This article is offered as a meta-reflection on the links between religion and politics in the contemporary world. What do we see? How do we position ourselves - both in order to see and in response to what we see? What is this place in/from which we see? These questions are posed over the course of the text, which pursues the following hypotheses: a) at the level of culture and everyday life, the public sphere and politics, religious actors circulate and publicly express their language, ethos and demands, with a variety of implications; b) this either contributes to the emergence of pluralistic and dialogic forms, or indicates a narrowing of the communication channels and the escalation of violence and intolerance; c) processes of 'recognition,' 'acknowledgment' and 'dialogue' between lay and religious actors are thereby generated through the interconnecting of issues of national/ethnic/racial/gender/class/age identification and political demands. Such a scenario elicits thematic and theoretical repositionings from social scientists, which are identified and discussed in the text.
Religion and politics; Methodology of religion; Religion and culture; Theoretical approaches to religion