Repositório RCAAP

Our main aim in this paper is to develop two solutions or exorcisms to ward off the new evil demon problem against epistemic reliabilism. The first solution is designated as “indexical reliabilism” and the second as “normal-conditions reliabilism”. We will argue that the second solution is more plausible than the first. We will also argue that this second solution, if properly developed, can respond well to several recent objections. Therefore, reliabilism has good ways of dealing with the new evil demon problem.

Based on bibliographical survey, this article analyzes the trajectory assumed by Brazilian macroeconomic policy between 2003 and 2018. I argue that from 2005 Lula government started a process of hybridization of the then dominant neoliberal macroeconomic paradigm. Despite preserving the neoliberal tripod instituted by FHC, this “liberal-developmental” paradigm presented measures that stimulate social development and economic growth. This hybrid paradigm was maintained until 2016, when Temer ascended the presidency. Guided by neoliberal guidelines, Temer has eliminated the developmental components of the macroeconomic paradigm that has in turn driven the country back to the dominant “market fundamentalism” of the FHC governments.

This article aims to address the emotional vulnerability of riverside women affected by the hydroelectric power plant of Estreito (MA/TO) with emphasis on the recording of the elderly women's life history, remnants in the island of São José in Babaçulândia (TO). The disruption of rural communities’ lifestyle made the deterritorialized women vulnerable not only regarding economic aspects, but, above all, in the emotional and symbolic aspects caused by loss of their traditional way of life. We examined the affective relationship with the river, the place of experience and the memory. We diagnosed that the affective vulnerability resulting from the displacement brought sadness and depression, besides the feeling of uncertainty about the future. Such impacts are not relevant in environmental impact studies presented by entrepreneurs from the hydroelectric sector, nor there is a mitigation procedure foreseen, although studies in the area of environmental law state the need to compensate for damages of affective value. 

The incessant flow of affections generated by the media constructs bodies that reflect subjectivities that organize corporeal actions of relations. This study aimed at analyzing the production of knowledge about the topic “body” linked to “communication” and “media” research in the Brazilian Journals of Physical Education (PE) in the period between the years of 2000 and 2015 in order to visualize the ways in which this field of knowledge has been studying the mediatic affections that revolve around the theme of the body. It was characterized as a qualitative study of a bibliographic review with a panoramic-monographic nature, having as a sample complete online texts of 12 Brazilian Journals of PE classified as A1, A2, B1, B2, B3 and B4 by Capes’WebQualis. We concluded that the body addressed in these texts presents itself as an anchorage point for the articulation of affectations and desires, that is, the body of communication and media is a body in continuous political struggle.

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The proposition of an axial age, lasting roughly from 800 to 200 B.C. and occurring in major civilizations (China, India, Near East) independent of each other, first introduced by Alfred Weber and Karl Jaspers, then further developed by Robert Bellah and S. N. Eisenstadt among others, implied from the outset the question whether there has been a second axial age, leading to modernity, and if so, whether this second axial age consists in a secularization of the achievements of the first axial age. In this article it is argued that the notion of a second axial age is meaningful, but that the emergence of modernity can›t be accounted for in terms of secularization of the achievements of the first axial age. Rather, a new axial principle was institutionalized which separates the modern from the premodern world. This new principle is spelled out with reference to Hans Blumenberg, Charles Taylor and especially Max Weber. The emphasis is on the dialectics of disenchantment and the place of religion in a secular age

The weberian theorem of secularization it is currently criticized for reproducing assumptions coming from modernization theories that suppose an unilinear transition from the tradicional to modern. Based on the idea of unity and variation developed by Shmuel Einsenstadt, this article discusses the possibilities of updating the concept faced with a backdrop of globalization and the multiplicity of modernity. After demonstrating that in Max Weber the subject is already treated in a multidimensional way, it revises up the debate on secularization in the sociology of religion. In the final part, it critically discusses three different ways of updating the theme of secularization: a) multiplicity of pathways of secularization, b) multiple secularisms c) multiple secularities. Focusing on macrosociologic theories, the general purpose of the text is to integrate the concept of secularization in the discussion of the nature and diversity of modernity in present times.

Despite being part of the scientific discourse in sociology of religions since the 1960’s, the theories of secularization have been heavily criticized since its advent. In particular its historical and ideological biases, its validity and theoretical extension and its expected results. However, these criticisms are, in most cases, scattered and they have not been developed deep and systematically. We believe that for any social scientist devoted to the study of secularization the compilation, articulation and interpretation of these criticisms is relevant in order to fully comprehend their internal deficiencies or incoherencies. Therefore our article aims to analyse the most solid and systematic critical arguments that have been made to secularization theories by the state of the art. For this purpose, we propose a descriptive, analytical, comparative and synchronic study of its inner layers and, then, of its criticisms. This examination allows us to get an in depth understanding of its propositional limitations and, thus, to support the proposal of new analytical and/or empirical categories or the development of new methodological strategies that ought to be considered in the context of multiple and global modernity.

This article starts posing a number of problems with which the classical understanding of the end of religions in Modernity has been confronted. This allows for a framework from which Max Weber’s theory of secularization can be addressed. From 1904 onwards, this author was engaged in the understanding of the historical-universal process of rationalization, and it is in this analysis where his prospective of secularization has to be looked for. His sociology of religion is therefore deconstructed from this point of view, so as to grasp why he understood that religions were displaced in the constitution of modern life conducts. After this analysis, the article poses the importance of this author’s legacy for the understanding of different issues concerning the present process of rebirth of religions.

From the Nietzsche’s emphasis that God is dead – basic principle of the secularization – and the concept of religion, from the substantivist and functionalist perspectives, this paper addresses the contribution of some authors, classical (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud) and modern (Eliade, Bourdieu, Habermas, Hervieu-Leger, Grace Davie, Heelas), in the important discussion of the (dis) enchantment of the world. Another issue considered is the role of religion in the contemporary society, in the context of a “reenchanted” world, with significant changes in the “market of symbolic goods”, characterized by an individualization/privatization of faith, deterritorialization of the sacred space, religious pluralism (with new and diffused religious practices) and by the phenomenon of Pentecostalism.

Scholarly debates about secularization and secularism have reached an unproductive impasse. Orthodox and neo-orthodox secularization theorists insist on the epistemological universality and global applicability of more or less uniform concepts of secularization. Postcolonial critics, by contrast, sought to provincialize the notion of the secular emphasizing its Western origin, its coimplication with the nation-state, violence, and colonialism. In this article, we critically engage with both of these approaches and suggest the concept of “multiple secularities” as an alternative approach. Whereas both universalist and postcolonial approaches tend to reify and essentialize the secular we aim to historicize and culturalize secularity. We do so by arguing that secularity are culturally and symbolically anchored forms of distinguishing religious and non-religious social spheres and practices and that institutionalizations of such distinctions have served as ways of grappling with different kind of problems. Significantly, while recognizing the situated historicities of secularity our conceptualization frees secularity from its singular associations with the West and with modernity.

I intend to map the historical and ideological impediments and also the possibilities of building a theoretical and empirical research program organized from Max Weber’s ideas about a religious phenomenon which the author did not witnessed, namely, Pentecostalism. In view of this goal I will construct my arguments into four distinct areas: (1) “Pentecostalism Analysis Mainstream and the rejection of the Weberian perspective”; (2) “Max Weber and Materialism”; (3) “Pentecostalism and Capitalism”; (4) “The promise of salvation for a new class in history” and finally (5) “Notes about religious cognition and Pentecostalism”. At the end of this article I do not claim to present a final thesis on Pentecostalism, but rather a set of well solid assumptions, tom old a research program to be developed and tested.

This paper argues that the modern secularization thesis is in the first place an explanation of the past of European societies and their colonial offshoots and that, contra its critics, it was not intended as a universal template. Such momentous historical changes cannot simply be repeated if only because, while the secularization of Europe was unprecedented, largely secular societies, that can attract emulation or rejection, now exist. What we might expect, and why, is detailed before the case of Brazil is considered. The paper concludes that, while it is too early to be certain that Brazilian changes fit the expectation that modernization weakens religion, we can probably conclude that they are minimally consistent with that expectation.

Given the strong support of evangelical Christian voters to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, many have wondered how, exactly, the pro-religious Trump campaign managed to prevail in an increasingly secular society. This article considers two conceptual models, offered by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, to bring some understanding to the Trump phenomena: the economic insecurity perspective and the cultural backlash thesis. Each will be considered in terms of three related and interlocking sets of issue clusters: the overall secular direction of the American population, the rural-urban cleavage, and empathy for the forgotten man and woman.

After a period in which secularization was undertaken as a – linear and teleological – hegemonic explanatory model in the social sciences, it became necessary to find, in the context of multiple modernities, other ways of access to the places of religious’ reconfiguration. In this context, it became decisive to re-approximate, at different scales, the scientific lenses to the places in which the new relations between the religious sphere and the other social worlds are being built, through the mediation of the displacements of the sacred. This essay explores the domain of contemporary musical creation as a laboratory for the discovery of these new configurations.

With this research Gert Pickel proposes an updated version of secularization’s narrative, contrasting it with the growing phenomena of religious pluralism, secular-religious polarization, and religiosity’s politicization in Europe. This article focuses especially on the European religious landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, analyzing the empirical developments in its indices of secularization, namely at the individual level. For this purpose, the author calls upon several statistical data that consider individuals’ attitudes towards religion, bearing in mind the different levels of modernization, as well as the political, religious and historical-cultural vicissitudes of the different countries. Despite religious affair’s proliferation in public debate, this article concludes that secularization remains empirically more convincing than the narrative of the return of religions. However, we are still far from speaking of a secular Europe.

This article presents basic elements of a theory of religious-secular competition on the individual level. The theory claims that individuals in many societies may choose between religious and secular options, creating a situation of competition between religious and secular institutions. The competition between religious and secular suppliers is influenced by three important contextual factors: innovation, regulation, and resources. We give six examples of empirical studies showing that the theory of religious-secular competition explains such contrasting phenomena as the difference in success of religious healing in European and African countries, the diminishing and change of religious socialization in Switzerland, variations in church attendance in U.S. states, variation in the attractiveness of monasteries, the late secularization of Ireland, or the success of megachurches since the 1970s.

The case of the 2015 attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris illustrates the imagined war between secularism and religion that is in the background of many incidents of violence at the turn of the 21st century. The Enlightenment idea that there are two different worldviews – two distinctly different spheres of understanding about reality—one of them secular and the other religious, is inherently problematic. This dichotomy creates an arena of discord that is easily exploited by people who feel isolated and marginalized for whatever reason and look for someone to blame and some battle to join. It is a false conflict which extremists on both sides, religious and secular, have exacerbated.

In this essay, Talal Asad reflects on politics in contemporary Egypt and its relationship with Islamic tradition. Against the background of the Egyptian revolution of January 2011 and its following events, including hostility towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, Asad not only looks at the links between the modern secular worldview and Islam but fundamentally for the aspects of this tradition that, according to secularists, are incompatible with the modern sovereign state. Assuming a critical stance on modern practice and discourse – aimed at undermining Islamic tradition – the author explores the possibilities of reintegrating this tradition into the post-2011 Egyptian democratic path but using it only as a model for how liberal states can benefit from a kind of embodiment of customs and ethical principles offered by tradition.