Religion and Francophonie (French speaking world)

A GSRL program led by Pascal Bourdeaux and Sebastien Fath (GSRL)    

 321 million people worldwide are able to express themselves in French (OIF data 2023).  

From a social sciences perspective, these French-speaking spaces lead us to think differently about religious interaction and dynamics. The French-speaking global framework (including Africa, Americas, Asia, Carribean isles, Pacific islands....) invites to reshape analysis beyond a hexagonal prism (French-centered) that remained hegemonic for long.

 

Deploying the analysis of religion in society in this French-speaking and postcolonial space-time, such is the purpose of this program “Religion and Francophonie (French-speaking world)”.  

Asia and the secular

This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to attend the GSRL's monthly research seminar at Campus Condorcet.

We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this book :

Asia and the Secular, Francophone Perspectives in a Global Age

• Edited by: Pascal Bourdeaux , Eddy Dufourmont , André Laliberté and Rémy Madinier

This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.

Link

See it to believe it - Photographing religion

See it to believe it - Photographing religion

The photography exhibition 'Pluralities of Belief', conceived by teacher-researchers from the CNRS and the EPHE, intends to show the activities of the GSRL laboratory, which studies religion in contemporary societies throughout the world. The distinctiveness of the selected photographs is to associate aesthetic qualities and scientific relevance. The resulting publication is an attempt to respond to the growing and unanimous interest in religious issues. It takes up the narrative unfolding of an exhibition conceived around several themes : gestures of belief, writings of belief rituals of belief, architectures of belief symbolisms of belief and secularism and convictions. The book focuses mainly on the plurality of beliefs and non-beliefs, considered in equal parts and forming the same common whole, which only find their real significance when they are themselves subjected to a plurality of views.

Link