Feminism and Secularization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4494038 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joy Dixon (0000-0002-1209-2016, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 80 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 291-296 |
| Publication date | 2015-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History Workshop Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/hwj/dbv022 |
| OpenAlex | W2112357119 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Both Laura Schwartz’s Infidel Feminism and Lesley Hall’s The Life and Times of Stella Browne are books about the history of feminism and freethought, but both of them also contribute in crucial ways – both implicitly and explicitly – to ongoing debates over the history of religion in modern Britain and the revision of what has come to be known as the ‘secularization thesis’. Secularization – understood here as a political project rather than as an abstract historical process1 – was itself the main goal of the secularist movement in nineteenth to twentieth-century Britain. At the same time, one result of the success of that project – among historians and sociologists who embraced the ‘secularization thesis’, if not necessarily within society more broadly – has been to obscure and marginalize the history of secularism itself. The belief that secularization was a natural and inevitable result of modernization, and that a secular attitude was therefore against an appropriately historical understanding of ‘the secular’. This has been particularly complicated in women’s history and especially in the history of feminism, where the secularity of feminist politics has, for a long time, simply been taken for granted and therefore, paradoxically, rendered invisible where it actually existed. Further, these texts assist us in the ongoing effort to revise and refine the revisionist case itself, illustrating the rich possibilities of an approach which emphasizes a more dynamic and dialogic historical relationship between ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’.
Feminism · Modernity · Modernization theory · Political science · Politics · Secularism · Secularity · Secularization · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|