ANTH2601 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Peter Van Der Veer, Secularism

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH2601
• Professor: all

Document Summary

Week 5: indian temples and chinese temples in southeast asia: comparative networks. *peter van der veer, the modern spirit of asia, ch. The secular. at one level the term refers to the separation of state and church. This makes sense only in the west, where one has the christian church. even in the west, however, this separation takes different shapes. In asia religions are not organized in churches, and that simple fact already cre- ates confusion about what is meant by the secular. Religion is sometimes taken to be an obstacle for scien- tific progress and secularism demands its removal for the benefit of societal development that is guided by scientific discovery and technological innovation. Secularization was seen by sociologists as an intrinsic and inescapable part of the modernization of western society, with the assumption that this was something all societies had to go through.