Eight Years CASHSS “Multiple Secularities”
Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors
Final Conference of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies„Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West. Beyond Modernities“
12–14 October 2023, Leipzig University

Event Locations
Bibliotheca Albertina
GWZ 			Alte Handelsbörse

Beethovenstraße 6, 04107 Leipzig
Beethovenstraße 15, 04107 Leipzig
Naschmarkt 1, 04109 Leipzig

Connecting to wireless internet for conference participants
As a guest of our conference, you can access the internet using our conference account.
Instructions:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Select the wireless network: eduinfo
Open a browser on your computer which redirects you automatically to the network page (Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc.)
In the drop-down menu, choose the event: Eight Years CASHSS Multiple Secularities - Outcome and Prospects through theEyes of our Interlocutors
Enter the password: a5098-2023
Accept the terms of use
Click on „activate“Your device is now connected. The connection has to be carried out once a day per device.
Convenors
Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
CASHSS „Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“, Leipzig University

German Research Foundation

Religion as an Object of Historical and Social Scientific Study: Global Perspectives; Leipzig University, 3–5 November 2021

Eight Years CASHSS “Multiple Secularities“
The occasion of this conference is to mark the end of the eight-year funding period (2016–2024) of
the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences “Multiple Secularities– Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” next year. Over the course of these eight years,
dozens of fellows from various countries and different disciplines who work on a diverse
range of regions and historical focuses have helped us tremendously to discuss, reflectand sharpen our concept of Multiple Secularities, to underpin it empirically and totheorise it more thoroughly. We are extremely grateful for this highly productive
exchange. We want to get together once again with our interlocutors anddiscuss what has been achieved, to celebrate the encounters made here, and thecommunity that this project has enabled with colleagues worldwide.
The main objective of this conference is to take stock. We will review the outcomeof our collaboration and outline prospects for future research. We would also liketo take the opportunity to exchange ideas about possible future collaborations
and perspectives on possibilities for follow-up projects that can build on and benefit
from the Multiple Secularities project. Finally, in light of the recurring question of thenormativity of research on secularities, we would like to address directly contemporary
political conflicts and the ways in which they contest and challenge the secular-religious
arrangements that we heuristically call secularities.

1

Programme Overview

Thursday, 12 October 2023
Bibliotheca Albertina | Lecture Hall
7.00 p.m.			

Keynote Lecture and Reception

Reinhard Schulze		

The Normative Status of Secularity and Islamic Genealogies of Worldliness			Friday, 13 October 2023

Bibliotheca Albertina | Lecture Hall & GWZ | Lecture Hall
9.00 a.m. – 10.30 a.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Opening Panel

Christoph Kleine		

Discussants: Farhat Hasan, Daniel Witte

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel I Secularity and Modernity
Chair: Magnus Echtler

Neguin Yavari		

Secularities contra Positivism: A Scoreboard

Dietrich Jung		

Multiple Secularities and Pre-adaptive Advances to Modernity: A Perspective of Social Emergence

Rinku Lamba		

Religion and the Constitution of the Modern — An Analysis of the Views of Tagore and Ambedkar

11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.
GWZ			

Panel II Conceptual Explorations of the Multiple Secularities Framework		
Chair: Daniel Witte

Housamedden Darwish
Multiple Secularities‘ Conceptual Framework and the Study of Islamic Secularities: Conceptual and Critical
			Considerations

2

Hubert Seiwert 		Reflexive Secularity: A Conceptual Exploration

Edgar Zavala-Pelayo

Using and Rethinking Multiple Secularities in Latin America: Analyzing and Historicizing the Secular Subject/s

Programme Overview

Friday, 13 October 2023

Bibliotheca Albertina | Lecture Hall & GWZ | Lecture Hall
2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel III (Post-)Ottoman Secularities
Chair: Mohammad Magout

Markus Dreßler		

The Religionization of Din in the Late Ottoman Period

Wolfgang Höpken		

Negotiating Secularity: Post-Ottoman Muslims in Bosnia 1878-2020

Gökçen Beyinli-DinçRethinking the Religious History of Turkey and Alevis through the Concept of “Multiple Secularities“

2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.
GWZ		Panel IV Multiple Trajectories
Chair: Hubert Seiwert

Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav

Multiple Secularisms in Colonial India

Peter Kneitz					

The Multiple Secularity Approach as a Middle-Range Cultural Theory: Interpreting the Secular State Projecton Madagascar, and Beyond		Dagmar Schwerk		
What Does “Religio-Political” Even Mean? The Diachronic Perspective on Bhutan as an Empirical and			Theoretical Case Study
Sven Bretfeld		Secularization and Doubt in Buddhist Societies

3

Programme Overview

Friday, 13 October 2023

Bibliotheca Albertina | Lecture Hall & GWZ | Lecture Hall
4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel V Multiple Secularities and Global Histories		
Chair: Elisabeth Marx

Adrian Hermann		

Multiple Secularities and „Global Religious History“: Recent Innovations in the German Study of Religion

Sushmita Nath		

Multiple Secularities, The Task of Comparative Political Theory and the Trend of Global History: A View from India

Todd Weir 		
Conceptual History and Multiple Secularities: The Global Diffusion of Arguments from Epistemes/Ontologies/					Worldviews
4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
GWZ

Panel VI Secularities: Beyond Modernity?		
Chair: Katja Triplett

Michael Stanley-Baker

Situating Medicine and Religion in Asia

Rajeev Bhargava		

History of Religious Coexistence in India

Roberto Blancarte		Signs of Secularity in Latin America

7:30 p.m. 		
Get-Together and Reception
			Alte Handelsbörse

4

Programme Overview

Saturday, 14 October 2023

Bibliotheca Albertina | Lecture Hall & GWZ | Lecture Hall
10.00 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel VII Modes of Secularity: Performativity, Materiality, Affectivity
Chair: Marian Burchardt

Augustine Agwuele
From Gestural Communication of the Religious and Secular to Functional Amalgam of the Religious
			and Secular
Magnus Echtler		

How to make a Zulu King

Birgit Meyer 		Materiality and Secularity

Nur Yasemin Ural 		An Affective Material Approach to Multiple Secularities

10.00 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.
GWZ

Panel VIII Thinking Beyond Multiple Secularities
Chair: Yee Lak Elliot Lee

Juan Cruz Esquivel

Beyond the Concept. Research Agenda Based on the Heuristic Potential of Multiple Secularities

André Laliberté 		

From Multiple Secularities to Social Welfare - Beyond the West, and Beyond Modernities

Jason Josephson Storm

Possible Futures for Multiple Secularities Research

1.00 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.
Panel IX
Bibliotheca Albertina		

Secularity and Governance		
Chair: Nur Yasemin Ural		

Lori Beaman

Nonreligion in a Complex Future: Rethinking the Secular, Secularism and Secularity

Marian Burchardt

Multiple Secularities, Secularism and the Specters of Race

Anindita Chakrabarti

Multiple Secularities, Post-Coloniality, and the Indian Conundrum

3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel Discussion: Contested Secularities - A Global Scenario

5Thursday, 12 October 2023 | 7.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

Keynote Lecture
The Normative Status of Secularitiy and Islamic Genealogies of Worldliness
Reinhard Schulze
Bern University

In the course of its research activities, the KFG Multiple I would like to pursue these questions in the context of theSecularities has successfully worked on the development of a history of the Islamic tradition and propose preliminary answers.
new research paradigm that focuses on a synchronic as well as
diachronic examination of global processes of differentiationof religious and secular orders. It remains a matter of debate
whether „secularity“ can be expanded into an analytical conceptthat could serve as a key term for a transcultural theory of themodern order of religion and the world. It is still undecided
whether (1) there can be a global theory of secularity at all
beyond the nominalistic content of the term and, if so, whether(2) such a “realist” theory can also be applied diachronicallyto traditions for which the term „secularity“ has not been
empirically documented. Furthermore, (3) the question must
be clarified how the process leading to the differentiation ofa normative order into religious and worldly orders can bemodelled historiographically. Finally, (4) it is to be determined
more precisely whether, in a world-historical perspective, there
is today a normative order that has standardised the religion
and secularity order, and, if so, how they have genealogicallyconverged in a standardised order of modern „secularity“.
6Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL I: Secularity and Modernity
Secularities contra Positivism: A Scoreboard
Neguin Yavari
New York

It is hardly an exaggeration to claim that even the wind blowing
through Nikolaistraße in Leipzig has caught a whiff of ‘secularity
as a heuristic concept,’ as outlined in the KFG’s research
agenda. Hardly unambiguous, what exactly is the purchaseof ‘heuristic’ in defining as protean a concept as secularity? In
this presentation, a student of premodern Islamic history will
briefly explain how she caught the whiff, reshaping her ideas
and setting her off on new tracks. I will focus on the dialectics
of secularity, to argue that heuristically, and as an alternative/
counterpart to both religion and secularism, secularity affords
an antipode to positivism. The triangulated schema (religion/
secularism/secularity) has at its foundation a dynamic historical
process, in that it illuminates not the religious or the secular, but
the manner(s) in which religiously inflected political discourse
determines the political imaginaire in a given context. As aheuristic concept, secularity undermines both a bounded
notion of religion and an identifiable domain of the secular,
and perhaps most significantly, a notion of the emergenceduring the Enlightenment, of that inevitable decline of religion
called secularization. At its core is an unshakeable focus on

historical change, which ‘multiplied,’ upends the positivist
flotsam from what is commonly referred to as Orientalism: thedetermined exclusion of a sizeable chunk of human history
and societies from serious consideration. Even if unspoken andheuristic, secularity authors a new geography of the modern
world that ‘is not intrinsically prejudicial to religion,’ or to the
non-West. To borrow from Jonathan Sheehan, it allows us toconsider the Enlightenment less as a birthplace of secularism
than as the birthplace of a distinctly modern form of religion
whose presence and power continues to shape the present. As
such, it circumvents nominalism, a cornerstone of any positivist
inquiry, with manifold ramifications for the study of premodern
Islamic societies.

7Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL I: Secularity and Modernity
Multiple Secularities and Pre-adaptive Advances to Modernity: A Perspective of Social Emergence
Dietrich Jung

University of Southern Denmark

The term multiple secularities immediately reminds us to
Shmuel Eisenstadt’s concept of multiple modernities. However,as a research program it goes beyond Eisenstadt in two crucial
points. First, it decentralizes Europe in taking no longer for
granted the assumption of modernity/secularities as “product”
of the West. It calls for searching – in Niklas Luhmann’s
theoretical vocabulary – pre-adaptive advances to modernity
in pre-modern cultures beyond the so-called West. Second, themultiple secularities program – at least in my reading – opens
for studies that do not only put their focus on the relationshipbetween religion and politics. My paper will take up thesetwo points and develops them further in putting both into
the broader context of theories of social emergence. From theperspective of theories of emergence, this is my argument,
modernity does not have a specific origin in time and space.
Rather, like Karl Jasper’s philosophical idea about the “axial age”
and its distinction between transcendence and immanence,
modernity appeared in different cultures at different places
without these cultures necessarily being in contact with eachother. From this perspective, the theoretical framework of the8multiple secularities program gave me important and supportive
inputs which I will illustrate with examples from Muslim history.
However, I also will point to a core problem I neverthelesshave with that framework which is the remaining focus on the
dichotomy between religion and the “rest” of modern (secular)social realms. This, so my conclusion, is an unjustified prioritizingof religion in social research.

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL I: Secularity and Modernity
Religion and the Constitution of the Modern — An Analysis of the Views of Tagore and Ambedkar
Rinku Lamba

National Law School of India University

A key lesson I’ve learned from the Multiple Secularities projectis to keep open the space for investigating how diverse
conceptions of religion can help in comprehending theconstitution of the modern. Some conceptions can generate
a notion of differentiation of spheres and others can relatewith a prioritisation of harmony thus giving to religion the taskof harmonising and integrating different spheres of humanactivity. Let me call the first a differentiation conception andthe second an integration conception.
At first I was able to see the two conceptions mainly inan oppositional manner. Also, I tended to associate thedifferentiation conception more with the historical experience ofthe modern west, and judged it unsuitable for understanding thehistorical experience of the Indian subcontinent. However, overtime, working with the notion of multiple secularities allowed
me to reckon with how focusing on different understandings ofreligion can illuminate questions of modernity.
For example, probing integrationist conceptions of religion incontexts such as India can shed light on the constitution of themodern in India. It is surely the case that I am gesturing toward

how multiple secularities are linked with multiple modernities.
But I want to say something more too. It is that more and more,
the multiplicity of the modern must be elaborated and not justassumed. And such elaboration requires investigating how themodern came to be in ways that are linked with the notion ofreligion. In my paper, I want to dwell on reflections about theabove, through an analysis of how the categories of dharma,
Dhamma and religion became vehicles for the way the moral
vision that constituted and Indian modernity took hold. I will
do this through a normative analysis of the political thought ofRabindranath Tagore and B R Ambedkar.

9

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL II: Conceptual Explorations of the Multiple Secularities Framework
Multiple Secularities‘ Conceptual Framework and the Study of Islamic Secularities: Conceptual and Critical
Considerations
Housamedden Darwish
Cologne University

The primary objective of this paper is to assess the effectivenessand limitations of the conceptual framework proposed by
the “Multiple Secularities” Centre in analyzing secularity (andsecularism) in Islamicate contexts. This paper is based on myfellowship at the Centre, and its purpose is to demonstrate thesignificant impact of its conceptual framework on my researchconcerning the formation of secularity and secularism, as wellas the cognitive and normative debates surrounding theseconcepts in the Islamicate world(s). Firstly, it focuses on the
distinction between secularity as an analytical concept andsecularism as a normative concept. The Centre acknowledgedthat it “cannot completely wipe away the normative
connotations of secularism from the term secularities.”
Therefore, it aimed to “overcome these connotations throughopen discussions and conceptual reflection.” The paperargues that these normative connotations are inherent to theanalytical concept of secularity due to the reference problems
identified by the multiple secularities project. Secularity
is seen as the solution to these problems, and as such, thenormative connotations cannot be completely eliminated,
10

overcome or disregarded. Therefore it is essential to explore
the cognitive and normative interplay between the analyticalconcept of secularity which primarily encompasses the thesisof functional differentiation within secularization theory, andthe remaining two theses: privatization and decline of religion.
Secondly the paper examines the limitations of the binary
code of religion/non-religion or religious/non-religious which
serves as the fundamental basis for the concept of secularity.
It explores the possibility and necessity of deconstructing thiscode without destroying it. Thirdly, the paper investigates thepotential intersection and/or mutual exclusion between postsecularities and multiple secularities. It suggests that postsecularity could be one variant of multiple secularities while
simultaneously opposing other variants of secularity. Finallythe paper reflects on the potential for these considerations
to inform a future project that builds upon and expands themultiple secularities framework.

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL II: Conceptual Explorations of the Multiple Secularities Framework
Reflexive Secularity: A Conceptual Exploration
Hubert Seiwert
KFG “Multiple Secularities”
Exploring the theme of secularity within the framework of
Chinese history, spanning from antiquity to modern times,
has engendered theoretical problems, some of which possess
broader significance. Amidst this exploration, a vexing issue
surfaces: The term ‘secularity’ is used in varying meanings within
academic literature. Analogous to the juxtaposition of ‘secular’and ‘religious,’ ‘secularity’ is intuitively apprehended as theantithesis of ‘religiosity’ or ‘religion.’ Charles Taylor discerns threedifferent forms of secularity, but in all three cases, secularity
is demarcated from religion, even though the distinction
takes on various forms (Taylor 2007, 15). In our collaborative
project “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities,” a different concept of ‘secularity’ was developed,
which is often perceived as counterintuitive, as it doesn’t
contrast secularity with religion. Instead, ‘secularity’ is defined
as a theoretical concept that designates a specific relationshipbetween religious and non-religious or ‘secular’ forms of social
action. This ideal-typical concept of ‘secularity’ is complex andtheoretically demanding. Yet, its virtue lies in not essentializing
religion but understanding the distinction between religion

and non-religion as historically contingent and variable. In thispaper, I will analyze the theoretical complexity of this conceptof secularity, which I characterize as ‘reflexive secularity.’
The analysis addresses the interdependence of social
practices (‘social structures’) and symbolic representations(‘epistemic structures’) and the interlocking of object-language
and meta-language perspectives. It is argued that the binary
contrast between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ at the level of
epistemic structures emerges as a reflexive response provokedby the practical significance of alternatives at the level ofsocial practice. ‘Reflexive secularity’ is more than secularity
understood as the absence or opposite of religion. As an ideal
type, it directs attention toward specific social constellations
in which religious and non-religious forms of social practice
are perceived and normatively interpreted as contrastingalternatives. The concept thus can stimulate empirical research,
including the question under which conditions this particularunderstanding of religion emerges or possibly disappears.

11Friday, 13 October 2023 | 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL II: Conceptual Explorations of the Multiple Secularities Framework
Using and Rethinking Multiple Secularities in Latin America:
Analyzing and Historicizing the Secular Subject/s
Edgar Zavala-Pelayo
El Colegio de México
As part of my intervention I will reflect on the earliest versionof the Multiple Secularities project that was carried out backin the first years of the 2010s. I will address the project’s
conceptual and methodological elements that I could apply
to a collaborative exploratory work on religious diversity andpluralism in Latin America. More specifically, I will highlightthe substantial contribution of the concept of secularity andcultures of secularity in the balancing of the theoretical andempirical weight given to church-state institutional dynamics
in the study of the religious and the secular in Latin America. I
will point out as well the historical/historiographical vein of the
project and its (trans-)regional comparative scope, observable
at a greater extent in the project’s more recent version, as
relevant theoretical-methodological prompts to approachcultures of secularities, and religious fields, beyond the societiesof the global north. After acknowledging these strengths, I will
suggest the possibilities for follow-up research that remains
focused on the (re)creation of either sharp or fuzzy institutional
differentiations and conceptual distinctions between thereligious and the secular, while directing the analytical gaze,
12

in a non-reductive fashion, towards the micro level of reality as
well. Drawing briefly on the case of the first “secular”, “scientific”,
and “progressive”, educational public institution in 19th-century
post-colonial Mexico, and the rather ambivalent “secularsubject” that the institution’s founder envisioned implicitly andexplicitly as one of the ultimate outcomes of his educational
enterprise, I will sketch the usefulness of investigating
secularities comparatively through analyses focused on thehistorical and contemporary formations of the secular subject/s
or secular subjectivity/ies.

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL III: (Post-)Ottoman Secularities
The Religionization of Din in the Late Ottoman PeriodMarkus Dreßler
Leipzig University

Din has been, due to its rootedness in the Quran and its
centrality in Islamic religious discourse, a particularly sturdy
concept. Drawing on the Ottoman-Turkish example, the paper
will argue that in order to understand its transformations,which nevertheless occurred in the modern period, it isnecessary to situate them both within (1) the longer trajectoriesof traditional Islamic discourses, as well as (2) semantic andconceptual changes particular to the modern period.
The Islamic tradition constitutes until today the mostimportant normative reference point for Muslim elaborations
on the meanings of din. This background needs to be consideredwhen investigating in the considerable correspondence that
din acquired over time with the modern Western concept ofreligion, which became increasingly solidified since the 19th
century. My contribution will chart this religionization of din in
relation to the “secularization problematic of modern politicalthought” that made itself felt in Ottoman lands at least since theTanzimat reform period and found its articulation in intensifying

debates on the “the place and significance of religion under thechanging conditions of modern life” (Davison 1995).
Since the religionization of din came along with new
distinctions between din/religion and its thus secularizedothers, it serves as an example of secularity. Such secularity is
especially lucid in the complex translations between politicalpractices and concepts marked as “European” in relation to thepractices and concepts that were in the same process reified as
traditional “Ottoman” and/or “Islamic”.

13

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL III: (Post-)Ottoman Secularities
Negotiating Secularity: Post-Ottoman Muslims in Bosnia 1878-2020
Wolfgang Höpken
Leipzig University / KFG“Multiple Secularities”

From the end of Ottoman rule in 1878 to the present, BosnianMuslims have been challenged by the necessity to negotiate
and re-negotiate the boundaries between their religious lifeand various secular systems. Three periods can be distinguishedwithin this constant process: After the end of Ottoman rule, theBosnian Muslims during the Austro-Habsburg period, firstly, wereforced to adjust their hitherto strictly religious environment to an
Empire, understanding itself as “Christian”, but at the same time
as a “modernizing” one, confronting the Bosnian Muslims with asemi-colonial European “mission civilisatrice”.
Yugoslav socialism after World War II posed a second challenge
to Bosnian Muslims, now in the context of a strictly secular,
even atheist state. While the question of modernity, which had
dominated the debates during Austrian rule, faded away as aresult of an unquestioned concept of socialism, the questionof ethnicity and religion became the most disputed issue.
With the end of the socialist Yugoslav state and the
independence of Bosnia in 1992/5 the third necessity to redraw the boundaries between the religious and the seculararose, this time under the condition of liberal-democratic
14

pluralism and the claim to be part of “Europe”, but at the sametime increasingly being influenced by transnational debates
and actor-networks of a global Islamic revival.
The case of the Bosnian Muslims can be linked to the conceptof Multiple Secularities in two ways: First, it offers a particular
example for the multiplicity of the secular-religious divide, notonly between “Europe” and “Non-Europe”, colonial and postcolonial, but also beyond the dichotomy of “Western“ vs. “Eastern
European” secularity. At the same time, it enriches the ongoingdebate on the relationship between Islam and secularity, largely
debated with regard to the non-European Islamic world.
Second, the idea of secularity as a process of “boundary drawing“
proved to be a prolific conceptional approach to structure the “longdurée” of post-Ottoman Bosnian Muslim history. Starting fromthe core aspects of the Multiple Secularities concept, the “criticaljunctures” of changing institutional and power configurationsin the process of boundary drawing could be identified anddiscourses and taxonomies of the secular and the religious could becontextualised. Having widened the concept of Multiple Secularities
to include the field of symbolic and material dimensions has alsooffered enriching perspectives for the Bosnian case.

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL III: (Post-)Ottoman Secularities
Rethinking the Religious History of Turkey and Alevis through the Concept of ‘Multiple Secularities’Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç
Hamburg University

The extensive research on Alevis mostly explains the exclusion, finally discuss whether it is necessary to extend the concept
discrimination and violence they have faced in the history of of “multiple secularities” to include the drawing of boundaries
the Republic of Turkey through the secular or religious policies within the “religious” in the context of a “secular” nation-state.
of the Turkish state and related actors. My initial approach to myarchival material on Alevis and Bektashis in Turkey was similar.
I tried to situate my findings within this “binary” framework
but hesitated to publish them because such an approach did
not adequately explain the complexity of the whole story, andthere were still “gaps” between empirical material and theory.
In this presentation, I will elaborate on, first, how my view on
the religious history of Turkey and the role of Alevis within itchanged after I applied the concept of “multiple secularities” tomy research. Secondly, I will talk about how the discussions at
the colloquiums helped to sharpen my perspective, especiallyon the significance of the secular Law 677 which banned
religious orders (tarikat) in Turkey in 1925. In this regard, I will

15

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL IV: Multiple Trajectories
Multiple Secularisms in Colonial India
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav
ICAS:M.P., New Delhi
My post-doctoral research agenda involves unearthing multiple
conceptions and narratives of secularism in colonial India. The
Multiple Secularities (MS) framework distinguishes between‘secularity’, as an analytical category connotating the modalityof distinction-making between religion and non-religion, and‘secularism’ as a normative category, signifying the ideologicalproject of separating the two. My project aims to capture different
forms of secularisms envisioned by historical actors as evident in
the different extents to which they conceived separation, andthe different value-based reasons and justifications they gave forthis separation. Since the project is concerned with normative
ideological visions, it uses the category of secularism rather thansecularity. However, the normative-ideological aim of separation
was preceded on the act of making distinctions between religion
and the state/politics. And so, in unearthing multiple secularisms
in colonial India, the project is in effect unearthing multiple
Indian secularities. The conceptual framework of multiple
secularities allows me to excavate multiple secularisms in India.
In particular, my project agrees with MS’ attempt to navigate
a path between scholarship that assumes the universality of one
16

form of secularism born in the West, and scholarship that rejects
secularism as a Western concept alien and unsuitable to nonWestern contexts. It aligns with MS’ commitment to recover theagency of regions beyond the West, uncover forms of distinctionmaking in these regions, and its attention to particular historicalexperience and cultural imprint of these regions. My project seeks
to uncover how the specific and astounding religious diversity of
British India, and the challenges and conflicts these generated,
resulted in different actors across the political spectrum –Congressmen like Gandhi and Nehru, on one hand, and the
Hindu politician Lajpat Rai, on the other – articulating different
conceptions and narratives of secularism. The MS framework
permits me to explore and reveal the ‘reference problems’ colonial
Indian actors sought to address and the different ‘solutions’ they
offered. Equally, while the distinctiveness of Indian secularism
has been theorised and noted, my project raises an importantquestion for the MS framework: do multiple secularities exist notjust across different regions but also within a single country?

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL IV: Multiple Trajectories
The Multiple Secularity Approach as a Middle-Range Cultural Theory:
Interpreting the Secular State Project on Madagascar, and BeyondPeter Kneitz
Leipzig

The Multiple Secularity Approach has added a very valuable
perspective for the interpretation of my empirically oriented
ethnological research project. In other words: It has worked
for me as a middle-range cultural theory, allowing to arrange
my understanding of the cultural phenomena studied in aheuristically meaningful way.
In my contribution, I would like, first, to consider some ofthe positive consequences for the understanding of my data.
Studying the meaning, and the development of “Malagasy
solidarity” (fihavanana gasy) as a central normative concept
within the present Republic of Madagascar, it seemed a long time
given that the basic idea was all about mutual understanding,
about the value of consent, of conflict solution, of living inharmony, and peace. Slowly, though, a very different reading
evolved, leading to an interpretation of Malagasy solidarity as
deep conservative impetus, as a way, to valorize a new kind of
Malagasy identity, and to develop a critical theory of modernity.
Looking to my data through the prism of the Multiple Secularity
Approach allowed me, among other, to unveil how the idea of“the” religion arrived on Madagascar, and to embed the process

towards the elaboration of present normativity within thegreater, and unknown picture of the negotiation of secularity in
Madagascar, and on the African continent.
In a second step I will aim to broaden the horizon, andto reflect on the position of secularity within the greater
cultural process. How to understand the complex intellectual
journey leading, roughly, from religious practices, to religion,
to secularity, and moving at present further on? And how to
describe the characteristic, and changing aspects of secularity
within a process stimulated, quite paradoxically, by an always
increasing emphasis on rationality, and the logos? Suchquestions can serve as a starting point for developing prospects
for an extension of the Multiple Secularity Approach.

17

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL IV: Multiple Trajectories
What Does “Religio-Political” Even Mean? The Diachronic Perspective on Bhutan as an Empirical andTheoretical Case Study
Dagmar Schwerk
Leipzig University

In this talk, I will first provide a brief overview of how I integrated
the multiple secularities approach into the analytical frameworkof my research. As a background, directly after my Ph.D. in
2017, I choose a new research focus in my fellowship here at
the CASHSS, eventually leading to the work on my second
monograph about identity- and nation-building in Bhutan
in the 18th century now. How to possibly adapt the conceptof multiple secularities in my research about the spheres ofreligion and politics (partially: law/economics) in Bhutan fromthe 17th to 20th centuries was, back then, sketched out in aworking paper (2019).
In brief, Bhutan’s development path is unique as Bhutan,
never colonized, is the only country in the Tibetan cultural areathat still possesses a premodern structural continuity in the formof the “Joint Twofold System of Governance” embodied today in
a constitutional monarchy and sustainable development model(Gross National Happiness). The concept of multiple secularities
was immensely helpful to identify and describe systematicallyand diachronically – in that depth, for the first time in Tibetology– not only institutional differentiations but also corresponding
18

underlying “epistemic structures” (in the beginning called“conceptual distinctions”) and boundary negotiations. Here, I will
highlight aspects that were essential for me and that repeatedly
resurfaced in discussions about secularity/modernity within mydisciplines of Tibetology/religious studies in Europe and North
America. Second, personally, I am interested in discussing some“open” questions regarding the multiple secularities approachand possible future research collaborations. For example, how
can we further develop the analytical approach of epistemes(my research interest lies in environmental humanities/climate
crisis research)? What unresolved issues in the trans-disciplinary
academic discourse about multiple secularities should be
addressed? And, finally, did we succeed in establishing lessAnglo-European perspectives/terminologies in modernity/
secularity studies in the German academy?

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 2.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL IV: Multiple Trajectories
Secularization and Doubt in Buddhist Societies
Sven Bretfeld

Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Religious and scientific modes of knowledge production arecommonly perceived as one of the major differences marking
a borderline between the religious and the secular spheres.
Religions deal with ‘revelations’ and transmitted ‘beliefs’,sciences with ‘discoveries’ and experiment-tested ‘models’.
From the mid-1800s Buddhist authors have disputed that thesedichotomies applied also to Buddhism. Buddhism was rather
promoted as the one exceptional religion in full compatibility
with modern science, or, even itself a form of science. This stillwidespread and ongoing discourse has absorbed some of theshocks modern scientific findings may have caused for religious
world-views in other cases.
The history of this rhetorical device and its echoes in Asiansocieties illustrate how secularities can develop in multiple
ways. Indeed, in Buddhist cultures secularization seems to be
driven by science-induced doubt to a lesser degree than, forexample, in Christian Europe. On the contrary – be it relativity,
quantum or evolution theory; the cosmological standard model,

psychoanalysis or, recently, neuro-scientific brain research –Buddhist interpreters have always found ways to reiterate andpopularize the idea that modern sciences confirm traditional
Buddhist knowledge. More extreme formulations even claim thatsecular scientists have now started to discover what Buddhists
have been knowing for ages. Yet, despite this quite successful
strategy of immunization against scientific challenges, otherforms of religious doubt have caused many Buddhists, forexample in Sri Lanka, to turn their backs on religiosity.
The paper will focus on this alternative source of doubt, what
it tells us about the distinctive mechanics and organization of
the religious fields in Buddhist countries, how secularization
processes can be conceptualized within this context, and what
this all has to do with scholarly debates on how to translate Pāliinto English.

19

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL V: Multiple Secularities and Global Histories
Multiple Secularities and „Global Religious History“: Recent Innovations in the German Study of Religion
Adrian Hermann
Bonn University
In the context of the German study of religion, the concept
of “multiple secularities” has been one of the most innovativeand exciting new developments of the last 15 years. Amongother things, it has been emerged as a response to thevarious challenges of postcolonial critique of the concept of„religion“ as an analytical category. Alongside the successful
implementation of the “multiple secularities” perspective, theGerman study of religion has also brought forth the approach20of „global religious history“ (Kollmar-Paulenz/Bergunder/
Hermann/Strube/Maltese et al.) In my contribution, I want torelate these two recent innovations to each other and discuss
how “multiple secularities” has contributed and could continue
to contribute to a „global religious history“Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL V: Multiple Secularities and Global Histories
Multiple Secularities, The Task of Comparative Political Theory and the Trend of Global History:
A View from India
Sushmita NathAshoka University
In 2016 I joined the KFG “Multiple Secularities” as a juniorfellow, and then again as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019, where
I continued my research until 2021. As this timeline reveals,
I was fortunate to have a long association with KFG “Multiple
Secularities”. As a result, the research group had a major
influence on my research on secularity in modern India. At
the KFG I explored the “Gandhi-Nehru tradition” of secularity,
which, as a dominant socio-political ideal during the twentiethcentury, influenced the Indian national movement as well as theideal of secularism in the post-colonial state. By distinguishingsecularity from secularism and secularisation, and by construing
it as an analytical category that distinguishes “religion” from itsothers, I was able to demonstrate the distinctiveness of thesecular ideal of the Gandhi-Nehru tradition vis-à-vis the secular
ideal of western Europe and North America. The result of thisresearch was a monograph titled, ‘The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi,
Nehru and the Idea(s) of India’, published in 2022. Secondly, my
intellectual engagements with the fellows at the KFG remindedme that the case for the distinctiveness of Indian secularity was
not an argument for exceptionality. An argument for exception,

it may be argued, assumes an authoritative original. By
questioning the existence of an authoritative original secular,
the notion of multiple secularities challenges accounts where
the history of Western Europe and North America serves as suchan original. As such, the concept of secularity has been usefulfor me and my co-author Tobias Berger in writing a paper on theautonomous sources of “liberal” and non-liberal thinking withregards to questions of secularism and secularity in South Asia.
Lastly, I see immense possibilities in exploring the conceptionof secularity in conjunction with recent developments inglobal (intellectual) history and comparative theorisation.
International and inter-disciplinary research environments,
such as the KFG “Multiple Secularities”, are crucial for suchintellectual developments.

21

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL V: Multiple Secularities and Global Histories
Conceptual History and Multiple Secularities: The Global Diffusion of Arguments from Epistemes/
Ontologies/Worldviews
Todd Weir
University of Groningen
Premise: Given what we currently know of the conceptual historyof worldview, we can posit that concepts such as worldview
have been crucial in the elaboration of novel ideas about humanknowledge, community, and religious-secular relations inmodernity. These concepts have been formed and reflected uponin the context of apologetic struggles between religious-secular
viewpoints, which have sometimes been known as “culture
wars.” In this process, definitions of worldviews both diverge,
as antagonistic claims are made by ascribing contrary prefixes,
such as “Christian” versus “scientific” worldviews, as well as
converge, given that the participants in the field of contestation
themselves seek to define themselves in relation to one another.
Furthermore, concepts travel geographically and linguisticlly
and enter into new spaces of contestation, which can beobserved in the migration of the German term Weltanschauungto Spanish cosmovision in the Latin American context, and now
as “cosmovision” in the global Anglosphere.
Relation to Multiple Secularities: The strength of the Multiple
Secularities approach is the comparative historical framework
it established for analysing religious-secular events and fields.
22This comparison is both geographic/cultural and chronological.
One could extend the above described project on this historyof worldview, which I will undertake with support of the Dutch
Research Council grant, with a collaborative project that would
investigate both historical and contemporary developmentsof arguments about ontological difference in the context of
apologetics of various sorts. It would study the evolution ofsuch arguments discursively and theoretically, one the one
hand, as well as liguistically and conceptually, on the other.
The premise is that arguments about ontological difference
are key sites of the apologetic elaboration of religious-secularboundaries. To take one very current example, it is clearthat part of the concept of “Russian world” advanced by the
Russian government and Orthodox Church in the current war
in Ukraine is the notion that underpinning the conflict is aworldview chasm between Russia and the West.

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VI: Secularities: Beyond Modernity?
Situating Medicine and Religion in Asia
Michael Stanley-Baker
Nanyang Technological University
During the period of the KGF research group, I produced two
related works, an edited volume titled Situating Medicine andReligion in Asia, which should be out by the time of the conference,
and a monograph in progress, titled Situating Practice: Medicine
and Religion in Early Imperial China. The unimaginative lack ofdifference between the titles indicates that they hinge on, orobsess over, the same basic idea, of examining how religion andmedicine come to be situated in relation to each other in specificcontexts. Whereas the broadly-scoped Multiple Secularities
project has compared many different contexts and forms inwhich religion becomes bordered, these two works examine
one particular kind of bordering, that between medicine andreligion. They focus on the contexts, genres, social forms,
historical and personal moments bring to bear different kinds ofissues and contours.
Concepts put forward by Killinger, Triplett and Kleine in their
Asian Medicine introduction have been particularly useful andeasy to apply. One insight that drew out patterns in the Asia
volume was the role of meso-level social forms – primarily
institutions – and how definitions of religion versus medicine

could be seen as contours of social and inter-institutional
power negotiation. This could be seen in the strong role thestate played in various chapters, whether Japan, Tibet, India
or Myanmar. The China monograph performs a close analysisof records of a fourth-century gentry family, to tease out how
healing practices situate knowledge, and organise religion
and medicine. Here, Killinger, Kleine and Triplett’s typology ofmodes of distinction is brought to life and appears repeatedly
in different guises: ends and purposes, means and methods,
framing, competence or charisma, and forms of authority. It
becomes clear that even within a single community we cannot
capture a singular snapshot of this moving tableau, but rather
need to observe clusters of methods or repertoires of practice– an approach foreshadowed by their introduction.

23

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VI: Secularities: Beyond Modernity?
History of Religious Coexistence in India
Rajeev Bhargava

Parekh Institute of Indian Thought

Deep religious diversity in India has remained a fertile topic
of discussion among scholars and public intellectuals. Somehave claimed that in pre-colonial India, religious diversity was
not only openly acknowledged but politically endorsed andthat India offers an interesting model of peaceful religious
coexistence. It has also been claimed that one of the distinctive
features of modern Indian secularism as distinct from othersecularisms is that it responds morally and politically toreligious diversity. Others have claimed that the Indian caseis no exception and has followed the trajectory of religious
conflict found in other parts of the world. The present essay
examines these claims. Its main conclusion is that there was anenviable degree of religious coexistence in India in the past,though this was neither due to explicitly formulated doctrinesof religious pluralism, nor a result of a practical, social, andpolitical arrangement, a bare modus vivendi. Instead, South
Asia in the past had collectively imagined a particular wayof living together, a common moral understanding of thesignificance of religious pluralism, and it is this that accounts
for peaceful religious coexistence in pre-modern India. This24

claim is substantiated by historical evidence of conflict andaccommodation until the arrival of the modern idea of religion.
This moral imaginary was severely challenged by the impetus
given by colonial modernity to some morally troubling
features in both Hindu and Islamic thought. It also had muchto do with the globalization of the modern, Western idea of
Religion. Modern Indian secularism is a fragile response tomodern religion and the forms of religious strife it generates.
It is an attempt to resurrect in a new form the core elements ofa much older pluralist imaginary and to prevent forms of interreligious and intra-religious domination (caste and gender
related hierarchies).

Friday, 13 October 2023 | 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VI: Secularities: Beyond Modernity?
Signs of Secularity in Latin America
Roberto Blancarte
El Colegio de México

The purpose of this paper is to answer a central question
regarding Latin America and particularly Mexico: Was there
some seed of a secularization process in what we now call
Latin America and particularly Mexico before the arrival of the
Spaniards and Portuguese to the American continent? And if
it’s the case, when and where can we find those elements? The
current research on secularity in Latin America takes for granted
that efforts of secularization in the region began only with theindependence of the new republics, after the fall of the colonial
dominion, in 19th Century. But a closer look reveals us a more
complex situation. Not only Pre-Hispanic cultures (Aztec, Incas,
and so forth) could have develop some signs of distinction andseparation between the “religious” and the “non-religious”,
but also the Colonial period (XVI-XVIII Centuries), known for

the importance of the Catholic church and catholic culture
in society, could show many signs of separation of affairs,
distinction of spheres and other elements of eventual seeds ofsecularization. The paper will introduce a discussion about the
influence of the concept of multiple secularities, its usefulness
in the research, exploring at the same time the limits and reachof the whole approach related to the theory of secularization.

25

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VII: Modes of Secularity: Performativity, Materiality, Affectivity
From Gestural Communication of the Religious and Secular to Functional Amalgam of the Religious
and Secular
Augustine Agwuele
Texas State University

Modes of communicating religiosity are integral to the spreadof religion; the ability of the religious to captivate is inextricably
linked to the place of culturally relevant ‘visible bodily actions’such as paralanguage, proxemics, physical appearances, anduse of material items of signification and symbolization involved
in secularism and the appressentation of associated values.
I set out from a linguistic perspective to observe anddocument how actors of two bible based Yoruba Movements
have positioned nonverbal elements to bear their message,
rather, I am confronted with a vast area of discourse on multiple
secularities, the exploration of which unveil multiplicities ofmodalities that in interaction with core elements of culture
generate empirically observable habitual responses thateffaces the dyad of religion and the secular and iterate the very
cultural imperatives that these movements initially identified
as secular. While not a religious scholar, a perspective shift
ensued from the interaction afforded by the fellowship at theCentre that now compels a strongly emerging collaboration
between linguistics, religious- and socio-cultural studies withcolleagues Magnus Echtler and Asonzeh Ukah. The dyad,
26

religion and secular, it seems, are utilitarian objects throughwhich Yoruba people contend with everyday life and that canbe explored theoretically and ethnographically to understandhow and why. This initial interaction laid for me a strong
foundation to further this new idea. The diverse case studies,cultural and disciplinary perspectives that the Centre brought
together uniquely and collectively expounded consequentiallythe theme of secularization unfurling for me, from an emic
vista, the enveloping context through which Yoruba people
apprehend and respond to life persistent questions. I therefore
will circumscribe (a) the manner in which my research has been
influenced by the fellowship through the interactions affordedby being at the Centre in Leipzig, and (b) the possibilities forfollow-up trans-disciplinary projects.

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VII: Modes of Secularity: Performativity, Materiality, Affectivity
How to make a Zulu King
Magnus Echtler
KFG “Multiple Secularities”
After having analyzed power relations in the Nazareth Baptist
Church, an African Indigenous Church that promotes Zulu
cultural identity, working at the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities”
provided me with the opportunity to study performancesof African culture outside the church, and hence arguably
outside the religious field. I hold that in the South African
context secularity was shaped through the customization of
African discourses and practices, that is, their secularizationby codification in Native Law, and that these customs were
subsequently mobilized in the political and religious spheres. In
my paper, I illustrate the argument with the public performancesthat make a Zulu king.
On October 29, 2022, Misuzulu kaZwelithini received acertificate of recognition from Cyril Ramaphosa, presidentof South Africa, and he was anointed by Referent Dr. Thabo
Makgoba, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town. The event,commonly referred to as ‘coronation’, took place at Moses
Mabhida Stadium in Durban. While the ceremony was criticizedas neo-colonial, it effectively installed Misuzulu as the new
Zulu king, although two of his half-brothers still contest

his succession in court. On August 20, 2022, Misuzulu had
performed the ‘entering the kraal’ (ukungeni esibayeni) ritual at
the kwaKhangelamankengane Royal Palace in Nongoma. Thisritual ‘really’ made him king according to Zulu proceedings, but
he was not the only one to perform it, although he mobilized
more supporters than his brothers. In my presentation, I look atthese public events from a performative angle, analyzing how
they negotiate the boundaries between religion, politics andculture.

27

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VII: Modes of Secularity: Performativity, Materiality, Affectivity
Materiality and Secularity
Birgit Meyer
Utrecht University

In my work, materiality and secularity have long formed
important research lines. My fellowship at the KFG “Multiple
Secularities” prompted me to think them together. In mypresentation I will offer a reflection from the interface of thestrands of scholarship associated with these lines, explaining
why it is productive to relate work on materiality and secularity
in the study of religion to each other. Firstly, I will offer some
general thoughts, tying into the last phase of the Multiple
Secularities project in which materiality was foregrounded as aprime conceptual focus, and take stock of the insights gained
during my fellowship in the KFG (April-June 2023). Secondly,
I will try to demonstrate the conceptual and methodological
gains of a combined materiality-secularity approach with regard
to a particular case-study which is occupying me currently andwhich formed the focus of my work during my fellowship:
the translocation of a missionary collection of legbawo anddzokawo – items mistranslated as “idols” or “fetishes” – from theEwe in the “mission field” on the West African coast (the current
South east of Ghana and South of Togo) to the Städtisches
Museum in Bremen (now Übersee-Museum Bremen). I will
28

point our that research on this collection can benefit from thetheorization of the materiality-secularity nexus, while at thesame time it offers important reflexion points to refine ourunderstanding of the complex relations between categories as
art, heritage and religion in our entangled, post-colonial world.

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL VII: Modes of Secularity: Performativity, Materiality, Affectivity
An Affective Material Approach to Multiple Secularities
Nur Yasemin Ural
KFG “Multiple Secularities”“Religious feelings” and the way they were conceptualised
from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th
century – exemplified in the writings of Schleiermacher andOtto, two important German Protestant theologians – play a
prominent role in the representation of religion as immaterial,
textual and personal. Religion was and still is predominantly
seen as a personal feeling/experience, thus a private matter andshould remain between the individual and God, we are told.
The public display of “ostentatious” religious signs continues to
disrupt the European public sphere, because it renegotiates theboundaries between the private and the public, as well as theplace of religion, as in the case of the headscarf/burkini affairs,
and the controversies about crosses in public institutions (Göle
2013). While religion is seen to belong to the private sphere,
where the personal, emotional and intimate takes place, its
definitional opposite – the secular – sustains an exclusively
public, impersonal and rational character. But as recent researchthrough the material turn has aptly shown, religion has neverbeen exclusively immaterial, personal and textual. Along thesame lines, the secular is also not a free-floating ideology,

completely detached from personal interests, bodily sensations
or historical dispositions. The secular is not free of emotions,
it feels a certain way (Jacobsen & Pellegrini 2008). Under thepremises of the affective turn, we can understand these secularfeelings of empathy, joy and moral superiority or of frustration,
anger and fear not as personal, individual experiences of
singular human bodies, but as relational affects that go beyond
and under our skin (Ahmed 2005). Following this line of inquiry,
I will address the affective politics of laïcité (French secularism)in the last decade using the example of food, particularly porkin public spaces and public schools. I argue that the we canonly understand Multiple Secularities Paradigm (Wohlrab-Sahr& Kleine 2021), which in its plurality based on the historicalconditions of their emergence, through the affective bonds,
joys and anxieties that do not emerge in single individuals but
occur relationally, contingently and arbitrarily. It is precisely thisaffectivity that forms the basis for the constitution not only of
individual human bodies, but also of the collective body of agroup, a people or a nation.

29

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL VIII: Thinking Beyond Multiple Secularities
Beyond the Concept. Research Agenda Based on the Heuristic Potential of Multiple Secularities
Juan Cruz Esquivel
CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires

Multiple secularities, more than a theoretical concept, implies
an epistemological, theoretical and analytical perspective tounderstand the relations between the religious and the secularin the contemporary world. This approach, which enables a fieldof research to analyze the singularities of the historical contextsof various social configurations, at the same time stimulates
systematic and comparative analyses. In this sense, theresearch was oriented primarily to identify the particularitiesof the secularization process in the Western world and in
Eastern countries. Much less have they focused on unravelingthe dissimilar paths within the West, taking into account thedifferent historical ways of resolving the tensions derived fromthe processes of institutional differentiation. Considering theheuristic potential of this theoretical-analytical tool, it would beopportune, on the one hand, to advance in the construction of asystem of typologies worldwide that systematizes the multiple
secularities. On the other hand, to reflect on the challenges of
the concept today, in light of the renewed religious presencesin the public space and their incidence in the dynamics ofinstitutional differentiation. The management of religious
30

diversity as a gravitating element in government agendas isprocessed in various formats, depending on the imprints of the
predominant religious institutions, the political culture of theruling class and the levels of secularization of society itself. To
what extent are the processes of institutional differentiation
being transformed is a research question that would contributeto revising the scope of the conceptual framework of multiple
secularities in its interpretive capacity of the contemporary
dynamics.

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL VIII: Thinking Beyond Multiple Secularities
From Multiple Secularities to Social Welfare - Beyond the West, and Beyond Modernities
André Laliberté

University of Ottawa

I would like to celebrate the meaningful contribution of the
project Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West and Beyond
Modernities to the field of political science especially with theissue of decolonization and the realities of deep diversity. A key
problem that the discipline will have to wrestle with for years tocome is the risk that legitimate concerns for contextualizationand methodological humility can be misconstrued as the
advocacy of irreconcilable differences and boundaries between
fixed and incommensurable traditions. The balance that theCentre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social
Sciences has maintained throughout the years has managed
to avoid that trap and given reasons for hope because it
has shown empirically that these aspirations are shared bycolleagues the world over. The concept of multiple secularities
has provided me with a germane framework to disentangle theparadox of China: A society that remains deeply religious but
nevertheless has to bear governance by political rulers who
profess atheism but at the same time have never embraced oneof its constitutive ideas of freedom of conscience; and therefore,
disqualifying them to define their regime as a secular state. The

reliance on comparative historical sociology that has guided theprincipal investigators and the team working with them proved
to be a salutary methodology because it has reminded us that
culture is not destiny and that people who claim a Chinese
heritage can look to other options than the model of pseudosecularism enforced by the Chinese Communist Party: they canlook to Taiwan for a very different way in which the legacy ofChinese religions and philosophy have nurtured the resilienceof a prosperous democracy with its distinctive characteristics.
I shall reflect on how the methodology that inspired the whole
research program of multiple secularities beyond the West andbeyond modernity could possibly be extended to nourish a
research program on welfare, mutuality, and social justice thatwould aim as well to reach a global comparative scope.

31

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. | GWZ

PANEL VIII: Thinking Beyond Multiple Secularities
Possible Futures for Multiple Secularities Research
Jason Josephson Storm
Williams College

The exploration of multiple secularities has been a remarkableendeavor in understanding the diverse forms of social anddiscursive differentiation across various cultures, contexts,
and historical periods. While I harbor reservations about theapplicability of the multiple secularities model to culturesthat lack a distinct category of “religion,” I must acknowledge
the project‘s exceptional ability to track and analyze
important themes and cultural conjunctures. Building uponthis foundation, I propose the consideration of alternative
forms of social and intellectual differentiation that are closelyintertwined with the concept of secularity (such as the binary
differentiations between science/superstition, science/magic,

32

religion/magic and/or the secular conceptions of temporality
and history). In summary, this talk will reflect on the way mythinking has evolved from conversations with the group, but it
will mainly aim to inspire and suggest possible future researchendeavors along different paths and uncharted territories.

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 1.00 p.m. – 3.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL IX: Secularity and GovernanceNonreligion in a Complex Future: Rethinking the Secular, Secularism and Secularity
Lori Beaman

Williams College

The Nonreligion in a Complex Future Project is a 7 year
international project that studies the impact of increased
nonreligion and increased religious diversity in five researchareas: law, education, the environment, health, and migration.
The project was designed to explicitly avoid using versions of‘the secular’ as a placeholder concept to describe social change
related to the increase in nonreligion. In our view, much ofwhat we are analysing can be effectively discussed without
relying on this overused concept. We share with the Multiple
Secularities programme of research a critical approach to thesecular, though we differ in our focus. The NCF is not concerned
primarily with the social construction of the secular. However,through and because of the approach of Multiple Secularities
we have cautiously embarked on a re-engagement with theconcept of the secular using the Multiple Secularities approachas described by Kleine and Wohlrab-Sahr. This approach has
been especially helpful in our projects in law, which haveexamined same-sex marriage as public controversy and theissue of reproductive rights, especially in light of the overturn of
Roe v. Wade in the recent Dobbs decision by the United States

Supreme Court which prompted an international reaction.
Social actors in these debates deploy ‘the secular’ in varyious
ways in public debate and in legal settings. Their strategies areembedded in power relations and ideas of the common good.
They link to notions of community and nationhood as well as
to citizenship and belonging. This paper will examine the NCF
research in conversation with the conceptual framework ofMultiple Secularities, considering its positive contribution as
well as its challenges.

33Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 1.00 p.m. – 3.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL IX: Secularity and Governance
Multiple Secularities, Secularism and the Specters of Race
Marian Burchardt
Leipzig University

In an important part of the social scientific literature, secularism
has been construed as an element of modern statecraft thatis intrinsically tied to the histories of Western colonialism
and pretension of racial superiority and white supremacythat underpinned it. Such approaches typically construe
secularism and secularity as an exclusive element of Westerncolonial modernity, not as a form of conceptual distinction
and institutional differentiation that is possibly universal.
Many studies, which work with such an approach lack a clear
empirical or historical basis for clarifying the nexus of secularity
and race. And generally, while the historical relationshipbetween secularity and other forms of social categorizationsuch as gender, race and ethnicity are undoubtedly central to
the research field of multiple secularities, there is a dearth ofwork. My talk seeks to address this lacuna on a conceptual andempirical level.
While for a long time, sociologists of religion imagined
secularization as more or less anonymous process, recent
approaches are more actor-centered and view secularizationas conflict. In my paper, I contribute to this research by focusing
34

on the civic engagement of secularist activists towards
reshaping the relationships between religion and the state.
Drawing on empirical research in Quebec and Catalonia, I
show that, while understanding their activism as aiming todemocratize the governance of religion, secularists often
find themselves in caught up between conservatives whoseek to preserve the status quo which privileges Christianmajority institutions on the one hand, and actors from the‘multicultural left‘ who blame secularists of undermining thestruggle of religious minorities, especially Muslims, and racism.
My paper explores this increasingly explosive conjuncture andexamines in a comparative fashion the ways in which different
institutional arrangements incentivize, curb, or potentiallyabsorb such conflicts.

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 1.00 p.m. – 3.00 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

PANEL IX: Secularity and Governance
Multiple Secularities, Post-Coloniality, and the Indian Conundrum
Anindita Chakrabarti
IIT Kanpur

Much of the recent theorization on the concept of secular hasquestioned its monolithic and Eurocentric understanding andworked towards an analytical frame that better explained thepractices and institutional dynamics associated with it. Much of thisscholarship has been situated within the post-colonial contexts
untouched by the temporality of the post-secular. How does theidea of secularity/secularism work in these socio-political contexts?
The concept of multiple secularities has initiated a discussion
beyond the political ideologies of separation between religion
and state/politics as it detects a variety of combinations of religion,
national politics and the claims of religious groups and secular
agents in the public sphere. It frames the debate not around thequestion whether secularism/secularity are culturally inauthentic
and a western import, but how the boundaries between religion
and secular spheres are negotiated, challenged, and redrawn. In
this presentation I map the secularity debate in India on three key
registers: First, the separation of religion and politics/state and its
impossibility in the Indian context; second, secularity as rights andjustice; third, an increasing judicialization of the question of religion
and its aftermath. I argue that the frame of multiple secularities

offers not an idea of multicultural relativism but a conceptual tool
to identify secularity as a multi-value idea.
My work on Muslim family law in contemporary India has
shown how the idea of secularity has shapeshifted in the recent
decades as judicialization of the religious domain emerged as
the key trope. In this context, the judiciary emerged as the sole
arbitrator that determined what was ‘religion’ and what wasnot. This development has on one hand led to infringementof religious freedom, especially of religious minorities andhomogenization of the religious majority. For me, the frame ofmultiple secularities offers a conceptual toolkit for investigating
how the institutional practices and concomitant meaning evolveand change in these post-colonial contexts. In this presentation I
will argue that in the contemporary public discourse in India wehave seen a clear shift from the guiding principle of ‘balancing
religious diversity’/‘principled distance’ to the concept of secularity
as ‘subjection of religion to the rule of law’. This idea of secularity
couched in the language of justice, constitutional rights, and a
uniform civil code has not worked well for the religious minorities
as the questions of religious difference and plurality go unasked.
35

Saturday, 14 October 2023 | 3:30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. | Bibliotheca Albertina

Panel Discussion
Contested Secularities – a Global Scenario
The interest in distinctions and differentiations between
religion and the secular – which we call secularity – is not
merely academic. It touches deeply on societal struggles
and sometimes even goes along with culture wars. This often
concerns the relationship between the state and religion.
However, everyday life, the family, education, science, and avariety of cultural spheres can also become battlegrounds.
The contestations can originate from different sides: Froma secularist state, like China, questioning the autonomy ofreligious life and its public presence. Recent developments inFrance, particularly regarding the wearing of certain Muslim
garments in public, also point in this direction. It was thisconstellation of a – more or less – authoritarian secularist statethat postcolonial and other critical approaches have focusedon. However, during the last decades and sometimes longer,
we have been confronted with a different constellation in many
places around the world: an intermingling between the state
and the dominant religion which goes against the maintenanceof the boundaries of private life and the family, the possibilityof free speech and political critique, the autonomy of culture,
but also the freedom of minority religions. We can observe
this in Turkey, in India, and – with utmost violence against the36

civil society – in Iran. But we can also see it in Russia and other
Eastern European countries in their intermingling of orthodoxy
and nationalism, as well as in parts of the United States, forexample in cases of severe religious intervention into school
curricula or women’s reproductive rights. And most recently,
accompanied by huge civil society protests, we see it in Israel,
where radical Jewish groups are trying to impose a Jewish
religious agenda on society. The panel will bring these different
cases together to discuss them in comparison and relate themto the academic debate.

Main Station
Alte Handelsbörse
Motel One

Bibliotheca Albertina
GWZ

Alte Handelsbörse

Naschmarkt 1, 04109 Leipzig

Bibliotheca Albertina Beethovenstraße 6, 04107 Leipzig

Motel One Augustusplatz Ritterstraße 4, 04109 Leipzig
GWZ		

Beethovenstraße 15, 04107 Leipzig

Leipzig University
Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies„Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“
Nikolaistraße 8–10, 04109 Leipzig
multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de
www.multiple-secularities.de