Description
Book SynopsisMurat Akan reframes the question of secularism, exploring its presence both outside and inside Europe and offering a rich empirical account of how it moves across borders and through time. Akan uses France and Turkey to analyze comparative discussions of secularism, struggles for power, and historical contextual constraints.
Trade ReviewMurat Akan has given us an incredibly thorough account of how ideas about secularism have traveled between France and Turkey and how to relate these ideas to broader understandings of the relation between religion and society. His sophisticated theoretical approach is deeply informed by his empirical research. This book will clarify many misunderstandings in the comparative study of secularism and multiple modernities. It is a must-read for scholars from a wide range of social sciences as well as for an informed public. -- Peter van der Veer, author of
The Value of ComparisonComparative studies on France and Turkey often emphasize the opposition between rigid anticlerical secularism and moderate liberal secularism. This brilliant and incisive work by Murat Akan demonstrates that a binary approach ignores the central problem of political constructions of secularism: the civil religion of the state. With the meticulous erudition of a historian and theoretical mastery of a sociologist, Akan shows how liberal secularism won under the Third French Republic and how Kemalism in Turkey set the path for the hegemony of the AKP. Akan's is the best book I have read on the subject and will significantly refresh global conceptions of secularism. -- Jean Baubérot, École pratique des hautes études (Sorbonne)
Akan makes significant contributions to the study of religion and secularism, especially (but not only) in France and Turkey. The book also offers deep archival engagement; with his native knowledge of Turkish and fluency in French, Akan makes an original contribution to Turkey-France comparisons.
The Politics of Secularism is comparative history at its best. -- Cihan Tuğal, University of California, Berkeley
An important contribution to historical, anthropological, political, and legal scholarship on secularism. * Journal of Church and State *
Akan makes a significant contribution to the study of secularism in France and Turkey. Those scholars interested in both politics of secularism in general, and French and Turkish experiences in particular will find the book useful. * Politics and Religion *
Murat Akan’s recent book is a significant contribution to this literature, particularly for his shift to consider the historical importance of state supported religious education and religious workers, most notably in the French and Turkish contexts. -- Russell Powell * Journal of Church and State *
The Politics of Secularism, with its original insights on political struggles over secular institutions, is a significant contribution to the comparative historical social science literature on secularism. Given its meticulous analysis of a wide range of debates in critical periods, it will become a central reference for students of French and Turkish secularism. * New Perspectives on Turkey *
Table of ContentsPreface
1. Traveling Through Analytical and Hermeneutical Approaches
2. Accounting for Institutional Outcomes and Trajectories: Political Ends, Ideas, and Institutions
3. The Institutional Politics of Laïcité in the French Third Republic
4. The Politics of
Laïcité Positive and Diversity in Contemporary France
5. The Institutional Politics of Laiklik in Kemalist Turkey
6. The Sincere Government (
Samimi Hükümet), the Institutional Politics of Religion, and Diversity in Contemporary Turkey
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
