New Religiosities in Turkey: Reenchantment in a Secularized Muslim Country?

• Applicant: Dr. Alexandre Toumarkine
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 246749133

"New religiosities" have recently been established as a fruitful concept for the study of beliefs and practices associated with the new age stream, modern esotericism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. These new religiosities are seen as corollaries of the secularization, individualization and globalization of Western societies. Non-Western societies and especially the Muslim world have been ignored in these debates, both due to a lack of data and due to the assumption of a lack of similar processes in these cultures.Our project proposes to study the emergence and development of new religiosities in Turkey, a secularized Muslim country, whose legal approach to religions has been designed with reference to French laicism. New religiosities are widespread in Turkey, but almost unstudied: for one, since the attitudes of local scholars are largely hostile or dismissive, and for another, since Islamic studies and Turkology regard such phenomena as insufficiently "authentic" to be worthy objects of study.Our project proposal is designed as an interdisciplinary research program for our research group of 26 scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. The research group will employ theories and methods from religious studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and literature. Our working plan is organized along theoretical and methodological lines and is supposed to compel the scholars to engage with theories and methods beyond their own discipline.The project intends to help integrate important French and German academic discourses. While German academia has done fundamental work on new religiosities unnoticed in France, it would benefit from French modern and postmodern critiques of secularization and modernity. The knowledge produced by our research will help lay the groundwork for a global and comparative understanding of new religiosities, which is intrinsically linked to the conceptions of secularization, individualization, and globalization. We will utilize the research results as part of our theoretical and comparative endeavor to question the essentialist assumptions underlying those concepts, as they pertain to the proposed exceptionalism of Christian Europe and the supposed "nature" of Muslim cultures. This critical stance will also enable us to embark on a deconstruction of "Turkishness" that shall positively impact the Turkish approach to new religiosities. Furthermore, we will contribute to the academic debates on the construction of identity, circulation, religious authority, gender in Islam, and the definition and borders of religion. Institutionally, our research project will foster the promising cross-border ties among the young scholars and the research institutes involved.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Participating Person: Professorin Dr. Nathalie Clayer