Religion and Politics: Nationalism, Globalisation and Empire

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics can be examined under three rather different historical circumstances: nation-states, the global system, and empire. Although these three socio-political contexts may overlap in time and space, they are examined here in their specific historical settings. These three contexts are explored in a broadly historical or evolutionary framework, and my conceptual model is explicitly based on the famous essay by Robert Bellah (1964) on 'religious evolution', which traced the development of religion towards its individualistic, pluralistic and denominational features in a secular age. The point of this framework is heuristic, namely to help us to think more clearly about the contemporary period.

Spirituality and music

“…Spiritual soundscapes. In addition to the five "scapes" with which anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1990) mapped out, the complex order of a contemporary global cultural economy -ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes -scholars of religious studies have recently added "religioscapes," essentially referring to the distribution in space of physical manifestations of religious traditions (Hayden and Walker 2013;McAlister 2005;Turner 2008). Focusing on contemporary presentations of religious music in non-religious spaces, Dutch theologians Mirella Klomp and Marcel Barnard recently coined the term "sacrosoundscapes."…”

Origin and Socio-cultural Formation of Bihari Identity: A Study on Bihari Community in Bangladesh

“…However, separating religion from the domain of politics is not an easy task for a nation since many countries historically failed to do so. Religion provides the social glue which attaches people and offers continuity (Turner, 2006). The partition witnessed a colossal riot among various religious groups, mainly between Hindu and Muslims, which evacuated 10-12 million people from their lands (Talbot & Singh, 2009;Cited in Nair, 2010).…”