. Hence, this serves as a good example of how a tradition, through cumulative creation, reinvents itself to become relevant for future generations.
In my chapter, I explore the way in which alchemy served as an “open ended text” that enabled a dynamic interplay between spiritual and scientific meanings. By connecting my analysis to the Gadamerian notion of tradition, I propose that Victorian occultists created a worldview that merged novel scientific discoveries with the pre-given structures made available by the alchemical tradition. Nevertheless, and similar to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s description of the interpretative process, this was simultaneously a reproductive and productive procedure. Hence, while the tradition of alchemy provided modern occultists with certain structures of ancient origin, they reinterpreted and adjusted them to meet present requriements. In my chapter, I discuss the pros and cons of embracing the kind of ”interpretative flexibility” that such coping strategy requires.
“The Revival of Alchemy: The Cumulative Creation of a Tradition.” In Vestrucci, A. (ed.) Beyond Babel: Religion and Linguistic Pluralism (2023). Springer International Publishing AG, 227-243.
Dr. Ingrid Malm Lindberg
Krönika #2 2023
A symposium: “National Interest, Representation, and the State: Implications for the Recognition of Rights of Nature”
On 5 June 2023 our research project Realizing Rights of Nature: Sustaining Development and Democracy organized a symposium. We considered two questions that arise when rights of nature are recognized: how nature will be represented and how its recognition as a rightsholder relates to ideas of national interest. We were fortunate to have at the symposium seven excellent speakers and a wonderful group of attendees who contributed to small-group and whole-group discussions.
After group members Victoria Enkvist, Marianne Dahlén, and Seth Epstein spoke about nature’s rights and our research, our invited speakers took the floor. The first to speak was Claes Tängh Wrangel, researcher and acting managing director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism here at Uppsala. Claes critiqued the claim that the Anthropocene represents a clear break from modernity. His argument provided a way to think about nature’s rights, which are often thought to reflect ideas we associate with both modernity and the Anthropocene.
The following two speakers broadly addressed the theme of national interest. Love Rönnelid, a postdoctoral researcher at the Law Faculty here at Uppsala, identified five unexpected consequences of attempts to enforce human rights since World War II. For instance, Love argued that rights are reactive rather than proactive. These consequences may be applicable to a rights of nature approach. Maria Refors Legge discussed nature as a right for future generations. Maria, a researcher in the Legal Department of the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), referred to human rights as a legal construct. Her argument that rights are created rather than inherent resonates with debates over whether there are limits to the sorts of natural rightsholders that can be created.
Following small group discussions and lunch, speakers discussed the theme of representation. Jonas Hultin Rosenberg, an associate professor in the Political Science Department here, spoke about the “all affected” principle, which gives all entities affected by a collective’s actions the right to participate in its decision-making process. Jonas distinguished between political patiency and political agency. Nature can deserve concern for its own sake, possess political standing, and have an interest in its own right; these are required for political patiency. Political agency additionally requires an entity be able to speak for itself. Entities possessing political patiency but not political agency pose a challenge for democracies. Christina Allard, associate professor of Law in the Division of Social Sciences at Luleå University of Technology, compared the orientation of Sweden and Aotearoa New Zealand towards the Sámi and Māori peoples, respectively. Christina argued that Aotearoa New Zealand is moving towards a bi-cultural society, citing the incorporation of some Māori concepts of representation in recent agreements between Māori iwi and the Crown Government.
Two speakers reflected on the day’s discussions. Michael Nausner, a Systematic Theologian and Researcher at the Unit for Research and Analysis of the Church of Sweden, underscored Claes’ point about the false hope of an emancipatory break with modernity. Noting that we cannot leave modernity behind, Michael spoke about the value of overlooked elements of our heritage (such as traditions of Christian animism). Last was Pella Thiel, activist and knowledge expert for the United Nations Harmony with Nature Initiative. Pella expressed skepticism towards natural law, referencing previous discussions about rights’ allegedly inherent character. In response to Love’s point that human rights have been more effective for stopping than enabling actions, she suggested that the promotion of new kinds of human-nature relations was more vital than the obstruction of old unsustainable practices.
The floor was then opened up for discussion. For more about the symposium, see: https://www.crs.uu.se/forskning/pagaende/forverkliga-naturens-rattigheter/.
Krönika #1 2023
What is the relevance of religion and nonreligion for understanding human/nonhuman relations in an era of planetary crisis?
My doctoral research project focuses on non-Indigenous activism against an oil pipeline project in British Columbia, Canada. I am not interested in activism as a social movement, but the perspectives and motivations of individuals engaged in activism. I frame their opposition to the pipeline project as an entry point to explore human/nonhuman relations during the climate and ecological crises. I seek to determine the relevance of religion and nonreligion for the ways in which these relations are structured.
Nonreligion is an emergent area of study in the social sciences of religion. Most recently, scholars have been exploring the positive or substantive content of nonreligious identities. This includes individuals who are humanists, atheists, secularists and spiritual but not religious, as well as those indifferent to religion. It is clear what the nonreligious are not (religious), but what are their morals, attitudes and beliefs, including those related to nonhuman animals and nature? One key objective of my research project is to identify how nonreligious individuals imagine moral human/nonhuman relations.
An underlying objective is to demonstrate how scholars can research religion and nonreligion together in relation to ecology. To do so I draw on political theories of environmental and ecological justice.
Environmental justice holds that the unequal distribution of environmental harm among racial, cultural and socioeconomic minority communities constitutes injustice. This harm includes, for example, land and water contamination from natural resource exploitation. The logic of environmental justice also applies to anthropogenic climate change. As the United Nations states: “The impacts of climate change will not be borne equally or fairly, between rich and poor, women and men, and older and younger generations.”
Ecological justice positions nonhumans at the center of moral concern. It reflects what ecofeminist Val Plumwood calls the ‘ecological self,’ in which humans seek the flourishment of fellow beings for their own sake. Ecological injustice occurs when humans disrupt the flourishing of plants, animals, water bodies, and even ecosystem or landscapes.
Do ordinary individuals, both religious and nonreligious, structure their relations with (non)humans in accordance with principles of justice? And are religious or nonreligious conceptions, language and identities relevant for how these principles are expressed?
Nonreligion has typically been studied based on its relationship with or comparability to religion. Theories of justice, as opposed to religion, operate as the primary conceptual reference for my research. This has the advantage of not imposing terms, concepts and ideas from the study of religion onto that of nonreligion. It also creates space to capture points of overlap and divergence among the religious and nonreligious, as well as identify the independent value of nonreligion for
understanding human/nonhuman relations. This latter point is particularly relevant given that, in traditionally Christian countries like Canada, the number of people who do not identify as religious continues to rise as the planetary crisis unfolds.
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Lauren Strumos is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada). She received a Mitacs Globalink award to visit the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society as a student researcher.
Krönika #2 2022
What is Europe? Cross-cultural reflections on interdisciplinary research
I am currently attending the WASP-HS project at CRS entitled 'Artificial Intelligence, democracy and human dignity' organised by Professor Anna-Sara Lind as a Research Trainee as part of the Euroculture programme, a master's programme exploring what Europe is, in which the Faculty of Theology of Uppsala University is participating. In the project, I have Professor Lind in Law and Dr Johan Eddebo in Philosophy of religion as direct supervisors to guide my academic discussions.
Value of cross-cultural comparison
What is Europe? What is Western culture? The importance of asking and thinking about these questions seems to becoming increasingly valuable as well as difficult in today's world. Especially since the late 19th century, modernisation seems to mean accepting and adapting the ideas, knowledge and technologies of civilisations originating from the European peninsula. Various types of knowledge deduced from ancient Greece and Rome have continued to spread around the world through the Age of Discovery and constitute what the citizens of modern nations regard as common sense. Meanwhile, globalisation does not refer to the phenomenon of people and goods simply leaving Europe, but naturally flowing back from the outer world, which is dozens of times the size of this huge peninsula, and forming a kind of chaos. This includes the flat Nordic societies, the societies of the central peninsula with their profound culture backed by aristocratic authority and traditions, the societies with a history of partially accepting communisation, the societies that integrate economic rationality and classical aristocracy while interacting with the continent, etc.
Her geographically, economically, historically and religiously complex inner diversity makes the question of an integral European culture impossibly difficult to answer. However, the desire to explore the image of Europe as the mother - or at least a major contributor - of contemporary cultural trends attracts many, and it seems to make sense to continue to try perceiving her identity in a society that embraces multiple cultures. Anyone can think of examples where the theories and ideas of the historical majority have been nonsense to those of us living today. There is a saying attributed to Bismarck, the iron-blooded chancellor who had a great influence on the modernisation of my home country: 'Fools learn from experience, wise men learn from history'. Not many people shall want to repeat those painful experiences into the uncertain future.
Cross-cultural comparative research has been conducted from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives. The World Values Survey, which regularly collects values from countries around the world and is presented in June 2021 CRS Chronicle by Professor Anders Bäckström, is one such example. There is also a trend in psychology, the scientific analysis of human behaviour, known as cross-cultural psychology. The theory of cultural self-construal, proposed by Markus and Kitayama, is particularly well known. The idea is that each person has a more independent or interdependent view of self, and that the gradient of this self-construal can be used as a factor in interpreting cultural behaviour and the environment to which it has been adapted. For example, in Japan, which is considered to have a more interdependent self-construal, the term ‘自分’ is used as the first person like ‘I’, and the direct English translation of this word is 'Self Part'. People in 'independent' Western cultures tend to put their babies in a stand-alone bed from a young age, while many Japanese families continue to have their babies sleep with them as early as around the age of seven, when they start primary school. Cultural comparison as an academic discipline is an area that requires caution, as it can encourage Orientalism and, vice versa, Occidentalism. As an interpretive tool, I prefer to use this theory of 'cultural self-construal' for phenomenal cultural comparisons.
Approach to the “What is Europe?”-question
In making cross-cultural comparisons to suggest what 'Europe' means to me, I considered my background in Japan to be one of the ideal targets. It is true that Japan, despite its geographical isolation, succeeded in rapid modernisation in the late 1800s to become a permanent member of the League of Nations and is still the only Asian country in the G7 after the World Wars. There is no doubt that the current state of politics and economy is an accumulation of history, and I argue that comparing the qualitative differences between Japan, which formally embraced the European system, paradoxically can illuminate the outer contours of Europe. From that standpoint, I am conducting research interpreting public opposition to IDs and common numbers assigned to citizens by the government to allow individuals to be identified, something which is essential for democratic AI use.
The hypothesis is that while opposition to privacy can be found in many political entities, there may be qualitative differences in privacy consciousness between the East and West. A relevant example can be found in how most Japanese novelists have used and been using pseudonyms, but both JK Rowling and Tolkien use their real names; the Tale of Genji, written over a thousand years ago, and a number of diary literature are also enjoyed by hobbyists in Europe, but in many cases the writer's family name is known but the real name does not survive. Japan has had a document administration system for more than 1,000 years, but when signing official documents before modernisation, officials often wrote the family name clearly in block letters and the first name in broken forms, leaving the actual signer unknown in some texts today.
Ancient Japanese diaries were literary works that were read and passed around among the nobility of the time. However, a work written 1200 years ago by a regional director dispatched from the centre, who called himself a woman, is very popular and is used in Japanese language classes for junior high school students in today. (The real author of the diary must have been known to the people of the time, as his own poems in the diary were selected under his real name in the Japanese National Poetry Collection in the period.) Numerous virtual-live streamers streaming with anonymous avatars on contemporary Youtube have gained millions of fans. It is my research hypothesis, based on previous research, that the complex and multi-layered sense of anonymity and privacy in Japan, which has been maintained from the past to the present, generates a psychological backlash against some e-government measures. I believe that such a perspective may offer an insight into another way of looking at the world as Europeans see it.
For Further Plan
This research is a work in progress and, when completed, will only be at the level of a hypothetical viewpoint, as it assumes a psychological theoretical interpretation of previous research. However, whether or not the research results are sufficient to hypothesise that the Far Eastern archipelago's status-based resilience used in e-government stems from privacy, it may offer another perspective on the ongoing modernisation of Europe as an engine.
Haruka Yoshioka, MA. Euroculture student
The photograph is from Euroculture's first semester in Olomouc, Czech Republic. Many students had 'my' café as a place to study. The Czech Republic, like Sweden, has a thriving café culture. The cat was the owner of this particular café and I used to play with him while I studied.
Krönika #1 2022
Religion och politik på Facebook
I augusti 2019 skickar Göteborgs-Posten ut en push-notis med nyheten att M-ledningen vill utreda slöjdförbud i skolan. Partisekreteraren uttalar att ”Skolan ska vara en frizon”. Sex minuter senare skickas en rättelse ut. Texten var densamma till skillnad från en enda bokstav som gjorde en essentiell skillnad; det var inte slöjden, som Moderaterna ansåg behöver utredas, utan slöjan.
Denna bild (bild från Emanuel Karlsten 2019). sammanfattar på många sätt den utveckling som har skett i Sverige under de senaste åren, där religion kommit att bli en allt mer synlig, omdiskuterad och politiserad fråga i det offentliga.
Hur ska man förstå det? Både i Norden och i Sverige visar tidigare forskning på en ökad politisering av religion. Från att ha betraktats en irrelevant aspekt i svensk politik har religion kommit att bli allt mer närvarande i den politiska debatten. Här, liksom i den offentliga debatten i stort, sammankopplas religion i huvudsak med olika politiska frågor, snarare än att diskuteras i sin egen rätt. Inte minst frågor som kan placeras in på den nya åsiktsdimension som omfamnar kulturella värderingsfrågor och som sträcker sig från libertär till auktoritär, såsom: integration, jämställdhet och andra mänskliga fri- och rättigheter.
I min avhandling Religion och politik i hybrida mediemiljöer har jag analyserat diskussioner om religion och politik i just så kallade hybrida mediemiljöer. Mer konkret handlar det om Facebook-kommentarer på tidningsartiklar som har publicerats av någon av sveriges fem största nyhetsredaktioner. Alltså, Aftonbladet publicerar en artikel på sin Facebook-sida, människor kommenterar artikeln och jag analyserar kommentarerna.
De analyserade diskussionerna berör tre olika politiska partier och tre olika händelser. Det första och största handlar om våren 2016, då den miljöpartistiska politikern Yasri Kahn avstod från att skaka hand med en kvinnlig reporter med hänvisning till sin muslimska tro. Diskussionen var del av en större debatt som startade med att dåvarande bostadsminister Mehmet Kaplan, också han aktivt troende muslim, kritiserades för samröre med icke-demokratiska organisationer. Den andra diskussionen berör Kristdemokraterna och frågor om hbtqi och abort under åren 2015-2016, och den tredje handlar om Sverigedemokraterna och valet till Svenska kyrkan 2017. Sammanlagt har jag analyserat över 20 000 Facebook-kommentarer.
Sekularistisk och antimuslimsk diskurs
Något som präglade alla de tre diskussionerna var en stark sekularistisk diskurs. Det finns, argumenterar de flesta, en gräns mellan religion och politik, där religion tillhör den privata sfären och bör stanna där, och inte blandas in i politik eller andra offentliga angelägenheter. Här uttrycks olika föreställningar om svensken som sekulär och om Sverige som modernt i betydelsen icke-religiöst. Här finns skillnader att finna mellan de olika debatterna. Även om den sekularistiska normen dominerar i alla tre, så är det samtidigt tydligt att det går att finna olika nyanser, inte minst i hur strikt den uppsatta gränsen mellan religion och politik ska hållas. I diskussionen om Miljöpartiet, ministern och handskakningen är den gränsen absolut och att överträda den är att betrakta som ett hot mot det svenska samhället och så kallade “svenska värderingar”. I de båda andra diskussionerna finns det tydliga öppningar i gränsen, som bland annat diskuteras i termer av rätt eller fel sorts kristendom. Orsaken till dessa olika nyanser menar jag går att finna i huruvida diskussionen sker mot bakgrund av islam eller kristendom. Det ligger nära ett annat av de drag som karaktöriserade samtliga tre debatter, nämligen närvaron av det jag kallar en Antimuslimsk diskurs. Här är det inte religion i sig som är det farliga och hotande, utan just islam. Det är islam som hotar “våra” så kallade “svenska värderingar” och det är muslimer som ska anpassa sig till våra normer. Normer som beskrivs som helt andra än “muslimska värderingar”, och den som inte “tar seden dit den kommer” uppmanas att “åka hem”.
Köksbordet på torget
Digitaliseringens effekter på det offentliga samtalet innebär att köksborden har flyttat ut på torgen: vi möter allt fler åsikter som inte är densamma som vår egen. Det betyder inte att det är åsikter som är nya, utan kanske bara att de inte fanns i de rum där vi tidigare förde våra samtal. I de diskussioner jag analyserat finns exempel på en stor bredd av röster, åsikter och känslouttryck som tidigare lyst med sin frånvaro i den offentliga politiska diskussionen. Den polariserade tonen är den vanligaste, och det förekommer såväl hat som hot. Men när man går djupare det så finns det också så mycket mer: genuina försök till diskussion, att förstå andras argument och testa sina egna, det finns frågor och det finns svar, det finns humor och omtanke.
Det är också viktigt att minnas att diskussionerna faktiskt bottnar i svåra frågor: När det jag ser att “mitt sätt att leva” krockar med andras principer, vad gör jag då? Ska vi välkomna alla religiösa uttryck i religionsfrihetens namn? Hur värderar jag olika jämställdhetsideal - rätten att bli lika behandlad eller att själv få bestämma över vem som rör vid min kropp? Och hur förhåller sig dessa ideal till frågor om religionsfrihet, eller till en önskan om ett inkluderande pluralistiskt samhälle? I det mångreligiösa samhället måste frågor om religion diskuteras offentligt, och tidigare forskning visar att denna typ av frågor ofta fungerar som en ingång till större diskussioner om det pluralistiska samhällets utmaningar. Dessa debatter är viktiga, även om de ibland kan tyckas skava. Däremot är det upp till oss alla att försöka hålla dem på en konstruktiv nivå, så att de hjälper snarare än stjälper den demokratiska utvecklingen. Här behövs mer forskning och en bättre förståelse för hur vi uppnår det.
Avhandlingen finns att ladda ner i fulltext från DiVA.
Linnea Jensdotter, doktor i religionssociologi
Krönika Nr. 2, December 2021
Ungas erfarenheter av religion i skola och medier
Desinformation, polarisering, stereotyper och filterbubblor är några av de risker som i dag förknippas med ungas användning av sociala medier. Vad gäller traditionella mediers tendens att använda förenklingar och stereotyper har tidigare religions- sociologisk forskning visat hur nyhetsmedier, film- och tv-serier tenderar att framställa islam som något kopplat till våld, hot och spänningar i samhället. Med anledning av att medier och skola utgör två vanliga platser där unga i Sverige i dag kommer i kontakt med frågor som rör religion blir ungdomarnas egna erfarenheter av religion i nämnda medier ett relevant religionssociologiskt område att studera.
Genom elevtexter och intervjuer enskilt och i grupp undersöker jag i avhandlingen ”Med(ie)vetenhet, motstånd och engagemang” hur gymnasieungdomar talar om sina erfarenheter av religion i digitala medier och andra sociala sammanhang, samt hur aspekter av aktörskap och omkringliggande kulturella värderingar aktualiseras i ungdomarnas tal. I studien deltar ungdomar på både studie- och yrkesförberedande program från tre olika gymnasieskolor och kommuner i Mälardalen.
Ett starkt resultat i avhandlingen är hur ungdomarnas tal präglas av en med(ie)vetenhet om, och ett motstånd mot, upplevt förenklade och stereotypa framställningar av islam, kristendom, judendom och buddhism i nyhetsmedier samt film- och tv-serier. Ungdomarna, som kommer från olika religiösa och etniska bakgrunder, uttrycker hur sociala medie-, skol-, och hemmiljöer innebär utmaningar men även möjligheter när det kommer till att prata om religion tillsammans med andra. Sociala medier förknippas med både svårigheter (hat och desinformation) och möjligheter (identifikation och inifrånperspektiv). Avhandlingen visar vidare hur större sociala sammanhang och dominerande kulturella värderingar om vad det innebär att vara muslim, kristen, jude eller ateist begränsar ungdomarnas aktörskap, när det kommer till att prata om religion i Sverige i dag. Att kommunicera om religion på sociala medier eller i klassrummet verkar fungera väl om det sker i mindre grupper. Att ungdomarna går på skolor präglade av etnisk och religiös mångfald anges som en förklaring till att samtal om den egna och andras religion blir möjliga i ungdomarnas respektive skolkontexter.
Konton på Instagram eller slutna grupper på Facebook uttrycks av ungdomarna som platser där hat mot, och desinformation om, religiösa grupper och individer förekommer. Samtidigt visar avhandlingens analys hur samma medier uttrycks som plattformar där nyanserade bilder av såväl religiositet som sekularitet delas och sprids. Såväl pedagoger som forskare behöver därför fortsätta att kritiskt granska hur religion och icke-religion förhandlas på nämnda plattformar – men också rikta uppmärksamhet mot hur sociala medier kan utgöra en resurs i ungas vardagskontakt med frågor som rör religion.
Vi vet att unga i det sekulariserade men också religiöst pluralistiska Sverige i dag kommer i kontakt med och lär sig om religion på en rad olika arenor. Min studie visar att kontakterna och lärandet präglas av en kritisk och kulturell med(ie)vetenhet om hur religion diskuteras och framställs i det svenska samhället.
Jag menar att det religionssociologiska, men även det didaktiska, forskningsfältet behöver fortsätta att bedriva forskning i skol- och mediemiljöer där unga i dag befinner sig. Mer empirisk forskning behövs för att bättre förstå hur ungdomar förhåller sig till, men också konsumerar och producerar, innehåll kopplat till religion och sekularitet - i och utanför medier.
Anna Wrammert arbetar för närvarande som lektor i religionskunskap i gymnasieskolan. Förutom sitt läraruppdrag driver hon även praktiknära forskningsprojekt samt utvecklingsarbete för verksamma lärare i Uppsala kommun. Länk till avhandlingen i sin helhet finns här.
Anna Wrammert
Doktor i religionssociologi och ämneslärare i religionskunskap, mediekommunikation, medieproduktion samt svenska.
Krönika nr 1, juni 2021
Ronald F Inglehart 1934-2021
Ronald Inglehart avled den 8 maj 2021. Han var ända till sin död 86 år gammal verksam som professor i sociologi vid universitetet i Michigan, Ann Arbor. Redan år 1981 medverkade han till det som skulle bli World Values Survey (WVS) en idag världsomspännande undersökning av medborgares värderingar som upprepas med 5 års mellanrum och täcker 90 % av världens befolkning. Genom att Thorleif Pettersson vid Uppsala universitet kom att bli indragen i de svenska enkätundersökningarna på 1980-talet blev Ingleharts teori om den tysta revolutionen (1977) introducerad i vår forskning. Teorins grundläggande tanke är att en kulturs värderingsbild endast förändras långsamt genom generationsväxlingar och att detta går att belägga empiriskt.
Den andra delen av teorin hämtas från Maslows behovsteori och är mer normativ genom att hävda att individens utveckling går från basala materiella behov (mat, värme, trygghet) till individuella post-materiella behov (självförverkligande och livskvalitet). De post-materiella värderingarna finns framför allt i europeiska välfärdsstater där den existentiella tryggheten är väl utvecklad. I dessa kulturer ökar fokus på jämlikhet, tolerans och mänskliga rättigheter liksom på miljö- och livsfrågor. Av intresse för den religionsvetenskapliga forskningen är att Inglehart, i likhet med 1800-talets teoretiker, inkluderar religion som en självklar del av sin utopi. I den nordeuropeiska protestantiska regionen förlorar nationalkyrkorna sitt inflytande medan en individuell andlighet blir mer dominant. Denna omvandling kallar han, något förenklat, för sekularisering. Men han och kollegan Pippa Norris konstaterar samtidigt att den globala demografiska utvecklingen gör världen mer religiös än någonsin.
Poängen är att de kulturella konsekvenserna blir förutsägbara i avancerade kapitalistiska ekonomier. När industriella länder som Kina och Indien går i samma riktning bör liknande kulturella skiften uppstå. Denna ”marxistiska determinism” filtreras dock genom existerande religiösa förhållningssätt vilket gör att teorin ger utrymme för en weberiansk nyansrikedom (så som David Martin argumenterar). ”Culture matters” är en av Ingleharts återkommande besked. Intressant är att Inglehart hann uppleva den ”backlash” i en ny politisk populism med söndervittrande demokratiska värderingar som han ser som följden av minskad ekonomisk säkerhet inte minst i USA. Inglehart konstaterar att efterkrigstidens ekonomiska och sociala vinster har gått till överklassen vilket förklarar nya tendenser till osäkerhet för breda befolkningsgrupper vilket leder till förväntade värderingsförändringar som går i motsatt riktning.
Det protestantiska norra Europa är dock fortfarande globalt ledande och han är särskilt förtjust i Sverige. Denna uppskattning har varit ömsesidig och Inglehart blev kallad som hedersdoktor vid Uppsala universitet 2006. Då WVS firade sitt 25-årsjubileum förlades firandet till SCAS (Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study) i Uppsala och kombinerades med en avtackning av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond som stöttat forskningen. När vi skrev ansökan om Linné-stöd för Impact of Religion-programmet (2008-2018) ställde han upp i vår internationella referensgrupp. Till detta kommer att han tillsammans med kollegan Pippa Norris tilldelades det Skytteanska priset 2011 i Uppsala. Vi kan nu se tillbaka på en lång livsinsats i forskningens tjänst. Resultatet av denna insats kommer även fortsättningsvis vara utgångspunkt för många analyser.
Anders Bäckström
professor emeritus i religionssociologi vid Uppsala universitet
Krönika nr 4 augusti 2020
Diaconia research in the Nordic countries 2015-2019
This year, I have had the privilege to do a survey of recent Nordic diaconal research, a report commissioned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden, as my master thesis in Church and Mission Studies.
Diaconia is most often understood as some sort of social work or social care, performed by churches and Christian institutions. However, as my report shows, Diaconia can be defined and delimited in many ways, as can Diaconia research. In a theological universe, Diaconia studies can be perceived as a bit blurry, not as bright and conspicuous as other stars, with their own academic disciplines. However, if you start looking, it is a cluster of dynamic research, drawing from and contributing to several academic fields.
In my report, I have analysed dissertations, scientific reports, peer reviewed articles, books and contributions to edited volumes, all of which are making a scientific contribution to the diaconal field of knowledge. Among the contributors are several researchers affiliated to CRS in Uppsala, as well as other internationally well known researchers on the field, and junior researchers and PhD students.
The referenced research makes visible the broad contribution made by churches, diaconal associations and institutions to public welfare in the Nordic countries, historically and in the present day, through a wide variety of diaconal practices. My report also shows theological developments in the understanding of Diaconia as an integral dimension of being Church. An interesting part of the study has been to make visible the variety and complexity of the work performed by deacons, as well as differences and similarities in the understanding of the Deacon’s office in the Nordic Lutheran majority churches. One of the results from my study is the insight that deacons in different countries struggle with similar challenges of mandate and responsibilities, which is shown by comparison between several referenced studies. These challenges appear to be connected to gender and a low overall appreciation of social care in society and church alike. Some authors also argue this to be an expression of outdated interpretations of the Deacon’s office as humble or lowly service.
This interpretation has roots in a post-reformation misunderstanding of the meanings of the Greek diakon-terms used in the New Testament, which was shown by John N Collins in the 1990:s but is still affecting the understanding of the word Diakonia to this day. Among the referenced works are contributions from an international research project at University of Eastern Finland, aiming to correct some of these misunderstandings by retranslating texts from the patristic era. Other researchers are addressing the issue through theological analyses, or by relating empirical finds to theories of gender and power.
All in all, the referenced studies show that diaconal works in the Nordic countries expand beyond the concept of care, and engage in theological development, social innovation, social mobilisation and interreligious cooperation. My study makes a theoretical contribution by adapting the concentric model for Diakonia developed by Erik Blennberger (1946 – 2018), based on this empirical finding.
Lena Sjöberg
Lena is a Deacon in the Church of Sweden and during spring 2020 was based at CRS working on the report and master’s thesis detailed above collating and analysing Nordic diaconal research. Her full thesis can be found here
Krönika nr 3, maj 2020
Contemporary religious-organizational change and the impact of the market
My research focuses on the effects of ongoing processes of marketization on religious organizations in the contemporary Western world. Propelled by the spread of neoliberal economy since the early 1980s, marketization has developed into one of the most socially consequential “megatrends” of late modernity. The concept of marketization generally refers to the process whereby late-capitalist and economistic values and imperatives make their ways into social and cultural domains and sub-systems that have traditionally been viewed as “non-economic.” Examples include the educational, charitable, nonprofit, and religious-organizational fields.
Starting from an understanding that social and religious change are always deeply interrelated to each other, I approach marketization as principally involving the penetration of market-associated discourse and terminology into new social organizational domains, including the religious-organizational domain.
In light of this perspective, I direct particular focus at the ways in which religious organizations have striven to respond to, align with, and adapt to new market-centered discourses and imperatives of organizational “effectivity” and “performance” by instigating their own internal processes of “religious-organizational marketization.”
Religious-organizational marketization refers to the process whereby particular religious organizations 1) adopt market-associated discourses, 2) integrate these as naturalized components of their own orders of discourse, and 3) varyingly strive to operationalize these discourses in actual practice.
Religious-organizational marketization is therefore to be understood as the result of a combination of mounting (both actual and perceived) external pressures and a series of active and conscious efforts on the part of religious-organizational actors themselves. As a result, the official discourse of religious organizations becomes increasingly marked by terms, notions, and imperatives such as “marketing,” “customer orientation,” “management,” “cost-effectiveness,” and “flexibility,” to name just a few. From the perspective of religious organizations themselves, such discourse is typically seen to offer new imaginaries for tackling a whole host of issues associated with continuing decline.
As a crucial complement to an examination of the proliferation of market-associated discourse, I also explore the concrete ways in which new market-associated discourses become tangibly materialized in the establishment of new administrative offices, working groups, working routines, training programs for personnel, etc.
To date, my research has mainly focused on processes of organizational marketization within the context of traditional, large, and long-established Western Christian churches who maintain extensive bureaucratic organizations and retain close structural ties to states and core social establishments. Cases include the Nordic Lutheran majority churches, the Church of England, and the seven denominations that comprise the traditional United States Protestant “mainline.” While remaining attentive to context-specific peculiarities and variations, my research ultimately aims to provide a theoretical framework on religious-organizational marketization that can be applied and tested on a trans-national and trans-denominational scale. As such, it also aims to provide a firmly empirically grounded investigation of a highly notable, but thus far largely overlooked, aspect of contemporary religious-organizational change.
Marcus Moberg
Academy Research Fellow, Adjunct Professor Sociology of Religion, University of Turku
Guest researcher at CRS spring 2020
KRÖNIKA NR 2, MARS 2020
Will our children live in democracies where their voting rights depend on how much money they make, on their contribution to the State?
In the project “Contributivism: On Practices, Debates and Attitudes About Grounding Democratic Inclusion on Economic Contributions”, at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University, a multidisciplinary research group studies contributivism, the idea that economic contribution grounds political influence in the form of franchise.
This idea may pave the way for greater economic inequality turning into political inequality, but, on the contrary, it may also lead to economic equality grounding claims for political equality. How do our attitudes towards voting rights, to whom should vote, for example, change when migrants’ financial contributions are often stressed, or when an increasing number of states sell citizenship, introduce investment visas and other golden ways into the citizenry at the core of democracy?
We want to find out if contributivism is making a comeback. We suspect it may. We aim to study its revival in Europe today by investigating: its institutional embodiments, i.e. practices making economic contributions a ground for enfranchisement directly or indirectly (e.g. practices involving golden citizenship policies or investor immigrant statuses); and then, its political prospects. The latterwill be studied in a two-fold way by focusing on what lawmakers claim and what the electorate believes. As for the first aspect, we probe partisan views on contributivism by studying parliamentary debates regarding laws and policies directly or indirectly regulatingfranchise. As for the second aspect we study popular attitudes on contributivism.
Contributivism may matter for the future of democracy and it is challenging to study. It requires both methodological innovation and theory development and, foremost, to see the elephant in the room: because citizenship is linked to franchise, when we choose who is allowed to enter a country, who is allowed to stay, who becomes a citizen, at the same time we determine indirectly who will constitute the electorate of tomorrow. Who is entitled to vote is a constitutional matter: the number of enfranchised members in a community determines whether we live in a democracy. It is ultimately a question concerning constitutional identity. Migration and citizenship policy affect the form of government, i.e. democracy, in a causal context that researchers have mostly failed to grasp in its entirety, let alone systematically studied. Perhaps because a different way of working is needed to see the big picture?
As a multidisciplinary research group, developing analytical tools, testing novel hypotheses to bridge the gap between methodologically different, but substantially contiguous outlooks on contributivism, we opted for a research design that builds on theory developmentpaired with systematic empirical studies: in-depth comparative studies of the laws enabling “citizenship for sale”, cross-national analysis of parliamentary debates and surveys on popular attitudes by means of conjoint analyses. This methodology was chosen because we need a multidisciplinary approach and cross-national comparisons to understand how contributivism is currently practiced and if it is making a comeback.
Patricia Mindus, Professor - Philosophy Department, Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Director Uppsala Forum for Democracy, Peace and Justice, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University,
For more information about the project, please see Constributivism
KRÖNIKA NR 1, FEBRUARI 2020
Samverkan, tro och engagemang
Tro och religion är en privatsak. Så har vi lärt oss tycka i Sverige. Det gör att det finns dem som saknar förståelse och blir tagna på sängen när religion blir synlig i offentligheten. Min övertygelse är att tro och religion har en omistlig plats i samhället. Tro är mer än enskilda individers uppfattningar, mer än traditioner. Tro är för många människor oskiljbar från livsstil, livsval och värderingar. Det går inte att lägga det som genomsyrar en människa åt sidan, likt ett ytterplagg. Det är inflätat med allt det vi gör och är.
Det går förstås inte att acceptera alla uttryck för tro, vare sig de benämns som kristna eller relaterar till andra trosåskådningar. Tro kan vara ett kraftfullt sätt att ta makt över människor. Men att avfärda allt eller marginalisera en viktig del av samhällslivet är inte rätt väg att gå. Att kritiskt granska är en viktig del i arbetat med att förstå vår omvärld och vår samtid. Det är att ta människors religiösa upplevelser och identiteter på allvar. Här är teologi en forskningsdisciplin som uttolkar och granskar de religiösa traditionerna och bidrar till deras utveckling.
Centrum för mångvetenskaplig forskning om religion och samhälle är en plats där vi med akademins många arbetssätt ägnar oss åt studier av de sammanvävda föreställningarna om liv och mening, om Gud och skapelsetanke, om människans plats och uppgift i universum och hur det samspelar in i det vi kallar samhälle både i en lokal och mer global mening. Det mångvetenskapliga är en nödvändig akademisk kollegialitet. Tro och religion i samhället är så mångfacetterat att det inte räcker med en enda metod, en teori eller ett perspektiv. Som centrumbildning har vi också möjligheten att vara en bra samverkanspart både inom universitetet och forskningen, och till aktörer i samhället – arbetsplatser, intresseorganisationer, trossamfund och andra – som på olika sätt konkret formar människors gemensamma liv.
Samverkan är viktig inte främst för att synliggöra och begripliggöra tro och religion, inte heller endast för en kritisk granskning. När det är tyst i det vi kallar offentligheten om dessa frågor, när religionen förväntas ”hålla sig på sin kant” skapas ett utrymme för bilder som föder och göder misstänksamhet. Den uppfattningen krymper också synen på vad som är ett samhälle. Det vi i dag behöver är det motsatta: att lyfta fram mångfasetterade bilder av troende människor och verksamheter.
Det som kan ta sig uttryck som vardagliga liv som rymmer medmänsklighet, förundran inför det skapade, vikten av ansvar och omsorg, sång och bön mitt i det liv som levs på arbetsplatser, skolor, i mataffären och i fritidsengagemang. Likaväl som det handlar om strategiska beslut, om manifestationer för hållbart liv, om aspekter i folkrörelser. Engagemang, tro och religion finns invävt i det samhälle som vi lever i tillsammans. Frågan är hur vi kan göra det för det gemensammas bästa. Där bidrar forskning med klarsyn och eftertanke.
Cecilia Nahnfeldt, vetenskaplig ledare (CRS)