TOWARDS A NEW SECULAR VALUATION OF RELIGION. A PROPOSAL FROM THE SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF CLIFFORD GEERTZ

Abstract

Given the characteristics of the contemporary world in its modern and postmodern aspects, it is difficult to find analyzes or judgments which express a favorable view on religion, especially in its more traditional forms. Modern secularization processes and the diversity of beliefs that coexist today in the form of cultural pluralism have led to religion being perceived as a reality out of place within recent sociocultural phenom-ena. Faced with this problem, the analysis from the world of symbolic anthropology is offered as a possibility of claiming religion, especially if we stick to the contextu-alization that makes the religious phenomenon something specific proper to culture. Taking this into account, the research presented aims to propose how the symbolic anthropology developed by Clifford Geertz implies a relocation of religion in the ac-tual world, because thinking of it as a cultural system, it also considers the role that it plays in the cultural processes that characterize the actual world.