Differentiation Theory and the Sociology of Religion and Secularity
Workshop Report by Johannes Duschka
On 8 and 9 October 2020, the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences “Multiple
Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” at Leipzig University hosted a hybrid Workshop on“Differentiation Theory and the Sociology of Religion and Secularity”, organised by its directors Christoph
Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr together with Daniel Witte from the University of Bonn. The two-day
workshop was divided into five paper presentation sessions and concluding discussions at the end of eachday. Each session had brief presentations of two previously circulated papers and therefore gave much room
for productive discussions. It should be mentioned, how well the hybrid format worked, giving an almost
undisturbed real time discussion experience to participants at the venue and online. This was due to thetechnical equipment provided by the CASHSS as well as the great effort of the session chairs in combining
and moderating on- and offline commentaries.

Opening Session
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
Christoph Kleine (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
Chair: Magnus Echtler (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
In the opening session, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr presented a theoretical outline of the Multiple Secularities
approach with its focus on the differentiation between religion and other societal spheres, further
distinguishing between distinctions on the symbolic or conceptual level and –again – differentiations on thesocial-structural or institutional level, heuristically addressing these distinctions and differentiations assecularities. In a second step, Wohlrab-Sahr referred to the multiplicity of these secularities, outlining thegoal of a global scale analysis and comparison(s) of such configurations in historical perspective, looking forreference problems and guiding ideas of religion-related-differentiations across the globe and through time.
The application of the concept to historical and to non-Western contexts would yield conceptual problems
and criticism to be discussed during the workshop, especially regarding the applicability of terms andconcepts like ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ eventually even ‘differentiation’, to pre-modern and/or pre-colonial
contexts.
Turning to the relation between differentiation theory and the sociology of religion in general, Wohlrab-Sahr
outlined the broad variety of approaches, which have contributed to both: from Weber and Durkheim to
Bourdieu, Parsons and Luhmann, relating these to problems and questions raised in the submitted papers
and to be followed up upon in the subsequent discussions: the specific historical constellations ofdifferentiations; differentiation theory’s capacity for causal explanations; its often criticised functionalist
heritage; the role of actors and agency; and the relations in and between differentiated realms, especially interms of power relations.

Closing her introduction, Wohlrab-Sahr again raised the question how to relate differentiation theory to theissue of secularity, especially with regard to the formation of a specific secular sphere or realm. In her view,
such an explicit secular-religious binary needs to be qualified by a certain meaning attached to it by codes ornarratives – beyond the mere structural differentiation of religion from other social spheres. Putting it
differently, culture and (social) structure are to be analysed with regard to religious-secular differentiations
in order to get the full picture.
Following Wohlrab-Sahr’s presentation, Christoph Kleine exemplarily introduced his work on Japan.
According to him, the methodological problems to face in the cross-cultural application of the Multiple
Secularities framework are those of operationalisation and conceptualisation. The empiric multiplicity ofmodern secularities would raise questions regarding path dependencies and cultural preconditions shaping
the appropriation of the Western model. In order to identify those structures relevant for the crucial
distinctions and differentiations, he suggested – to circumvent the problem of a direct transfer of Westernconcepts – an analysis of the history of institutions to discern relevant social structures and a history ofconcepts to identify epistemic structures.
Concretely, Kleine proposed a five-step analysis and briefly applied it to his research on Japan:
1.) Which institutions were considered as ‘religions’ once this category was introduced? The concept ofreligion was introduced in Japan in the second half of the 19th century, translated as shūkyō. Buddhism andChristianity, already considered as functional equivalents since the 16th century, were subsumed under thiscategory, other traditions like Shintō and Confucianism were not. 2.) Which social practices, concepts,
symbols etc. were assigned to the (new) category of religion? According to Kleine, legal classification as
religion has changed the character of Buddhism, excluding elements not corresponding with the Christianitybased prototype of religion. Continuities and discontinuities resulted in a reconfiguration of an alreadyexisting societal domain. 3.) Were these elements assigned to a common abstract category before theintroduction of religion? Kleine identifies shūshi as category that was used to subsume Christianity andBuddhism from the 16th century onwards, earlier classifications for systems of cognitive and normativeorientations were dō, kyō and hō – also applied to Confucianism, Daoism, and Brahmanism. The institutionaland communal aspect was referred to by terms like shū, ke or later monto. 4.) What degree of equivalence
did these indigenous categories have with the concept of religion? For Kleine, the legal and political struggle
over the categorisation of Shintō shows that these semantic and functional equivalents were not perfect.
Eventually – primarily out of political motives – Shintō was not considered as shūkyō once this term wasintroduced, it subsequently became an example to question the applicability of the distinction between thereligious and the secular. 5.) To which extent do institutional and conceptual idiosyncrasies account for
specific forms of secularity? Boundaries between the religious and the secular were drawn differently by theJapanese than by Western observers as the example of Shintō shows. For the latter it was unquestionable
religious, for the former rather considered a central element of political legitimacy.
Finally, Kleine highlighted another result of his research that has become a major empirical reference pointof the Multiple Secularities group’s work. He identified a structural analogy to the European struggle between
the military and the temple in the paradigm of the interdependent nomospheres of the Buddha, represented
by monasteries and the clergy, and the Ruler in 12th- to 19th-century Japan. Kleine concluded that a
genealogical approach of a history of institutions and concepts had advantages over the retrospective
projection of macro-sociological formations, but also warned to conflate discursively related pre-modern
concepts too easily with our understanding of ‘religion’. Nevertheless, he maintained that his research does
show how the history of Buddhism in Japan made it possible to subsume it under the category of religion andthat the discourse on the nomospheres of the Buddha and the ruler constituted a close similarity to thereligious-secular divide – eventually facilitating the later appropriation of secularity.

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Session 1
Thomas Kern (University of Bamberg)
Raf Vanderstraeten (Universiteit Gent)
Chair: Hubert Seiwert (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
Thomas Kern presented a paper titled Why We Need a Theory of Social Differentiation. He took off fromcriticisms against differentiation theory, especially those aiming at its connection to functionalism. Kernpointed at Hans Joas as prominent advocate of this kind of critique, agreeing to his criticism of the normative
bias and homogenising tendencies in functionalist differentiation theory, but disagreed with Joas’ latest claim
to dismiss differentiation theory altogether. Kern proposed an action based theoretical revision ofdifferentiation theory instead, because of its repertoire of concepts and taxonomies for the classification ofsocial phenomena, its suitability for comparative research and the possibility to explain causal mechanismsof differentiation by drawing on action theoretical approaches. Referencing the works of Uwe Schimank, Kernemphasised the importance of Max Weber’s work on value spheres for an action-based approach, which is
looking for causal, agency-based explanations of differentiation processes instead of functionalist
deductions. In his understanding, sub-systems are functional only in the sense of providing specificcontributions for society.
Kern understands the concepts of differentiation theory as hypotheses about the properties of empiricalphenomena that must be tested empirically. Leaving normative claims about the direction of social evolution
aside, differentiation theory would provide useful tools for the classification of research units: a typology ofdifferentiated orders and concepts of the constituents of the subsystems as well as of levels of differentiation.
Beyond classification, differentiation theory for Kern also enables the researcher to hypothesise about therelationships between these units. Again agreeing to Joas’ critique of the low explanatory power of functional
analyses, Kern states, that recent differentiation theoretical works of – among others – Schimank and himself,have contributed to the analyses of social mechanisms behind specific differentiation or dedifferentiation
processes, combining differentiation theory and middle range theories.
Some reflections on the uses of differentiation theory for the sociology of religion and secularity were
presented by Raef Vanderstraeten1, drawing closely on the work of Max Weber and Niklas Luhmann.
Vanderstraeten proposed four perspectives to address questions of institutional differentiation between
religion and politics to reflect on historical processes inside and outside the West: 1.) Drawing on Max
Weber’s historical comparison of India and China, Vanderstraeten hinted at the structural consequences ofcontingent historical circumstances, in this case for the development of institutional unity or duality withregard to religion and politics. 2.) Asking about coextension or dissociation, three different constellations are
possible according to Vanderstraeten: co-extension of religion and politics as in the ancient polis; a pluralityof religions under one political rule like in the Roman Empire; religions reaching over different political units,
like the medieval Roman Church or the modern world religions. Especially the latter two would correspondto a conceptual non-identity of religion and politics. 3.) Again referencing Weber, Vanderstraeten introduceda typology of religion, referring to the distinction between religious communities (‘Gemeinschaftskult’) or
civil religion on the one hand, and religions of salvation (‘Erlösungsreligion’, ‘Gemeindereligiosität’) on theother. The latter being prone to differentiate itself from society. 4.) In terms of conceptual differentiation –as he put it –, Vanderstraeten emphasized the self-differentiation of the religious from the world or ‘secular’– originating in early Christianity and having semantic consequences until today, foreshadowing the1

The paper was written together with Hartmann Tyrell, who had to cancel his participation on short notice.
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system/environment distinction prominent in systems theory. The formation of the secular is – in thisunderstanding – a product of the self-differentiation of the religious.
In the second part of the paper, Vanderstraeten suggested to distinguish between the differentiation of
specialized roles and that of communication systems. Functional differentiation according to Luhmann could
not directly be linked to initial role differentiation, it occurs only when at least two roles – professional roles
and (public) boundary roles – organise themselves around a certain function. Differentiation of function
systems would accordingly depend on the differentiation of inclusion rules for those boundary roles,
stressing the heterogeneity of modern society. According to Vanderstraeten, for the early Luhmann
functional differentiation of religion occurred rather late, as a reaction to the problem of how to incorporate
large populations in lay roles, in this perspective secularisation becomes a problem of inclusion. In his later
works, when the paradigm of religious decline was already in question, Luhmann’s interest turned to thevariety of arrangements of inclusion and exclusion, observing that religion was somehow independent fromthe mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of other systems – appearing as an adaption advantage.
Vanderstraeten concluded that the focus on such arrangements would raise fruitful research questions on
the interrelation between mechanisms of in- and exclusion in function systems, especially between religion
and other, ‘secular’, systems. This kind of analyses could be carried out in a comparative framework,
examining different religious traditions and areas of the world with regard to their mechanisms of in- andexclusion.

Session 2
Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University)
Adrian Hermann (Bonn University)
Chair: Yasemin Ural (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
Sudipta Kaviraj opened the second paper session with his presentation on Disenchantment andsecularization. Phrasing it ironically by asking whether European history of religion did also happen in India,
he pointed to the necessity of historicising the allegedly universal findings of sociological theories in the lightof the vast expansion of historical knowledge on religion since the times of their origin. He identified Weber(on secularisation) and Durkheim, later Luhmann (on differentiation) as the most important theoreticaltraditions to engage.
Regarding Weber, Kaviraj pointed out both, the centrality and the vagueness of the concept of(dis-)enchantment, covering belief in goblins as well as in a philosophical transcendent god. Disenchantment
would also incorporate evolutionist expectations of the eventual disappearance of all enchanted belief.
Kaviraj criticised this conception by drawing on examples from Indian history, showing that for example
Vaisnava theologists dissented from earlier conceptions of a transcendent God, advancing the idea of anaesthetic (re-)enchantment, a tradition of thought that extended to modern thinkers like Rabindranath
Tagore. Relating these findings to Weber, Kaviraj again emphasised the internal asymmetry of the latter’s
theory – empirically rich on European, sparse on other religious traditions – questioning its generalapplicability to the regions and religions of the world.
For a fruitful contemporary conceptualisation of religious history, Kaviraj made a number of proposals thatgenerally seem to be in line with the proposed operationalisation of the Multiple Secularities approachpresented by Christoph Kleine. Similar to Vanderstraeten, Kaviraj stated that ‘religion’ emerged fromChristian self-differentiation. Even though Kaviraj did not propose to ban this term’s use in other contexts,
he asked to spend attention to similar developments and the according terminology in other faiths. Although4Weber and Durkheim would not use Christian conceptual language directly, it should be reflected that they
were drawing upon it when developing their own. Kaviraj emphasised that Indic religious traditions forexample have their own vocabulary to describe and evaluate differences. An empirically rich and in that sense
symmetrical comparison instead of a shallow contrast would ask for an exploration of the analytical resourcesof such conceptual repertoires.
In Global History of Religion and Differentiation Theory, Adrian Hermann proposed to extend Burkhard
Gladigow’s European History of Religion to a global perspective. Adding thoughts from postcolonial theories,
he asserted a necessity to provincialise European history of Religion, but without falling into cultural
relativism by simply replacing European with local categories. Herrmann called for a historicisation of theEuropean experience that is aware of the latter’s continuing relevance as universal prototype, describing its
hegemony while revealing its historical contingency. Such considerations should lead to a theory ofmodernity abstaining from teleological narratives. Drawing on David Scott, Hermann stressed the importanceof a remembrance of Europe’s colonial and imperialist domination during the emergence of today’s global
categories and the reflection on contemporary asymmetries of power within the proposed historicisation.
Borrowing from Talal Asad Hermann introduced the notion of the single shared world, attempting to markthe domination of modern global categories without claiming social or cultural homogeneity on a global scale.
Additionally referring to Luhmann, Hermann suggested that world society theory, conceiving the modernsocial world as a single whole instead of a plurality of societies, could provide a theoretical perspective tograsp this single shared world. The global reach of communicatively reachable acts as well as thetransformation towards a primacy of functional differentiation are identified as decisive developments forthis idea. With regard to the latter, Hermann – similarly to Vanderstraeten – emphasised that functional
differentiation should not be understood as the split of a whole into parts, but rather as creation of adifference between system and environment – eventually leading to a multiplicity of relations between
different subsystems; neither should its primacy imply its teleological self-realisation, but it should rather be
understood as a historically contingent conditioning structure or framework. Hermann introduced anunderstanding of social structures as being radically temporal and contested. In the light of these
considerations, the emergence of religion as a function system could then be described as historical andmodern phenomenon.
Bringing the semantic level back into his considerations, Hermann stressed the genuine, dynamic
interconnection between semantics and structures, rejecting the idea of differentiations as pre-existing
structures beyond discourse. In this view, religion as a modern function system is the contingent result ofmultiple developments that cannot be reduced to pre-existing or necessary societal functions. Concluding his
presentation, Hermann posed a challenge to the Multiple Secularities approach by stating that religion in its
present form as function system could then only be described and reconstructed with regard to contemporary
global society and not in continuity from pre-modern situations.

5Session 3
Gesa Lindemann (University of Oldenburg)
Detlef Pollack (University of Münster)
Chair: Florian Zemmin (CASHSS Multiple Secularities)
Gesa Lindemann opened the second day of the workshop with a paper on Religion and social differentiation,
analysing the connection between differentiation theory and religion based on a theory of procedural
ordering systems of violence. She historically identified three such systems: the order of reciprocity, the orderof judiciary, and the order of politically controlled state power bound by the rule of law. Each order would
permit different forms of social differentiation.
According to Lindemann, the order of reciprocity is characteristic of Europe in the early Middle Ages as well
as of societies described by ethnological studies. This order was characterised by family groups inrelationships of mutual exchange, inappropriate exchange easily leading to direct violence, which was
eventually contained by reciprocal giving obligations. Groups are the dominant social units, individuals do
not play a role, and differentiation beyond family groups is not likely to occur. In the transition to the highMiddle Ages (11th–13th centuries) the church played an important role by legitimising the rule of new
emerging central powers and weakening the power of the families by giving individuals legal status throughbaptism, preventing or at least impeding infanticides, thereby changing the rules of inclusion and exclusion
into or from society. In that process, members of society became responsible individuals before God, opening
the possibility of dissent with the family. Church had created an early form of individualisation against thefamily based on the force of territorial rulers. Against this background, social differentiations of the economy
and of law developed. Religion acted as a facilitator and a constraint of social differentiation by criticisingand thereby limiting the new forms of economic interactions.
Lindemann further argued that in 18th and 19th centuries a new procedural order of violence was establishedby modern nation states. This order removed the act of violence – public demonstrations of torture forexample – from the public arena. This removal lead to a trust in non-violence, establishing the paradox ofviolence: Society appeared to be largely based on peaceful coexistence but still relied on violencemonopolised by the state. Succeeding the Christian baptism registers, the state replaced them by its recordsof birth, marriage and death – a violence-supported organisational performance that follows from that which
had generated the soul individual in the first place. In this sense, the church was replaced by medicine, a
process called medicalisation, guaranteeing equal legal status to the newborn, a development that fosteredfurther individualisation, which was complemented by the institutionalisation of fundamental rights as a stop
rule to state power. This constellation enabled individuals to establish different contexts of action anddifferent group contexts, in other words horizontal differentiation. Contrary to the political, these othercontexts have not developed stop rules, tending to fully absorb individual actors and to destroy theestablished differentiation. To regulate this tendency, political regulation and societal critique are necessary.
Lindemann closed her presentation stating that from her perspective secularisation does not refer to thedecline of the belief in God, but to the fact that the individualising process once initiated by the church is later
carried by the state.
Detlef Pollack’s presentation focused on The presumed origins of functional differentiation in Western
Europe. Similar to Kern’s account, Pollack asserted the lack of differentiation theory’s explanatory power,
making it necessary to provide it with a foundation in action theory to identify the carriers of differentiation
processes and the specific actor constellations impeding or promoting processes of functional differentiation.
He forwarded the thesis that the emergence of processes of functional differentiation in the West was driven
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by the Roman church, giving this type specific traits different from types of differentiation in other cultures– such as a peculiar consistency, rigor and enhancement. Consequently, high degrees of competition andconflict would be characteristic for Western type differentiation. As a counterbalance to these traits – butstill struggling with them till today –, the West eventually developed a competence to limit its inherent
tendencies of enhancement and maximisation, as Pollack illustrated with regard to limiting dynamics
regarding science, economy and political power in modern society, similar to the stop rules introduced by
Lindemann before.
Historically, Pollack argued analogously to Vanderstraeten’s brief account, the European type ofdifferentiation developed from the insistence of the Roman patriarchate in the high Middle Ages torationalise its actions on a purely theological basis, forcing other spheres to construct their own systems oflogic. In the 11th century, the Roman church strove for detachment from society, institutional establishment,
and supremacy over all other spheres through purification from worldly interferences, self-referential
recruitment, establishment of a church judiciary, and the pope’s claim of superior authority. Especially thelatter provoked counter-reactions by (worldly) emperors supported by scholars, deriving secular power from
non-church sources. Functional differentiation therefore emerged from the conflict between universal claimsof the church and its counter currents – Pollack suggests that the mentioned tendencies towards consistency,
rigor and enhancement are related to this conflictory origin.
Referring to Thomas Bauer, Pollack briefly outlined a comparison with a different, the Near Eastern type ofdifferentiation. In contrast to other positions, Bauer would argue that the dichotomy of din and dunya, orwhat we call religious and secular, was only one distinction among many others in the ancient Near East.
Because various discourses stood side by side, Islam did not overarch all societal spheres. Still drawing on
Bauer, Pollack offered the specific constellation of religion not being represented by an hierarchicalinstitution, therefore not acting as an independent agent in the ancient Near East, as a possible explanation
for the multiplicity of discourses and perspectives shaping this type of differentiation.

Session 4
Sita Steckel (University of Münster)Phil Gorski (Yale University)
Chair: Marian Burchardt (Leipzig University)
Sita Steckel opened her paper presentation on Differentiation theory and historical secularities: A
perspective from the European past with some general considerations concerning the concept ofdifferentiation. According to her, the division of labour has always been present in societies throughout
history, followed by the emergence of specialised roles and conceptual distinctions, eventually differentiating
spheres of activity such as religion. From Steckel’s perspective, institutionalisation is the crucial process ofdifferentiation, stabilising and homogenising societal spheres. She identified alphabetisation,
bureaucratisation and the emergence of mass media as some of the main factors fostering
institutionalisation. Her historical examination of differentiation processes disproved to some extent imagesof the stable, unified Christian Middle Ages since intra-religious and intra-confessional plurality were much
more present than today due to the lack of institutionalisation. This observation lead her to question theconceptual link of functional differentiation to inter-religious plurality, which is dating its advent in Europe
around 1500. She directed the attention to earlier phases of significant and complex internal diversity andplurality within Christianity caused by local variations, eventually fostering differentiations between religion
and other spheres, – a perspective that leads to the acknowledgement of different trajectories of7

differentiation for different fields and subfields but also for locally different secularities. With regard to theMultiple Secularities approach, Steckel raised the question whether the history of secularities should andcould only be written as segmental histories instead of aiming at society as a whole – a suggestion that seems
very much in line with some of the works resulting from the first funding period of the Leipzig project,
especially those dealing with the complex relationship between religion and healing/medicine.
In addition to inner plurality, Steckel identified cultural entanglements having a major impact on institutional
patterns of differentiation and being a primary driver of transformations. Early situations of cultural
encounter, such as the European observation of religious toleration by Muslim rulers, would open
perspectives on alternative arrangements of differentiation to relate to. To complicate the picture evenmore, she also asked to look for the shifting structural alliances of actors from different fields to explain
institutional change, such as certain religious elites sanctioning practices of political elites, political actors
pushing back religious influence, or protecting religious plurality and endowing religious peace.
Secularization of the World OR Fragmentation of the Sacred? was the question Philip Gorski raised in thelast presentation of the workshop. Starting from the observation that, although religion and politics havebecome autonomous from each other, religious institutions have also lost their monopoly over the now
fragmented sacred, he asserted that differentiation theory is necessary but insufficient to study religion
today. Similar to Kaviraj, Gorski focused on the Weberian heritage of differentiation theory, criticising it for
its ontological parsimony (ignoring organisations, communities, practices and artefacts); for its vast historicalsweep (attaching modern differentiation too strictly to developments rooted in the axial age); and for its
notion of sphere parity (alleging functional equivalence of all value spheres). Gorski mentioned Luhmann and
Bourdieu as alternative frameworks, preferring Bourdieu’s field theory for rectifying some of theshortcomings attributed to Weber by incorporating bodily ritual through habitus and by considering the
primacy of the economic sphere. For Gorski, further advantages lie in Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of fields
as being constituted by struggles between rival elites and his historical argument that modern cultural
spheres did only crystallise from the late 19th century onwards. Gorski also identified shortcomings ofBourdeusian field theory, namely its structural isomorphism, the lacking attention for materiality and its
insufficient account of the properties and mechanisms of social boundaries. Also similar to Kaviraj, but witha slightly different accent, Gorski attributed these shortcomings to the historical moments of theiremergence. These theories are therefore insufficient to analyse contemporary society, because Western
nation-states have been pluralised by immigration, have experienced massive unchurching, and exist in a lessstable, fluid, culturally hybrid, accelerated multipolar world.
Hence, Gorski suggested the image of a shattered vase to capture contemporary developments, which theconceptions of differentiation or secularity cannot sufficiently cover. According to him, religion has lost themonopoly over the legitimate forms of the sacred, leading to a multiplicity of modern sacralities. Gorski
referred to Charles Taylor’s nova effect but asked to radicalise this metaphor in the sense of a total
fragmentation. The challenge would then be to construct a conceptual framework to examine thesefragments and to understand the underlying dynamics of (de-)monopolisation instead of trying to incorporate
them in the master narrative(s) of secularisation.

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Discussions and Reflections
The lively discussions addressed many aspects, empirical details and theoretical clarifications, as well as
systematic problems and further research perspectives – on a subjective selection of the latter two I will
briefly focus in the following critical reflections.
The presented papers offered a stimulating input with regard to the context-dependent processes andconstellations to look for in order to uncover, analyse or explain (historical) processes of (de-)differentiation,such as the emergence of conceptual distinctions, processes of homogenisation and heterogenisation,(de-)monopolisation, (de-)pluralisation, inclusion and exclusion, (de-)institutionalisation, (dis-)appearance ofstructural alliances or the fragmentation of the social – sometimes directly pointing to processes of(de-)differentiation, sometimes standing in rather intersectional relations to them.
With regard to the broader theoretical implications of differentiation theory, it seemed that almost all
speakers and participants openly rejected the evolutionist or teleological heritage of differentiation theories
in favour of a sensitivity for historical contingency, some on the empirical grounds of their research, some as
principled stance, many for both reasons. Most of the presentations during this workshop were good
examples that it might well be possible to rid differentiation theory of this heritage. The closely related andopenly addressed, often criticised, functionalist bias of differentiation theories however proved to be a moredifficult problem to tackle. In one or the other way a majority of the speakers referred to modernity as being
characterised by a primacy of functional differentiation, but the repeatedly raised question what the concrete
function(s) of religion in (modern) society might be, was not sufficiently answered. Confronted with theelaborate theories of differentiation presented, suggestions based on the Durkheimian idea of providing
social cohesion were as little persuasive as simple references to the division of labour. Especially with regard
to the approaches referring to Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation, the impression was that‘functional’ might be a misleading conceptual residue – some participants already seemed to prefer the useof terms like horizontal or institutional instead of functional differentiation. Function systems were foremost
characterised as autonomous, self-enhancing, self-referential, ‘eigenlogical’ systems, following andenhancing ends rather disconnected from social or societal necessities that might have fostered theiremergence in the remote past. A thorough and consequent reflection on this quality of institutional
autonomy of social spheres (in modernity) leads to the question whether and to what extent they can (still)
primarily be described as functional, or whether differentiation theory should abstain from its(terminological) primacy, because it contradicts its own assumptions or even tends to bring inunacknowledged normative or metaphysical statements about society. At the same time, such a reflection
could open up differentiation theory for the inclusion of obviously related critical concepts from othertheoretical traditions like reification of and alienation from social reality.
With regard to historically oriented cross-cultural comparisons, an endeavour obviously essential to theMultiple Secularities framework, Adrian Hermann’s stimulating presentation posed a fundamental challenge.
While at first his concept of a Global History of Religion seemed to critically complement conceptualisationsof cross-cultural comparison as put forward by Kleine and with a different accent by Kaviraj, he suggested aradically different interpretation in the conclusion of his paper and the subsequent discussions. His final
declaration that modern ‘religion’ cannot be described in any continuity from pre-modern situations,
together with the repeated assessment that modern global categories were equidistant from
European/Western categories and from those of other regions and traditions, poses serious questions
whether and how historical research could at all cross the asserted qualitative rupture between modernity
and pre-modern arrangements, but also whether the ascertained hegemony of Western categories in theemergence of modernity could be made visible within such a framework of equidistant categories. In terms
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of Steckel’s presentation, one could ask whether such a perspective would ignore the pre-modern history ofcultural entanglements and again creates a picture of stable and homogenous pre-modern societies.
Nevertheless, the workshop showed the great potential, but also the conceptual difficulties of this kind ofcomparisons, demanding a particular awareness for the conceptual subtexts of terminologies like encounter,
entanglement, imposition or appropriation; global, European or western; exceptional or provincial; culture
and society.

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