De Gruyter Handbook of Religion and Social Change

This truly unique, global and multidisciplinary reference work offers a comprehensive and analytically rigorous examination of the multifaceted relationship between religious phenomena and processes of social transformation. While the study of religion has long acknowledged its capacity to preserve existing social arrangements, this volume focusses on the equally significant ways in which religious ideas, institutions, actors, and practices motivate and shape diverse forms of social change across historical periods and cultural contexts. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the De Gruyter Handbook of Religion and Social Change provides a systematic account of how religion intersects with political institutions, economic systems, and cultural formations. The contributions challenge reductive assumptions that cast religion primarily as a conservative force, demonstrating instead its dynamic and sometimes ambiguous role in both stabilizing and transforming social orders. This informative resource will benefit scholars and students of Religious Studies, Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Political Science, and Colonial Studies seeking a nuanced understanding of religion’s complex place within social change.