Globalization and Religion: Identity and Power
INAES (Institute for North American and European Studies), University of Tehran
15-16 November 2005
Abstract
Globalization and changing individual patterns of behavior: collective feature of religions
Ali A. Saeidi
University of Tehran, Department of Developement and Social Planning
saeidi@ut.ac.irAli A. Saeidi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Science, Tehran University since 2001. He has got a doctorate from Royal Holloway, University of London in 1999. During 1999-2001 he was Research Associate at the Center for Middle East Studies, University of London working on a research project to prepare an achieve of oral economic history of Iran during the Pahlavi period. His recent publications are "Charismatic Political Authority and Populist Economics in the post-Revolutionary Iran, Third World Quarterly, 2001, Vol.22, No.2, pp 219-36", "Dislocation of the State and Emergence of the Political Factionalism in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Journal of Political Geography, 2001, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp 525-546".
Globalization is a social phenomenon with vast implications. One of these implications is the emergence of a new individual pattern of behavior, one which could affect the religions through the process of de-traditionlization. It is difficult to understand the experience of globalization without looking at the essence of this process and its implications, and what it has meant in our lives today. The main objective of this paper is to discuss one of the fascinating aspects of what’s occurring in the process of globalization and its effects on one of characteristics of all religions, i.e., collective rituals. The paper argues that the growth of individual patterns of behavior in the global era has overlooked collective feature of religions. Personal rituals bring us into contact with one of the most pervasive features of what it's like to live an everyday life in a contemporary society. Discussing Freud and Foucault arguments on obsession and compulsion, the paper will discuss these actions as the features of globalization are in contrast with collective pattern of behavior. Likewise, the paper will argue whether this sense of globalization, i.e., the ever-increasing personal pattern of behavior is a real problem confronting us whereby everyday life has become de-traditionalised. The paper will analysize that this change is a bleak side of the emancipatory of modernity as it is something we are all grappling with in our personal lives. It also finally tend to raise this question whether the rise of individual pattern of behavior, even in form of personal religious ritual, may blur the main factor distinguishing religion, which emphasize on collective ceremonial and rituals and magic.