Religion and Politics Test Review Transnational Religion, Globalization, and Development Globalization · It is a process that has sociological, anthological, political and economic dimensions among many others. o 1) Internationalization: The development of cultural connections and methods of production that link an ever-wider diversity of nations around the world 2) Liberalization: The reduction of barriers to the free exchange of goods, services and ideas. o 3) Universalization: The development of new global standards in modes of production and convergence with respect to the norms and values respected by the various members of the global community 4) Modernization or westernization: The triumph at the global level of a very particular way of doing things. o 5) Reduction of Geographic limitations: The deterioration of public life · The development of new technologies, which have made communication, transportation and interaction ever faster, and more complex global processes propel all of these aspects of globalization. Critiques of Globalization · The processes of globalization has often be en criticised for its tendency to sharpen political divisions such as the one between the advanced capitalist societies of north America, Europe and east Asia and the developing societies of south and central Asia, Africa and Latin America. · Another dividing line highlighted by globalization is cultural. With the spread of an increasingly homogenized global culture, many people intent on preserving their cultural identity put a new emphasis on their distinctive traditions. Religion is also a key factor at the cultural level. Religion and Globalization · Peter Beyer: o A sociologist of religion and globalization. Has argued that religion today is a subset of many different social forms that have been evolving since the major cultural developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For Europeans, religion had a very particular meaning, reflecting the creeds developed over the first few centuries of Christen and the notion of a distinct difference between public and religious matters. o By the time they began studying the societies of people in other parts of the world, they already had a firmly established notion of what religion was and what it offered in terms of organization, worship and feeling of spiritual meaning. o The notion of a function system led moderns to believe that all civilizations must have a set of basic social principles to help people to understand the world at large. When these principles were religious, they would include judgments about
good and evil, the role of the divine and preferences for social organization among other things. The spread of such ideas about religion hand in hand with globalization meant that religion became a universally recognized social phenomenon even in societies for whom the concept of religion in the European sense was entirely foreign. . World's First Parliament of Religions - Chicago 1893 o Marked a watershed in the understanding of religion as a social category. Also one of the first events to bring together representatives of religious traditions from around the world, and thus could be understood as prototypical of the