Chapter 1
Religious geopolitics
1. Defining the problem: the misconception of the “End of History”
“Imperialism, wrote J.A. Hobson at the beginning of the twentieth century ‘is the word on everyone’s lips’ (Hobson, 1902). A hundred years later, when capitalism once again seems to be entering unmapped regions, the word on everybody’s lips is globalization. And globalization now, like imperialism then, is giving rise to new questions, fears and debates” (Sutcliffe, 2002).
Globalization and modernity have often been misinterpreted, due to a certain Eurocentrism, as global extensions of the Western model. On the contrary, as the following argument will show, global manifestations of religious fundamentalism are an essential part of modernity and therefore should not be regarded as a case apart from modernization and globalization processes. Global capitalism and modernity should not, at the same time, be viewed as processes that are geographically restrained to the Global North but instead as global phenomena with differing geographic manifestations. By globalization we mean the intensification of global interconnectedness – political, economic, military and cultural – as well as the changing character of political authority. Even though globalization is a term that has its roots in modernity, and arguably even earlier, the globalization of the 1980s and 1990s was a qualitatively new phenomenon that can be explained in part as a consequence of the revolution in information technologies and dramatic improvements in communication and data processing. This process of intensifying interconnectedness is a contradictory one involving both integration and fragmentation, homogenization and diversification, globalization and localization (Kaldor, 2012, pp. 3–5). In this regard globalization involves the idea that power, whether economic, political and cultural or military is increasingly organized and exercised at a distance (Baylis and Smith, 2006, p. 23). According to Beck (2010) the process of globalization is leading towards the recognition of difference and towards a cosmopolitan global society. Despite the fact that there is some evidence of such a tendency this assumption at the moment seems to be less and less valid in light of the recent world events which indicate the contrary. The very phenomenon of religious fundamentalism is indicative of fragmentation and resistance in the face of cosmopolitanism. There are important reasons for the appearance of such a reactionary activity in different parts of the world against globalization. The main reason for this is the importance of globalization as a force to promote Eurocentric and/or Western neoliberal models of society. Within the space of four centuries the economy of capitalism has transformed from a European to a global system. But this process of transformation has generated a contradiction: the transformation of these areas often happens from a modern world-culture upon a local and traditional culture as the local populations are induced to abandon their own culture and adopt the modern and global one of a Western origin in order to favor consumerism (Guolo, 2003). This process has produced a severe identity crisis especially in both the non-Western and Western worlds, in which religious fundamentalism arises as an immediate response to this Eurocentric worldview. Religion, values and societies are often perceived as providing the necessary resources to (re)moralize the society and challenge the idea that the market has become God (Frank, 2001). Regarding the levels of religiosity among countries and regions, economy is a very important factor that must always be considered. The Religious Value Hypothesis holds that the conditions that people experience in their formative years have a profound impact upon their cultural values. Growing up in societies in which survival is uncertain is conducive to a strong emphasis on religion; conversely, experiencing high levels of existential security throughout one’s formative years reduces the subjective importance of religion in people’s lives. This hypothesis assumes that as a society moves past the early stages of industrialization, and life becomes less nasty, less brutish and longer, people tend to become more secular in their orientations (Norris and Ingelheart, 2013, pp. 219–220). Even though there is a lot of truth to the fact that populations where individuals struggle for survival tend to be more religious, this is a very misleading approach. Apart from the heavy Eurocentric biases that it reflects, this hypothesis is also empirically wrong. One only needs to take a look at the contemporary political systems of the wealthy Gulf Arab states to understand that this is not the case. The problem of religious fundamentalism is far more complex and therefore needs a thorough and in depth analysis that escapes the confines of statistical data and positivism. However, fundamentalism is only one aspect of modern religious change. Appadurai (2008) argues that globalization produces cultural hybridization, because the interaction of different cultures through migration and the growth of diasporic communities creates, primarily in global cities, a new cultural complexity. With cultural hybridity, there is also religious experimentation. These hybrid forms of religion are often constructed self-consciously and they are closely related to youth movements and to generational change (Edmunds and Turner, 2002), and in a sense can be interpreted as a form of religious popular culture (Turner, 2011). One example of this is the rise of New Age religions across the globe and particularly in the West. For these reasons we should understand religious fundamentalism as just one version of those alternative hybrid models of the modern religion, albeit their most radical and problematic one.
In reality, this study charts the radical shift from a Eurocentric world towards a multipolar and multicentric world in the modern era of postcolonialism and the economic ascent of the Global South. The ideological conflict is increasingly articulated through religion as different cultures attempt to defend and export their own worldview. Religious ideological systems have a collective force that was not fully available to those of humanism, communism and nationalism. Religion allows a national community to express its history in deep-rooted myths or sacred time in a way that gives national history a universal significance. To tell the mythical history of a nation is to tell a story of suffering and survival common to all humanity. The implication is that social life can never be an entirely secular arrangement (Turner, 2011). In order to uncover the reasons behind the rise of global fundamentalism, what is required is an alternative theoretical approach that integrates a new methodology with a dialectical kaleidoscopic analysis of the world, taking into account its multi-polarity and multi-centrism of the contemporary global system as well as its historical development. This analysis will therefore involve the re-interpretation of the concepts of modernity, globalization and religion, before proceeding to an analysis of religious fundamentalism itself.
1.2 Research objectives
Questions regarding the influential role of religions in current political and/or ethnic conflicts and the radical violent insurgencies across the Global South today continue to demand more concrete and insightful answers. Many answers to these questions have nevertheless been proven false and misleading. Despite the promotion or at times the imposition of Western cultural norms such as the rule of law and constitutionalism in the postcolonial world, many states of the Global South never fully integrated those norms in their socio-political structure and hence true secularization never took place. Given also the fact that religion defies national borders, it is no surprise that International Relations theories have failed dramatically to explain religious conflict, founded as they are on a Westphalian model of nation states. The Middle East alone seems to have become the graveyard of such theories. Hence examining the world with dated theoretical concepts is utterly futile. In a postcolonial context there is undoubtedly a need for a new methodology free from the Eurocentric mistakes. For this reason I argue that critical sociology is the appropriate tool to provide a sound analysis regarding the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism. In order to circumvent the trap of Eurocentrism, what is suggested below is a new methodological analysis of religion which combines the insights of different social theories. It will thus examine religion with respect to globalization and modernity through a variety of selected social theories that complement each other and shed new light on this phenomenon.
1.3 Chapter review
This book will begin in the second chapter with an introduction to the philosophy of Kaleidoscopic Dialectics and demonstrate how this alternative methodological approach can be applied to the above research goals. It will discuss why the re-definition and reexamination of the concepts of globalization and modernity is crucial to this task in order to avoid Euro- or ethnocentric prejudices especially when we examine the Global South. Furthermore, it will argue why the very concept of religion should also be examined dialectically from different selective theoretical approaches in order to provide a multi-dimensional analysis so that the rise of religious fundamentalism can be better understood. The third chapter, by focusing on the concept of globalization, will attempt to give an alternative interpretation by observing globalization through the theoretical lenses of cultural hybridity and religious synthesis. By accounting for the historical evolution of religions, it will argue that religions were the first engines of globalization and the founding fathers of religious institutions its first agents. It will be argued that the key element that helps us understand the politics of religious synthesis is the concept of syncretism, a hybridization process that accompanied the program of empire building and the unification of diverse cultures across disparate areas. In addition to this this chapter will also look upon the emergence of urbanism and its relationship with globalization and religion. The fourth chapter will focus its analysis upon the phenomenon of modernity and its relationship with religion. Through a consideration of Castoriadis and Eisenstadt’s theories of secularism and modernity, it will become clear how world religions have incorporated modernity within their structure to promote their own models of globalization. It will thus be demonstrated how contemporary modernized religions are able to provide an ideological base to the societies of the Global South. In the fifth chapter this book will examine the concept of religion itself. By looking through the kaleidoscopic lenses of different social theories a new dialectic methodological approach to religion will be applied in order to analyze its complexity. Having considered globalization, modernity, religions and their interconnections, the sixth chapter will draw these separate threads together to examine the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism. In this way, the dual nature of religious fundamentalism will become clear: its relationship with modernity and globalization as well as with tradition and intolerance. Finally, the seventh chapter will conclude by reexamining the methodology that was applied in this study in order to explain the resurgence of religious fundamentalism. As will be argued, the main reason behind the resurgence of religious fundamentalist in the Global South is an incomplete program of modernization.
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