"No Sex Pleas, We are Catholic". Reproduction and Partnership in the Area of Conflict Between (De-)Secularisation and (De-)Privatisation of Religion in Ireland and Poland

• Applicant: Dr. Michael Zok
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421920062

The research project aims at a scientific monograph that compares the developments in the sexual dispositives in the Catholic countries Ireland and Poland. Therefore, it searches for (non-)existent path dependencies that influenced the developments in these two societies. Furthermore, it shows how difficult it is to apply macro-sociological theories, such as of modernisation, and models of sociology of religion on actual historical developments. The recent and the anticipated future results underline that there neither was nor is a linear development towards a general liberalisation with regard to human sexuality (understood as a part of modernisation), especially while looking at the cultural and juridical circumstances of these developments. Instead, contradictions and (un-)simultaneous phenomena occur that can be observed by comparing the two Catholic societies. Although both underwent processes of modernisation in the second half of the 20th century, this did not lead to a general decline of religiosity and identification with a particular confession. In the case of these two countries, additional factors and circumstances have to be taken into account: One of these factors is the question of the influence of (economic) transformation both societies experienced in the late 1980s and the 1990s and its impact on shifts of values. Another question closely connected deals with the attitudes of political elites towards these changes in society as well as towards shifts of values. Thus, the project will not only reflect macro-sociological models that aim at explaining the changes in the sexual dispositives. It also tries to overcome the split of historiography in a part that analyses ‘Western societies’ and another part that focuses on the (former) state-socialist societies of the ‘Eastern Block’. The impact of the results of this comparative study on current problems is immanent.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants