Postsecular Conflicts and the Global Struggle for Traditional Values (Lecture)

This is the text of a lecture that Dr. Kristina Stoeckl (University of Innsbruck, Austria) gave in RANEPA on the 2nd of March 2016. She presented the research project “Postsecular Conflicts” (2016–21). This project in the field of sociology of religion and political theory explores conflicts over questions of public morality (i.e., visibility of religious symbols, definitions of family and gender). It starts from the observation that in today’s world these conflicts no longer take place in national contexts, but have a global appeal. How can we understand this global struggle for traditional values? In order to answer this question two steps need to be taken: (1) a revised political sociology of traditionalist religious actors; (2) a revised political conception of moral conflict. The Postsecular Conflicts research project wants to achieve both of these steps, specifically through a thorough analysis of the role of Russian Orthodox traditionalist actors in the global struggle for traditional values.