Abstract

BOTELHO MONIZ, Jorge. Genealogy of the secularization thesis: From its pre-sociological proveniences to its emergence in nineteenth-century sociology. Soc. relig. [online]. 2017, vol.27, n.48, pp.130-163. ISSN 1853-7081.

The main focus of our research is the analysis and interpretation of the conditions that supported the provenience and the emergence of the secularization thesis. For that purpose, we applied a genealogical methodology that allows us to observe its historical vicissitudes, as well as its contingencies, discontinuities, and contradictions in sociological and pre-sociological discourse. Thus, we propose a diachronic and systematic review of secularization's several meanings. We start by its Greco-Roman senses - where we identify the five basic layers of meaning of the concept - and then deepen what we call the fundamental moment for the establishment of a systematic study of the religious phenomenon in modern societies - its appropriation by sociology in the mid-nineteenth century, but, especially, in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century. The study of its provenience and emergence compels us to question secularization's representation, and of its concomitant project of modernity, as the natural order of modern societies.

Keywords : Secularization Thesis; Genealogy; Etymology; Nineteenth-century sociology.