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A theory such as Pierre Bourdieu’s, oriented towards actors as well as social structures, would appear to be particularly suited for research on religious practices. Thus, accompanied by various empirical projects, central Bourdieuian theorems will be further developed with a special methodological and theoretical focus on religion.
Work in all religio-sociologically oriented projects boils down to, in one way or another, a further development and deepening of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach. Thus, Schäfer has developed an approach in several research projects based on a combination of habitus theory and the theory of social space. The aim is to understand religious practices theoretically and methodologically as the operation of the practical logics of the actors involved and differentiated according to the actor’s position in the “social space of religious styles”. The most important approach for this is the method of {habitus analysis} developed by Schäfer, based on the model of the “praexological square” as well as on the related theory of identity as a partially coherent network of dispositions of perception, judgement and action.
A specific research outlook particularly relevant to conflict behaviour in situations of socio-structural inequality is that of religious identity politics in which religious identities themselves become political stratagems (e.g. ethno-religions). An adequate theoretical and empirical understanding of these strategies can not exist without a theoretically and methodologically clear understanding of the interaction between the identities and the field in which they can transform into politics. It would seem to us that a viable identity concept would be that of {identity as a network} of dispositions, especially in differentiation from the “closed” identity concepts of classical modernity and the postulation of incoherence of identities by post modern authors. It is possible to construct a viable model for a “field of identity politics” from the field theory developed by Bourdieu.
We are working on the theoretical development and methodological operationalizing, above all, of the following Bourdieuian theorems for the specific issues of religious research: social space as space of religious styles, field, capital, habitus, practical logic and strategies. This is being carried out in a permanent research group consisting of all project members that runs parallel to our empirical research projects, not only with a view to national societies but also – taking into account the works of Castells – from a transnational perspective.
Researchers:
Heinrich Schäfer
Jens Köhrsen
Leif Seibert
Adrián Tovar
The public role of religious identities is constantly gaining greater significance in the social sciences, corresponding to a number of empirical observations: fundamentalist, Pentecostal and Islamist identity politics (Appleby, Cleary/Steigenga, Schäfer); identity consolidation among migrants (T. Meyer); identity formation in ‘transnational fields’ (Pries); political instrumentalization of identities (Bush/Huntington), and the diffusion of identities in post-industrial societies (Z. Baumann). However, while identity politics empirically turn more important, the theoretical concept is becoming blurred. The classical concept of identity as a more or less ‘closed’ unit (Erikson, Mead) – albeit socially acquired – has been supplanted by postmodern theories of identity as multiple or ‘patchwork’ (Keupp, Gergen, Bhabha, Elster). Drawing conclusions from these observations for a theory of identity—including religious identity—such a theory should today be able to raise the issue of relative inner unity and relative inner diversity of identities in such a way that, within this model or concept,
Therefore, we propose to conceive of identity as a network of dispositions. Based upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and practical logic, we model such a network as consisting of socially acquired dispositions of perception, judgment and action, which are anchored in cognition, emotion and the body. Such a concept—suitable to be operationalized for empirical research—makes it possible to model the simultaneous existence of fragmented and coherent structures which form the identities of social actors; while also allowing at the same time to distinguish between individual and collective dimensions of identity networks by simply following the idea of superimposing different networks, thus finding differences and ‘overlaps’. The notion of a network of dispositions also links identities with strategies inasmuch as it allows conceptualizing both as concurring in an actor’s praxis. As the dispositions are socially generated and linked to certain fields of praxis, a network also necessarily integrates experience and interpretation, action and meaning, into the concept of identity as such—in other words, the practical ‘use’ (Wittgenstein) of signs, by the use of which identities unfold. Finally, religious identities are not seen as ‘separate entities’. They are shaped according to specific dispositions which operate with reference to transcendence, but are simultaneously woven into a vast network of non-religious dispositions of the same individual or collective actor.
Publikationen:
Schäfer: „Notizen zu religiöser Transnationalisierung – Lateinamerika“. Soeffner, Hans-Georg (ed.): Transnationale Vergesellschaftungen. Verhandlungen des 35. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Frankfurt am Main 2010. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2011.
Schäfer: „Identity politics and the political field – a theoretical approach to modelling a ‘field of identity politics’”. In: Josef Raab, Sebastian Thies, Olaf Kaltmeier (ed.): Ethnicities under Construction: Inter-American Perspectives on Identity Politics. 2011. As pre-print (2009)
Schäfer: “The praxeological square as a method for the intercultural study of religious movements”. Cultures in Process: Encounter and Experience. Ed. Steve Gramley, and Ralf Schneider. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009.
Schäfer: “Zum Religionsbegriff in der Analyse von Identitätskonflikten: Einige sozialwissenschaftliche und theologische Erwägungen [Langfassung]”. epd-Dokumentation 5 (2009): 6.
Schäfer: “Zum Religionsbegriff in der Analyse von Identitätskonflikten: Einige sozialwissenschaftliche und theologische Erwägungen [Kurzfassung]”. epd-Dokumentation 5 (2009): 6 - 16.
Schäfer: “Religion, Politik .. und? Zur Verankerung von religiöser Praxis in sinnlich-menschlicher Tätigkeit”. epd-Dokumentation 11/2008 (2008).
Schäfer: Antrittsvorlesung, 7. Juli 2006, veröffentlicht in längerer Fassung als „‚We gonna bin laden them!’ Überlegungen zu einer methodologisch-kommunitaristischen Friedensethik”. In: Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik, 51. Jg., 2007, Nr. 3, S. 169-181. [download PDF]
Schäfer: „‚Die‘ Pfingstbewegung in Lateinamerika…? Zur Untersuchung des Verhältnisses zwischen religiöser Praxis und gesellschaftlichen Strukturen.“ In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 14, 2006, S. 52-83.
Schäfer: „Identität als Netzwerk. Ein Theorieentwurf am Beispiel religiöser Bewegungen im Bürgerkrieg Guatemalas.“ In: Berliner Journal für Soziologie Bd. 15, 2005, Nr. 2, S. 259-282. [download PDF]
Schäfer: Praxis Theologie Religion: Grundlinien einer Theologie und Religionstheorie im Anschluss an Pierre Bourdieu. Frankfurt: Lembeck 2004. [download PDF]
Schäfer: „The Janus face of religion: on the religious factor in new wars.“ In: Numen, Vol. 51, 2004, No. 4, S. 407-431. [download PDF]
Schäfer: Zur Theorie von kollektiver Identität und Habitus am Beispiel sozialer Bewegungen. Eine Theoriestudie auf der Grundlage einer interkulturellen Untersuchung zweier religiöser Bewegungen. Berlin: Humboldt Universität, 2003 (Mikrofiche), 497 S.
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Deutsch
Religionstheorie: Religion als praktische Logik, Identität als Netzwerk und Identitätspolitiken