Loading “Social Issues - Measuring religion in global civil society.”

Across the social sciences, research has accumulated focusing on what has been termed a "global civil society" (Cox 1999; Wapner 1996) and a corresponding "global" or "world culture." (Boli and Thomas 1999; Featherstone 1990). Although scholars of global culture vary in terms of the questions they pose and the arguments they advance, there is one point upon which they tacitly seem to agree: global culture is a secular culture, where action is informed by rationalist principles and modes of organization. The literature on transnationalism is filled with accounts of cosmopolitans (Hannerz 1990), epistemic communities (Haas 1992), principled issue networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and other agents speaking the languages of science, economics and law as they pursue goals, such as democracy or rights, that resonate with the principles of the Enlightenment. Religion, if addressed at all in this literature, is a challenger, an exception that proves a rule about the pervasiveness of this secular world culture. Or, it is epiphenomenal, a mode of expression that legitimates or defends what are ultimately economic or political interests.