Abstract

TERESA MARTINEZ, Ana. Secularization and laicity: among words, contexts and politics. Soc. relig. [online]. 2011, vol.21, n.36, pp.66-88. ISSN 1853-7081.

Catholic hegemony has being built in Latin America historically by the way of patronato, and the states -colonials at the beginnings- build themselves stressed by economic, military and religious individual and corporative agents, even today. Modernity has had the shape of compulsive modernization. It has deepen the detachment among institutions and agents dispositions, at on one hand in the constitution of democratic and liberal states, and on the other hand in the catholic church rationalization, who has never really controlled a religious diversity, so destined to be clandestine. Thus, cultural secularism and institutional laicity may be studied as different processes, which moves at different rhythms, and which may be analyzed at different scales, in different epistemological registers. The current fight taking place in the politic field, where the minor religions and minorities work to reclaim their rights and liberties, release the utopian side of democracy and suggests the need of refining the instruments to study processes that happen in crossed an overlapped fields of society.

Keywords : Secularism; Laicity; Latin America; Religious Modernity.

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