Die Transformation des Religiösen. Südostasiatische Perspektiven.

Criticism of religion originated in the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, in which the opposition was developed between pure reason claiming self-critical reflection and religion as the paragon of traditional dogmatism. This opposition does not only legitimize the superiority of modern philosophy and science over religion. Ever since Max Weber's idea of modernity as a process of "disenchantment" and increasing rationalization, it also presents sociological theories concerning modernization as secularization. During the last decade, however, it has become evident from a crosscultural perspective that the globalization of modern economy and technology does not automatically include secularization. Contrary to this Eurocentric assumption, an unforeseen tendency towards the revitalization of religion has evolved at the core of modern societies, which requires a theoretical reassessment concerning the relation between religion and modernity in general. This volume tries to reflect upon this process from a Southeast Asian perspective. The contributions concern present-day pro-cesses of religious transformation in Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Post-Soviet Vietnam. Thereby, the major theoretical approach is not to restrict the question of religious revitalization to fundamentalist tendencies -- as regularly happens in philosophy and sociological theory -- but rather to reveal the variety and heterogeneity of transformations in religion today. This seems all the more important as religious traditions in Southeast Asia cannot be understood from the viewpoint of the Eurocentric opposition between irrational dogmatism, on the one hand, and pluralist secularization, on the other: By contrast, religious pluralism and the reflective self-restriction of religious dogmatism are not the outcome of secularizing influences in modern or post-modern society. In Southeast Asia they are an essential part of traditional religious practice, which has become marginalized only recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]