Religieuze regimes en staatsontwikkeling. Notities voor een figuratie-benadering

Samenvatting

Religious Regimes and State Formation. God and Politics have nothing to do with each other. One is tempted to draw this conclusion from many sociological and anthropological studies on religious phenomena. Systems of meaning are usually presented sui generis, without the power processes that generate and change them. The present essay attempts to bring power back into the study of religion, and, in a way, to re-appraise the role of religion in the political process. Based on Norbert Elias's work on processes of civilization and state formation, the article presents a theoretical model for the study of the mutual conditioning of processes of power and meaning. Religious regimes and states have much in common and demonstrate remarkable differences. Systematic comparison may improve our insight into the interrelatedness of fields of inquiry which have drifted apart in the social science community.