Religion and the Secular in Eastern Germany

AutorIn
Esther Peperkamp, Małgorzata Rajtar (eds.)

Verlag
Leiden: Brill

Jahr der Veröffentlichung
2010

ISBN
978-9004-18467-1

OPAC

Abstract
The radical process of religious change in East Germany poses a real challenge to social researchers. Common explanations view either the socialist past or larger scale processes of modernization to be the cause of East German secularization, but fail to address historical contingencies and individual agency. This book focuses on the interplay between local bureaucracies and individual lives. Contextualizing individual choices is essential in order to gain insight into how religious meaning is produced, reproduced, contested, discontinued, and disrupted. Bringing together the disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, and sociology, what unites the articles is their qualitative approach. The collection of articles lays out an impressive mosaic of the religious and the secular in the GDR and contemporary eastern Germany.