Approaches to Secularism: Anthropological and Institutionalist (original) (raw)

At first glance we notice that discussions on secularism are under the monopoly of sociology, political science and philosophical understandings which focus on social notions. Such discourses, create arguments through some certain dichotomies: state and society, state and citizen, or state and religion. State is, as we see, at a central position, it is one of the central notions around which these discussions revolve. Dichotomies like this might confine us within the limits of dualistic notions, and prevent our discussions from exceeding the limits of our range of thinking, more importantly, they might be an obstacle on the way of discovering new areas of inquiry. One has to aim at transcending the conceptual lineages in which we are used to think. I want to put some emphasis on the notion of " formality " at this point. Some define concepts like state, citizen and democracy through formal qualifications, but in the framework I built above, one could say that secularism or religion is a social structure which has an effect beyond the formal world. In this sense, anthropology gives us a chance to look at secularism in a different perspective. Here I would like to recall Talal Asad. He says that, what formal principles propose on relations between the state and religion do not have an explanatory value, and how secularists define religion might not be the " religion " which we are trying to address: The " proper domain of religion " is distinguished from and separated by the state in modern secular constitutions. But formal constitutions never give the whole story.