Social Compass

This International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) keynote lecture offers a glimpse on 20 years of research on the transnationalization of Orisha religion in the ‘Black Atlantic’. By expanding Gilroy’s analyses to include the South Atlantic, and in particular, Brazil and Nigeria, I focus on the diffusion of these religious practices in a tricontinental space of circulation. The transnational ‘Yoruba’ community is constituted on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to the continuous exchanges between these two territories. If the Yoruba identity in Nigeria needs its American ‘mirror’ to exist, the so-called ‘globalization of the Orisha religion’ is the product of this incessant negotiation between different versions of the Yoruba tradition in Africa as well as in the diaspora. This also includes the persisting role of nation in transnational processes and the issue of religious (im)mobilities, showing that religious transnationalization is not necessarily linked to migration.

More and more people live, study, work, and retire in countries where they are not full citizens. How do they protect and provide for themselves and their families when they live for extended periods outside the places where they have citizenship rights? In this talk, I offer a framework for understanding hybrid transnational social protection developed in a forthcoming book with my colleagues Erica Dobbs, Ken Sun, and Ruxandra Paul. We argue that mobile people create resource environments that span national borders with supports they purchase through the market, obtain from the public sector, from communities, and from their social networks. I focus here on the role of religious institutions and networks as transnational social welfare providers. I draw, in particular, on research conducted with Breda Gray on the role of the Catholic Church in Italy, Mexico, and the Philippines.

With the advancement of new technologies, instrumental rationality, as described by Weber and Ritzer, has been carried further towards the self in a process described as the i-zation of society. This is in elective affinity with the expansion of digital capitalism which is aligned with recent global and transnational developments. Religion has not been left untouched and has adapted itself, if not embraced, these changes brought by neoliberalism. This article argues that with the advent of COVID-19, we can observe an acceleration and intensification of these affinities which are currently further altering the religious ‘digitalscape’.

Social science analysis of diversity, and religious diversity in particular, has long struggled to move beyond simple binaries of religious-secular, religious-spiritual, traditional-modern, global north-global south, and so on. Twenty-first century realities test existing terms and find them wanting. While concepts such as the postsecular, multiple modernities, multiple secularities, and non-religion point to new lines of analysis, each still refers to binary and thereby limiting terms. This article reviews research on religious diversity, delineating some of the major challenges posed. Building on useful frameworks of superdiversity, multiple pluralities, and religious complexity, we argue that the more widely encompassing concept of worldview complexity might represent a better way forward. It has the advantage of acknowledging the intersecting diversity of diversities in multiple, differing contexts, and abiding similarities in what is occurring ‘beneath religion’.

The present study focuses on the identity constructions of a group of young Tunisian homosexuals. Led by a survey based on semi-structured interviews with nine Muslim gays and six Muslim Lesbians, the study attempts to report on the negotiations between a Muslim identity and a homosexual identity. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals the attachment of gays and lesbians to their sexual identity. Nevertheless, the relationship with Islam takes many forms. Some opt for the separation between the practice of the precepts of Islam and the homosexual practice in order to diminish the dissonance between faith and homosexuality. Others choose to move towards a form of spirituality by creating an individual and singular relationship with God. Finally, one of the questioned gay men opts for detaching himself from Islam for a better preservation of his sexual identity.