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Being Post-secular in the Social Sciences: Taylor's Social Imaginaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

David Lyon
David Lyon*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, D431 Mackintosh-Corry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
*
Email: Lyond@queensu.ca
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Abstract

Following the fall of mainstream secularization paradigms, this article suggests opportunities arise for considering social and political life as ‘religious’ phenomena and, specifically, for using Taylor's pregnant notion of ‘social imaginaries’ as a bridge between ‘secular’ and ‘post-secular’ social science. Thus, themes implicit in A Secular Age are made explicit and used to challenge how social science is done in ‘post-secular’ times.

Keywords

individualismpost-secularreligionsecularizationsociology
Type
Symposium on Charles Taylor with his responses
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 91 , Issue 1036 , November 2010 , pp. 648 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2010 The Dominican Society.

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