Artikler

Indhold : Nr. 1 : Årgang 9 : 2006

 

Tema

Religion og politik i komparativt perspektiv

af Anders Berg Sørensen

Det epistemologiske syndefald - Et sekulært skred i betingelserne for det transcendentales politik: reformation, oplysning, revolution (1517-1848)

af Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Religionernes genkomst på den politiske dagsorden

af Brian Jacobsen

Et spørgsmål om sekularisme? Islam i fransk politik

af Katrine Rømhild Benkaaba

America Born Again: Religiøse vækkelsers indflydelse på amerikansk politik

af Marie Andersen

Fra islamisme til statsræson? - Om aktuel sekularisme i Iran

af Manni Crone

 

Artikler

Udlicitering i en kompleks virkelighed 

af Kasper Lindskow og Yosef Bhatti

Folketingsvalget 2005 i cyberspace

af Kasper M. Hansen, Karina Pedersen og Dorit Wahl-Brink

 

Bøger

Bogomtaler

Der hersker ingen tvivl om, at religiøse spørgsmål har fået en uventet høj placering på de politiske dagsordener i den vestlige verden og på verdensplan: For det første i form af den synlighed, som religion har fået i kraft af tilstedeværelsen af et muslimsk mindretal, som i de seneste år også har haft et stigende behov for at fremhæve deres religiøse tilhørsforhold; for det andet i form af en øget politisk betoning af de nationale kirkers og dominerende trosretningers centrale rolle for forskellige europæiske landes kultur og nationale identitet; og for det tredje da religioner er et centralt omdrejningspunkt i de politiske konflikter om løsrivelse og selvbestemmelse og krige, der har hærget de europæiske udkantsområder efter den kolde krigs ophør og de trusler om terrorangreb og religiøst motiveret vold, som Europa og europæiske borgere bliver mødt med. Hvordan skal vi forstå religionernes genkomst i politik og det offentlige liv? Hvilke mekanismer er drivende, hvad betinger religionens stigende rolle i politiske debatter og beslutninger, og hvilke implikationer har det for de politiske institutioner og de politiske kulturer? Det søger dette temanummer af Tidsskriftet Politik at belyse.

 

Udgangspunktet er, at forholdet mellem religion og politik sædvanligvis bliver anskuet ud fra sekularismens perspektiv i den vestlige verden. Det er en indgroet forestilling i den offentlige debat, at religion og politik er adskilte størrelser. Men religiøse synsvinklers stigende betydning i den politiske offentlighed er tilsyneladende ikke fænomener og hændelser, der kan isoleres til enkelte lande. Derfor er der god grund til at anlægge et komparativt perspektiv, der kaster lys over forskellige opfattelser af religion/politik relationen og udfordrer sekularismen ved at vise, at der ikke blot er én måde at håndtere forholdet mellem religion og politik på. Gennem landestudier af Danmark, Frankrig, Iran og USA stiller dette nummer af Tidsskriftet Politik derfor også spørgsmålet, hvor og hvordan grænsen mellem religion og politik er blevet og bliver sat.

 

Abtracts:

 

Religion og politik i komparativt perspektiv

Anders Berg-Sørensen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

 

The article gives a general sketch of how to do studies of the relationship between religion and politics in a comparative perspective. The aim is to understand secularism in plural rather than secularism as a political doctrine of the separation of religion and politics. The claim is, first, that comparative studies of the religion/politics nexus contribute with insights by exchanging perspectives; second, the exchange of perspectives creates the conditions of possibility for criticising the national institutional arrangements and practices regulating religion and politics, cultural self-understandings etc.; third comparative studies of the religion/politics nexus contribute to democratic reflections beyond the separation of religion and politics. The potentials and pitfalls of this theoretical frame will be illustrated by including different national debates on the Muslim headscarves in European countries.

 

 

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Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Ph.D.-student, Columbia School of Journalism, Columbia University

 

This article argues that the one trait common to otherwise different secular orders is to be found at the epistemological level. Despite their differences when it comes to the precise regulation of the relation between religion and politics, and degrees of secularization, widely different secular orders in Western Europe all share a common imaginary for the politics of the transcendental. This imaginary allows – in contrast to the religious hegemony that ruled before the Reformation – for other sources than religious ones to provide transcendental organizational principles for the social order. The development of the new imaginary is traced through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Revolutions of 1848.

 

 

Religionernes genkomst på den politiske dagsorden

Brian Jacobsen, Ph.D.-student, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

 

Among the first social scientists the general understanding was that religion was no longer important. The secularization theory predicted a gradually declining importance of religion in public life. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21^st century religion still holds a powerful role in the construction of ethnic and national identity – a process which is reinforced by various globalization trends. In this article the validity of the secularization thesis in Denmark is discussed and various factors that influence the process of secularization in Denmark are pointed out. These factors are a) various globalization trends, b) the Danish church-state relationship and c) the religious landscape which transforms the relationship between politics and religion in Denmark.

 

 

Et spørgsmål om sekularisme? Islam i fransk politik

Katrine Rømhild Benkaaba, Ph.D.-student, Department of Political Science Aix-en-Provence, University of Aix-Marseille-III

 

In 2003 the French Council for Muslim Faith was created. One year later, in 2004, the wearing of ostensible religious signs in public schools was prohibited following heated debates on Muslim schoolgirls wearing headscarves. Through these episodes Islam was constructed as a public problem and the secular notion of ‘laïcité’ received renewed attention. The article analyses these two episodes as a struggle over meaning between various political actors, illustrating the ambiguous political practice in relation to Islam. It is also argued that the symbolic struggle concerns not only the meaning of Islam but also that of the notion of ‘laïcité’, which by certain actors is defined as a particular national ideology rather than as a secular principle of state neutrality.  

 

 

America Born Again: Religiøse vækkelsers indflydelse på amerikansk politik

Marie Andersen, Ph.D.-student, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen

 

The rise of the Religious Right in American politics is not a new phenomenon. In an attempt to understand the present movement of the line of separation in its historical context, this article looks at the current relationship between religion and politics through the lens of awakening-cycle theory, because according to the construct, when an awakening peaks, religion and politics merge. The central question is, therefore, whether or not the current movement towards an increased intimacy between religion and politics points to the fact that America is in the middle of a Great Awakening. The article begins by introducing the awakening-construct, then moves on to describe the first three great awakenings before looking more closely at the religio-political environment from the 1970s onwards. In conclusion, the article argues that the current merger of religion and American politics resembles that of previous great awakenings and can, therefore, be viewed as such.

 

 

Fra islamisme til statsræson? - om aktuel sekularisme i Iran

Manni Crone, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

 

In this article it is argued that Iran today is neither a theocracy nor an Islamic state but a secular state ruled according to a “state reason”. In Iran today, the secular state is even challenged by a theoretical secularism that proposes alternative ways of how to practice and understand secularism in an Islamic context. The article proposes to understand secularism as a separation of religion and state, thus allowing religion to interfere in politics as long as the political sphere stays autonomous. Iranian secularism thus has two distinctive features: it is a ‘religious secularism’ and secularism without secularization.

 

 

Udlicitering i en kompleks virkelighed

Kasper Lindskow & Yosef Bhatti, both graduate students, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

 

The article examines the determinants of contracting out nursing homes in three selected Danish municipalities. The authors aim to deliver two contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, a hermeneutically founded supplement to the existing quantitative studies of contracting out is developed and applied. Secondly, the article supplements studies that explain if municipalities contract out are supplemented by an analysis that equally analyse how they contract out. The article shows that hermeneutical studies are neither prevented from making causal inferences nor applying ‘theory’ in order to generate insights. Furthermore, the analytical approach is able to uncover the complex and local associations which cannot necessarily be captured in quantitative analysis of political and structural background variables. Thus, well-conducted hermeneutical case studies can believer a valuable contribution to the existing literature.

 

 

Folketingsvalget 2005 i cyberspace

Kasper Møller Hansen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Karina Pedersen, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Cand.Scient.Pol, MRes, Dorit Wahl-Brink, Consultant, Muusmann Research & Consulting

 

The character, development and effect of cyber-campaigning are focused upon on the basis of previous studies and a detailed study of the Danish case. Three types of cyber-campaigning are identified. The first type is characterized by websites functioning as library, archive and phonebook. There is no cyber strategy, and the content of cybercampaigning is copied from offline campaigning. In the second type the purpose of cybercampaigning is to inform the electorate. Material is developed for the online campaign, and more information on candidates, policies and activities are provided. In the third type of cybercampaigning the purpose is to mobilize activists and convert voters. New features such as games, video and blogs are applied, and off- and online campaigning is highly integrated. The effect of Danish cybercampaigning is yet limited since parties are visited by only a smaller share of the electorate and large part of these visitors are party sympathizers. In sum, ICT is applied to various degrees by the Danish political parties but the electoral effect of this usage is still rather limited. ICT has the potential for change; however, this potential was far from exploited at the general election in Denmark in 2005.